The FISA Court is deplorable shite and has no fucking place in a democracy

[cali]

That was true in 1978 and it's even truer now that its been expanded and given more power.

Of the 33,000 or so requests made to the FISA court, only 11 have been rejected.

Last year there were 1,856 requests resulting in almost 34,000 warrants issued, which demonstrates pretty clearly that the requests are for mass warrants.

As Russell Tice, former NSA analyst said, it's a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.

It's a system ripe for abuse with no checks and no way to find out how abusive it may be.

[sibelian]

1. Well stated. Recommended. nt

[MotherPetrie]

2. k&r

[Bonobo]

3. What's wrong with a secret interpretation of law being "monitored" by secret

courts that rubber stamp every surveillance request handed to them -grouped by the MILLIONS?

What's wrong with the govt. demanding private corporations hand over people's personal information and then preventing them for revealing that it ever happened?

What's wrong with the most widely used computer OS intentionally keeping security bugs so that the govt. will be able to exploit them to steal personal information?

What's wrong with the govt. storing all my personal info in a database forever in case they may someday want to comb through it (just in case?)

[cali]

5. according to many duers, not a damned thing.

[fasttense]

6. It's NOT the government behind the spying, it's corporate contractors.

None of the super secret laws and courts would be needed if corporations weren't making such huge amounts of money off our federal government.

First it has to be kept secret from competitors so no one else gets in on their gravy train.

Then it has to be kept secret from the general "civilian" population. We the People might not approve of the vast amount of our national wealth being funneled to wealthy corporations when our country can't afford to even feed their hungry children. We the People might not approve of the methods and short cuts corporations take in order to make more and more profits. Yes, these short cuts are illegal, immoral or destructive but they make the corporations an extra million or two. We the People might not approve of turning over political power to anyone some greedy little pig of a CEO thinks is a ok. We the People might not approve of unelected, unaccountable, greedy corporate tools having the power and authority that use to be held only by duly elected government officials.

It's NOT the government keeping security bugs to exploit our personal information. It's NOT the government storing all our personal information. It's corporate contractors who are doing 99% of it. It's corporate contractors who are controlling it all.

[cali]

35. oh please. it's both. and it's the government leading the way.

[newfie11]

4. K&R

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. knr

[DCBob]

8. So, how do you propose we fix that problem?

[cali]

10. How about appointing an attorney in every case to oppose the government?

How about a Congressional group to oversee every single request?

[DCBob]

11. Yes, I think changes like that should be discussed and might work.

Clearly there is a problem and we need to modify the system to help ensure the FISA requests are legit and necessary.

[Narkos]

12. That's a joke, right?

[reusrename]

61. It would surely bring down the unemployment rate.

I think it's a great idea. The more people involved the better, afaic.

[treestar]

64. Oh right because

You'd be willing to trust them

[rhett o rick]

58. Change the law. nm

[East Coast Pirate]

9. But what about worshiping Snowden?

[Cooley Hurd]

14. Really?

That's all you got?

[East Coast Pirate]

15. I didn't think I needed the sarcasm smilie.

[Cooley Hurd]

23. My bad!

[East Coast Pirate]

25. No problem.

I'm sure it sounded just like them.

[sibelian]

27. Getting ENTIRELY impossible to tell now...

[East Coast Pirate]

41. Spooky is what it is.

[bemildred]

13. Correct. Secrecy and democracy have nothing to do with each other. nt

[randome]

17. So no more infiltrating the KKK or trying to catch child predators or organized crime?

Law enforcement sometimes has a need to operate in secrecy.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[bemildred]

18. Why not arrest them all? Violent murderers and assholes you don't need to fuck around with.

More to the point, if they have committed a crime, arrest them, if not they are free citizens, and you leave them alone.

Yes, this "infiltration" shit is not consistent with democracy. Fear makes you stupid, stop letting people scare you with that sort of bullshit.

[randome]

24. You can't arrest someone until you have evidence.

Sometimes that evidence is not obtained except by undercover work. Until I see evidence that law enforcement -including the NSA- is breaking the law or abusing their positions of authority, I'm not going to assume they are.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[bemildred]

26. These are totalitarian police state tactics, Sir.

If you have no evidence, you have no right to mess with them. The fact you have no evidence does not give you some right to intrude in their affairs, rather the opposite. That is what it means to be free of government harrassment.

[DCBob]

29. Often there are cases where there is "evidence" but not enough to file charges or make an arrest..

thus the need for further investigations and "surveillance". But of course you knew that.

[bemildred]

31. Right, and then you leave them alone and respect their rights until you get evidence.

The notion that if you have no evidence you can interfere in their affairs, lie, cheat, etc. is just a license for you to do as you please, and one can easily see that that is exactly what happens all the time.

[DCBob]

33. Right, but the FBI might be listening to their phone calls to get that evidence.

Is that violating their rights?

[bemildred]

34. Quite. nt

[randome]

39. You do not 'leave alone' a suspected child molester. You try to get evidence.

Undercover police work has been a staple of law enforcement since long before Sherlock Holmes.

Or do you think Sherlock should not have disguised himself, tricked criminals, kept secrets, etc.? (Yes, I'm referencing a fictional character, I know.)

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[bemildred]

66. Your suspicion does not give you any rights to infringe someone elses rights. Period.

If I suspect you of being a pedo, should I come go through your stuff looking for evidence? Is that OK with you if I can do that on my own say so? Or do you have a right to know what is going on and defend yourself?

[sibelian]

28. They don't need to break the law.

All they have to do is work to change it.

[randome]

47. Like Snowden did?

My point is that no one has shown evidence that the NSA is breaking any laws.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[treestar]

65. The naïveté is stunning, isn't it!

Only the guilty should be investigated!

[randome]

16. The process, so I've heard on DU...

...is that when something does not pass muster the first time around, the warrant request is handed back, changes are made and then it is resubmitted.

That makes plausible sense. So looking at the numbers, it becomes clear why the majority do not get rejected completely.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[caseymoz]

19. You make it sound like the problem

Last edited Sat Jun 29, 2013, 12:47 PM - Edit history (1)

is the approval rate. No, that's the symptom. As you've said, a secret court has no place in a democracy. Its central basis is an impatience with democracy.

As long as it's secret, it might not be a court at all for all we can tell.

[cali]

21. excellent point. The approval rate

demonstrates why a secret court is so dangerous and so unaccountable

[caseymoz]

60. Courts have a similar approval rate, though

. . . in the War on Drugs. That's where our law enforcement gets its cynicism, and why the approval rate isn't more shocking.

[JaneyVee]

20. "1,856 requests resulting in almost 34,000 warrants issued"

Actually, the reason for this is because of the tight scrutiny from FISC judges, judges request more information about a warrant or decide to split a warrant with multiple suspects, phone numbers and locations into several, more specific ones. Meaning that they are not letting the Govt just collect mass warrants in bulk, each suspect must have their own specific warrant.

[cali]

22. gotta link to your claims?

[Democracyinkind]

30. You mean a "leak" to her claim...

Sorry.. Couldn't resist.

Kind of ironic that most of the people that are ok with this practice base their consent on what they know from leaked stuff. The only difference being that those leaks are approved by the gov. All these talking points come from government sources and should be subject to the same reprecussions as Manning et al.

[JaneyVee]

43. Leaked stuff? Metadata collection isn't new. And there are more sources on this than just

the government.

[Democracyinkind]

48. "And there are more sources on this than just the government"

That's true. You must mean uncritical journalists that get their info from insiders, who are never prosecuted.... I should have spelled that out the first time.

[JaneyVee]

53. You can find out about all the judges on FISC, they are public

* Reggie Walton, the current FISA presiding judge, may be best known for two high-profile perjury trials - the one with Libby, who was ultimately pardoned by Bush and another against former baseball pitcher Roger Clemens. Walton declared a mistrial in Clemens case after the government improperly presented evidence and on retrial the athlete was acquitted. Lawyers say Walton is a stern judge at sentencing, but note he has also chaired the national prison rape commission. "He's pro-government, but I don't think he's pro-government in terms of doing reflexively what the government wants," a defense lawyer wrote of Walton in an anonymous survey published by the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary.

* James Zagel, who led the Illinois State Police for seven years, co-authored widely-used law school text books on criminal procedure, wrote a critically-acclaimed crime novel, presided over the corruption trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and appeared as an actor in a 1991 David Mamet movie, 'Homicide.' "He leans slightly toward the government," a defense attorney wrote in the Almanac survey.

* Roger Vinson of Florida, who signed the Verizon order, is perhaps best known for striking down the Obama Administration's health care law in 2011. He declared the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate unconstitutional and federal government overreach. The Supreme Court, led by Roberts, disagreed. Vinson's seven-year term on the FISA court expired in May.

* John Bates of Washington, D.C., the judge who served as a Whitewater prosecutor, has dealt blows to the Obama administration in rulings on the indefinite detention of terror suspects. In 2009, Bates ruled that to be held at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, a detainee must be a member of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated groups or have committed belligerent acts. Simply supporting those organizations, he ruled, is not enough. Bates' term expired in February.

* Mary A. McLaughlin of Pennsylvania spent three decades working for white-shoe law firms and four years as a prosecutor. In 1995, McLaughlin served as a special counsel to a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating an alleged FBI cover-up following a fatal shoot-out in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The Almanac reports that defense lawyers describe her as fair and, as one said, "right down the middle on everything."

* Martin Feldman of Louisiana was active in Republican politics from the Eisenhower to Reagan Administrations. He counts as a mentor and clerked for the liberal Republican John Minor Wisdom, an appeals judge credited with issuing significant civil rights rulings during the 1960s. An expert in tax and business law, Feldman most recently presided over litigation related to the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

* Raymond Dearie of New York, a veteran prosecutor, was described in the Almanac survey by defense attorneys as fair. "He has no leanings," one reported.

* Thomas Hogan of Washington, D.C. has been involved in several high-profile cases, including a ruling that restricted public access to White House records kept by President Richard Nixon, an order requiring the Library of Congress to keep publishing a Braille version of Playboy for the blind and a decision that directed the government to stop routinely denying security clearances to naturalized Americans born in certain countries.

* Susan Webber Wright of Arkansas is best known as the judge who presided over the sexual harassment case Paula Jones filed against Clinton. Wright ruled that Clinton could postpone the lawsuit until after he left office, but the Supreme Court disagreed. She later held Clinton in contempt of court for lying under oath about a sexual encounter with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

[Skittles]

62. you need some purty blue links

so you can compete with Pro

[randome]

44. You'd prefer that government not answer your questions?

A statement from a representative of the NSA -even when anonymous- pales in significance to revealing IP addresses of ongoing spy efforts or threatening to reveal the locations of undercover agents.

Not even in the same ballpark.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[Democracyinkind]

46. I've yet to see an attempt to reveal undercover agents other than from Cheney.

I'd prefer the government to be consistent. I'd prefer them to prosecute the people that provide the information for all of these fluff pieces in just the same way as they went after Manning and others.

[randome]

49. We all want more transparency and less secrecy with the NSA.

That's the best thing that will come out of all this. But not every bit of information in the NSA is considered classified or 'Top Secret'.

Revealing something that is classified requires going through the proper channels to get approval first. Unless (I'm guessing here), one's position is high enough to decide that alone.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[Democracyinkind]

52. I guess you know from our prior interactions that I pretty much share that view.

Edit: it's easy to miss such nuances when the debate is framed as "authoritatians" vs "paulites". I'm sure I did so too in the past.

[randome]

57. Yes, it is easy to get caught up in one side or another.

I try to tell myself I'm not on any 'side' but I'm not always the most objective observer of myself. I try. We all try to varying degrees.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[East Coast Pirate]

38. You really think they meticulously perused all 34,000 warrents?

[JaneyVee]

50. The judges are the ones who split the warrants, not the FedGov. So I guess, being that

occasionally they do rule against the FedGov.

[Catherina]

32. +1000000 n/t

[cali]

37. good morning Catherina

and thanks.

[Catherina]

45. Good morning to you lol!

Still wiping the sand out of my eyes my dear Cali. What a pleasure to see your post first thing in the morning!

[ProSense]

36. So

"That was true in 1978 and it's even truer now that its been expanded and given more power."

...you want to revoke the Chuch Committee recommendations?

Introduced in the Senate as S. 1566 by Edward Kennedy (D–MA) on May 18, 1977
Committee consideration by: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee on the Judiciary
Passed the Senate on March 20, 1978 (95-1)
Passed the House on September 7, 1978 (246-128)
Reported by the joint conference committee on October 5, 1978; agreed to by the Senate on October 9, 1978 (Without objection) and by the House on October 12, 1978 (226-176)
Signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 25, 1978

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was introduced on May 18, 1977, by Senator Ted Kennedy and was signed into law by President Carter in 1978. The bill was cosponsored by nine Senators: Birch Bayh, James O. Eastland, Jake Garn, Walter Huddleston, Daniel Inouye, Charles Mathias, John L. McClellan, Gaylord Nelson, and Strom Thurmond.

The FISA resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in 1978 as a response to President Richard Nixon’s usage of federal resources to spy on political and activist groups, which violates the Fourth Amendment.[4] The act was created to provide Judicial and congressional oversight of the government's covert surveillance activities of foreign entities and individuals in the United States, while maintaining the secrecy needed to protect national security. It allowed surveillance, without court order, within the United States for up to one year unless the "surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party". If a United States person is involved, judicial authorization was required within 72 hours after surveillance begins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act

I know people have called for repealing the Patriot Act, but are you saying repeal the FISA law too?

If the Patriot Act is repealed, should the secret FISA Court be abolished?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022999502

[cali]

42. I'm saying reform it.

[HardTimes99]

56. That's the rub, I think. We cannot know exactly what to reform, since

so much is shrouded in secrecy. For that matter, we cannot know for certain whether there even is a problem, given the secrecy which shrouds the FISC\FISA apparatus and process. (It may be that this secrecy is the fertile ground upon which the divide between left- and right-wing authoritarians and libertarians of left- and right-wing stripe grows.)

I still say the real problem is not per se with FISA, nor with the odiously named Patriot Act, but rather with 'trust' in government. When actions of our government happen in secret, how can we trust that our government is not abusing its powers and how do we hold our government accountable for exercising competently those powers we have delegated to it?

After Vietnam and Iraq and the les told to the American people to justify each respective conflict, after the indisputable abuses of power by Nixon (FISA was a democratic respond to Nixon's abuses), Reagan (Iran-Contra) and Bush the Younger (remember warrantless wiretapping?), I do not know how to restore 'trust' in government, nor whether 'trust,' once lost, can even be restored. But maybe that's where the debate needs to start: on the issue of 'trust' in government.

[Thinkingabout]

40. Wow, what is all the timbling about, the Fourth Amendment is being followed and now there are

Complaints. How is this going to be challenged, we don't like the Fourth amendment so we will just bypass what we don't like.

[Recursion]

51. Agreed. Call your Congressman

Tell him you want a better law, and won't donate or volunteer for him unless you get it.

[cali]

54. fortunately, I don't have to. that his position

when you have Pat Leahy, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch representing you, there aren't too many occasions that you have to beg them to do the right thing.

[Recursion]

55. Fair enough. And mine can't vote, though she agrees (nt)

[treestar]

59. Before FISA was passed there were no checks on the Executive

They could spy on whoever they wanted to without cause.

That was the reason for the fISA in 1978. So you would be recommending going back to no checks at all on the President.

Also you have not really addressed whether some secret activity might be needed and in our best interests and not violating the Fourth Amendment. The courts have addressed some of these issues.

Prior to the enactment of FISA, virtually every court that had addressed the issue had concluded that the President had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information, and that such surveillances constituted an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 629 F.2d 908, 912-14 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1144, 71 L. Ed. 2d 296, 102 S. Ct. 1004 (1982); United States v. Buck, 548 F.2d 871, 875 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 890, 54 L. Ed. 2d 175, 98 S. Ct. 263 (1977); United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593, 605 (3d Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 881, 42 L. Ed. 2d 121, 95 S. Ct. 147 (1974); United States v. Brown, 484 F.2d 418, 426 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 960, 39 L. Ed. 2d 575, 94 S. Ct. 1490 (1974); but see Zweibon v. Mitchell, 170 U.S. App. D.C. 1, 516 F.2d 594, 633-651 (D.C. Cir. 1975), (dictum), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 944, 48 L. Ed. 2d 187, 96 S. Ct. 1685 (1976). The Supreme Court specifically declined to address this issue in United States v. United States District Court [Keith, J.], 407 U.S. 297, 308, 321-22, 32 L. Ed. 2d 752, 92 S. Ct. 2125 (1972) (hereinafter referred to as " Keith &quot , but it had made clear that the requirements of the Fourth Amendment may change when differing governmental interests are at stake, see Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S. Ct. 1727, 18 L. Ed. 2d 930 (1967), and it observed in Keith that the governmental interests presented in national security investigations differ substantially from those presented in traditional criminal investigations. 407 U.S. at 321-324.

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/nat-sec/duggan.htm

[treestar]

63. Except that before it

There were no controls on presidents whatsoever. You've been linked to the Duggan case several times.