Slashdot Mirror


More FISA Orders Were Denied During President Trump's First Year in Office Than in the Court's 40-Year History (zdnet.com)

In its first year, the Trump administration kept one little-known courtroom in the capital busy. From a report: A secretive Washington DC-based court that oversees the US government's foreign spy programs denied more surveillance orders during President Donald Trump's first year than in the court's 40-year history, according to newly released figures. Annual data published Wednesday by the US Courts shows that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court last year denied 26 applications in full, and 50 applications in part. That's compared to 21 orders between when the court was first formed in 1978 and President Barack Obama's final year in office in 2016.

21 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. deep state by john+of+sparta · · Score: 1, Insightful

    there.

    1. Re:deep state by rahvin112 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Given the FISA court will give a warrant on a french bagel you have to wonder what exactly Trumps new "torture first" group of CIA/NSA spies are asking for warrants on.

  2. Fake news, or basically poor editorship? by Nutria · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In its first year, the Trump administration kept one little-known courtroom in the capital busy.

    There's nothing in the story about whether the gov't made more or fewer FISA requests in 2016.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:Fake news, or basically poor editorship? by dlkwnt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure what your news diet consists of, but I can only assume by your statement that you were either in a coma during the 2016 season, or you've never used social media.

      I've got a very small number of conservative friends on social media and I could still name at least a dozen fake news websites that were all over the place during that time period. One of them that really stood out to me and is still around is truthfeed.com, which was constantly peddling pro-trump/anti-hillary bullshit on a daily basis.

      Fake News is a very real thing, and it's exactly what it sounds like; websites built to look like a new site, but filled with patently false or distorted stories and little to no transparency about who is running or financing the site. This is/was a real thing, and its dangerous because the average American is so mindnumbingly stupid they would believe this crap and share it online with their equally dumb friends. That's how we got nutjobs believing the Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a goddamn pizza shop.

      Then you have Donald Trump step in and start calling ALL news "fake news", thereby co-opting the phrase and completely destroying all meaning it once possessed. I have no idea whether he did that intentionally, or he just bumbled into it like most everything in his life, but the effect is the same, it's become a tactic to de-legitimize professional journalism in favor of bullshit hackery the same way that Fox News vilifies everyone else as "Mainstream Media" when they themselves are absolutely part of that very same media.

  3. Re:and...? by dunkindave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or were they denied because the standards have changed due to some recently publicized abuses, meaning how many would have been denied if submitted about two years ago?

    All we have are some numbers, and now people will claim conclusions that fit their desired viewpoint.

  4. Re:For those of you not up on any of this by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What a load of bullshit.

    This is about the FISA warrant that was used to spy on Trump's campaign. He was supposed to lose and the facts were never supposed to come out.

    Now that those facts are out, they are embarrassed and a few even realize that it could be turned against them and their pet candidates.

    It's too late, unless someone from Hillary's campaign and the FBI goes to prison for this, every (non-incumbent/appointed successor) candidate's campaign will be spied on.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  5. Re:For those of you not up on any of this by bobbied · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Shesh... Be carful there with what you accuse the Trump administration of..

    I'd like to point out that MONTHS ago, around the time of Trump's "Wires tapped" Tweet that caused a week of "He's crazy!" reporting, it was alleged that the Obama administration did just this, went to the FISA court to get a political opponent under surveillance. Since then, more evidence has surfaced that indicates that this is actually true. (Remember the dueling "memos" from the house committee? That's what this was all about.)

    So, I agree. Using the secrete FISA courts to get a secret warrant to spy on your political opposition is not good, neither would using such spying for personal or political gain. But I'm afraid that there is ample evidence that it has been going on and heads should roll for abusing the FISA system... Oh, and heads actually ARE rolling.... But you don't want me to discuss all that because the media isn't really covering it.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  6. Re:Comparison to 2016 by DamnOregonian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or does it mean that 24 orders out of 1600+ is nothing bug fucking line noise?

  7. Also it makes you wonder by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    is Trump's administration denying more requests a good thing because they're denying bad requests or a bad thing because they're making so many outlandish requests. No real telling since it's a secret court.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Also it makes you wonder by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      is Trump's administration denying more requests a good thing because they're denying bad requests or a bad thing because they're making so many outlandish requests. No real telling since it's a secret court.

      Well, only one of the 11 FISA judges has been appointed since Trump took office, and Trump and his administration had no control over the choice -- appointments are made by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with no executive or Congressional oversight, review or even input. Chief Justice Roberts has appointed all 11 of the current FISA judges. So, it's safe to say that the composition of the court hasn't changed with the administration.

      What has changed is the leadership of the DoJ. So it seems clear that what has changed is the nature of the requests -- or possibly the number, but it would require a massive increase in number of requests to cause this change. My money is on the nature of the requests.

      OTOH, the court rejected nine in 2016, the largest number in any year (until 2017). From 1979 to 2015, there were 12 rejections, in 2016 there were nine, in 2017 there were 26. So the change seems to predate Trump, a little.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    2. Re:Also it makes you wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It might not be the nature of the requests, but the willingness of the court to "work" with this administration (ie. they stopped rubber stamping all requests and started doing their job being one of the powers).
      But since the land of the free has secret courts, secret policies and secret interpretations of them...

  8. Andy McCabe will by trying on orange jumpsuits... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yep, the very same Andy McCabe whose wife got almost $1 million from Hillary.

    Did McCabe issue ‘Stand-Down’ order on FBI Clinton Email Investigation?

    Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is now facing possible criminal charges for lying under oath about leaks he made to The Wall Street Journal in 2016, in an effort to salvage his reputation and give his account to journalists who were questioning whether he gave a “stand-down” order to FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation.

    Multiple former FBI officials, along with a Congressional official, say that while there may have been internal squabbling over the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation at the time, there was allegedly another “stand-down” order by McCabe regarding the opening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of her private email for official government business.

    McCabe’s stand-down order regarding Clinton’s private email use happened after The New York Times first reported Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules in March 2015 and before the official investigation was requested by the Justice Department toward the end of July 2015.

    After The New York Times publication, the FBI Washington Field Office began investigating Clinton’s use of private emails and whether she was using her personal email account to transmit classified information. According to sources, McCabe was overseas when he became aware of the investigation and sent electronic communications voicing his displeasure with the agents.

    “McCabe tried to steer people off the private email investigation and that appears to be obstruction and should be investigated,” said one former FBI official with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the investigation. ...

    Who among James Comey, Loretta Lynch, and Barack Obama had to be aware of this?

    Given that Obama also sent emails to Hillary's illegal email server, I'm betting it goes right to the top.

    Obama used a pseudonym in emails with Clinton, FBI documents reveal

    President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.

    The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

    ...

  9. Re:For those of you not up on any of this by rahvin112 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nice hyperbole. A member of Trumps campaign make active overtures to someone in Britain the US security complex believed was a Russian Spy.

    It wouldn't have mattered if they were a vacuum cleaner salesman, I'm willing to bet anyone making such inquiries would immediately get all your conversations spied on with an immediate FISA application. This is how things work, you start taking to people the US government things is an agent of a hostile government those conversations are probably going to be recorded, transcribed and passed on for review.

    Bringing it in like it was simply because Trump was connected is absurd. Want to test it? Start making overtures to Russian spies and see how long it takes them to start recording your conversations.

  10. Re:Good? by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It says 'they' are embarrassed by the unreasonable approval rates that were revealed after the election. The judges are _now_ doing their jobs, not rubber stamping.

    Which is good, I guess. Another example of routine corruption that got exposed and derailed by Trump's election.

    The problem is, it's statistics that don't mean jack squat.

    It COULD mean the administration is doing their job. Or it COULD mean the administration is producing very poor requests that judges are denying because they're stupid.

    And the latter is certainly possible if a certain commander in chief wanted to spy on all his "enemies" and got rejected more times.

    The problem is, we don't know. We can never know because the nature of the courts won't let use determine if the rejections are because the courts are applying more scrutiny, or because the requests are of poorer quality and thus rejected because there is no basis for approving them?

  11. Liberal, here by BankRobberMBA · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, as a way-out-there social liberal who really dislikes Trump and has said bad things about him (and thought worse things), I feel like I owe it to somebody to say 'well done.'

    The cognitive dissonance in my head right now is making it hard for me to follow the threads in the comments. I really did not see this one coming.

    Just, wow.

    1. Re:Liberal, here by sexconker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He also seems to be instrumental in getting progress towards an actual peace treaty between North & South Korea.

      But hey, let's focus on a hooker he may or may not have fucked years ago!

    2. Re: Liberal, here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nk is playing the same old song and dance, except they got what they wanted -validation as a nuclear power and got the mighty USA to come and talk with them and acknowledge them.

    3. Re:Liberal, here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm almost as stunned as you.

      What is more likely, a sudden break out of ethics in Trump world or something else?

      I'm guessing it is something else. Here are some possibilities.

      1.) Good people are doing their jobs. It has nothing to do with Trump. Some other event is responsible.
      2.) Trump appointed one or more of those good people. (It is certainly possible. His major criteria is how much they praise him, which doesn't eliminate the possibility of competence.)
      3.) They are being rejected because the requests are now so bat shit crazy that not even FISA will tolerate it.

      Personally, if I was going to bet money, I'd bet on 3. We'd need to see a random sampling of requests then and now to really conclude much...

  12. Re:Andy McCabe will by trying on orange jumpsuits. by BlueStrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > almost $1 million from Hillary.

    Not true. That money was from Terry McAuliffe the Virginia governor who got it from Hillary, and the part from Hillary was much less than a million dollars. According to Newsweek, and I save the article just to debunk these sort of claims, it was only $675,288. Not evidence that it influenced McCabe has ever been release much less proof that McCabe didn't fully investigate Hillary because of it.

    Oh, well then, no harm, no foul if it was only a measly ~$700,000 from a DNC political apparatchik. Oh, and ~$300,000 from HRC. That's chump-change, not even worth mentioning! I mean, sure, you could probably hire a contract-killer for less, but human life is cheap! There's no way that tiny amount of pocket change could influence somebody being paid those luxurious government wages.

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  13. Re:Good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Lots of jobs at the State Dept have gone unfilled, because Trump hasn't nominated anyone to fill them (and Tillerson was in no hurry to, either). The CIA and FBI have both suffered a lot of shakeout since Trump basically declared war on them.

    Did you see the Comey exchange with Anderson Cooper on CNN? Cooper - super liberal Cooper - busted Comey's chops for being the FBI leaker. It was hilarious to see him try to explain himself. Hell, even the left hated Comey's guts before the election. Now with Comey and McCabe both exposed, not to mention the Strzok/page Trump hate fest, it sure looks like Trump was right on the money.

    I don't know about the CIA specifically, but when DNI James Clapper lied to Congress, it didn't give me the warm fuzzy feelings about any of the secret societies.

    Before you complain about anyone declaring war, maybe consider it was a self defense action.

  14. Re:Good? by frazamatazzle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is so cool. How exactly did Trump get the Freedom Act passed in 2015? Please do tell because I would love to hear more about Trump's time travelling skills!