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