Care4all
Warrior Princess
- Mar 24, 2007
- 73,854
- 28,780
Yeah, so what?The FISA Courtās 702 Opinions, Part I: A History of Non-Compliance Repeats Itself
A look at the newly released FISA Court opinions and what they reveal about the FBI's non-compliance with its legal requirements.www.justsecurity.org
In 2016, the FISA Court learned that the NSA had been violating the rules established in 2012. Because those rules were designed to remedy a Fourth Amendment violation occurring since the start of the program, the NSAās non-compliance meant that its upstream collection activities had been operating unconstitutionally for eight years. Moreover, the government did not report this issue for several months after discovering it. Unable to bring itself into compliance, the NSA made the only decision it could: In the spring of 2017, it abandoned āaboutsā collection, which was at the root of the problem.
The Courtās October 2018 Ruling
In March 2018, the government submitted its annual certifications and procedures to the FISA Court for its approval. In a decision dated October 18, 2018, and released last week, the FISA Court held that the FBIās minimization procedures violated both the statute and the Fourth Amendment. The Courtās opinion addresses three main practices by the FBI: downstream collection of certain communications; the FBIās failure to record USP queries; and the FBIās improper use of USP queries.
Downstream collection and āaboutsā communications. Although this section of the opinion is highly redacted, it appears that the government is engaged in a new form of downstream collection that raised a flag for the FISA Court. The Court solicited amiciās advice about whether the statutory preconditions for resuming āaboutsā collection apply to downstream collection, and whether certain activities in the governmentās 2018 certifications involve the acquisition of āaboutsā communications. Amici argued that the answer to both questions was yes; the governmentās answer was no in both cases. The Court split the baby, holding that the statutory requirements apply to any kind of āaboutsā collection, but that no such collection would occur under the governmentās certifications.
For years prior to the 2012 review, they screwed up, and afterwards...measures they took to correct it, did not work, but it was finally corrected by dropping what they were doing.... sucks it went on for so long.
But that is a systematic problem, not one created for Trump?