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Monday
Jan132020

The abuse of FISA must stop

We now have a huge and continuing problem with no cure in sight. This is a tipping point for those who support the Constitution as the IC infrastructure has constructed a “I know nothing. I see nothing.” response to perpetuate lack the control and consequent systematic abuse. With the growth of technology this problem will only grow and citizens will lose the ability to turn it around by democratic process.
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  • “Within Judge Boasberg’s review of the 2017 activity he outlined an identical set of FISA violations from within the FBI units and “contractors” as initially outlined by Judge Collyer a year earlier. Judge Boasberg wrote his opinion in October 2018 and that opinion was declassified last October 8th, 2019)...
  • Because the FISC-R’s conclusion regarding Section 702 required the Government to amend the FBI’s querying procedures, it declined to reach the issue of whether the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures complied with the requirements of FISA and the Fourth Amendment...
  • Essentially it was the job of David Kris to deal with the violations being outlined, and then find process arguments to convince the FISA court to keep letting the DOJ and FBI use the system...
  • both presiding FISC judges never ask the “why” question: why are all these unauthorized database searches taking place? Instead, both judges focus on process issues and technical procedural questions, seemingly from a position that all unauthorized searches were done without malicious intent...
  • Accepting that neither judge, likely purposefully, had no information upon their FISA review, their lack of curiosity is not necessarily a flaw but rather a feature of a very compartmentalized problem...
  • Boasberg and Collyer are only looking at one set of data-points all centered around FISA(702) search queries. Additionally, the scale of overall annual database searches outlined by Boasberg extends well over three million queries by the FBI and thousands of anonymous users; and the oversight only covers a sub-set of around ten percent..
  • as Boasberg notes in his declassified opinion there is no consistent application of audit-trails or audit-logs; and worse yet, users don’t have to explain “why”, so there’s no FISC digging into “why”...
  • If the DOJ or FBI want to turn on a surveillance switch against an American person, let them go to a standard Title-3 judge and request a search warrant for it.”

Read this article in full to gain a more fulsome perspective. 

FISA Court Selecting Surveillance State Advocate, David Kris, Shouldn’t Be a Surprise…

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