When President Trump’s associate, Carter Page, came under FBI scrutiny, we later learned of errors in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications that suggested political motives. Now, the Justice Department watchdog, Michael Horowitz, finds 29 randomly-selected FISA applications replete with many blunders.
Are FBI agents incompetent to fill out the paperwork? Is the process too complicated? Or, is the whole FISA concept a bad one because we can never trust the government with spying on American citizens.
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11 replies on “FBI Botches Every FISA App: Watchdog Finds Many Blunders in Surveillance Paperwork”
It just means that when the FBI wants something it wants it and it will do anything to get it. One presumes that when the FBI applies to FISA it doesn’t want to accept no for an answer.
It should be possible to manage some sort of accountability for FBI agents swearing out FISA applications.
I’m a lab tech with a major water utility. If I fudge data, I can wind up not just fired, but going to jail. And lab techs have been jailed for fudging data.
Scott asked the question, where else but government bureaucracy could you have such gross incompetence and still keep your job. I give you THE MEDIA.
There is nothing in Bills comments that I can disagree with. It saddens me to say that what Bill is saying is systemic throughout all governments (in the US).. Even small towns of 1k populations these problems exist and I am slightly embarrassed to admit it….. Bill, sad but thankful….
No excuse for having FISA or other secret courts anywhere in America.If courts are not trustworthy, you shiitecan judges until they begin doing things right. There is no other reason to justify the existence of FISA courts.
Constitutional~Carry!
Accountability.
Bill mentioned this word once or twice, and while the totality of his ranting added up to this, it needs to be delivered with much more clarity and force.
Yes, you cannot change human nature, and that means combinations of error, incompetence, corruption, and contempt, alongside diligence, competence, and integrity.
In full awareness of this, any governmental mechanism which has the potential to violate a citizen’s Constitutional rights must be composed of four parts, and these parts must be 100% consistent:
Procedure ~ Black and white descriptions of the parameters allowed by the mechanism, and the evidentiary requirements for the mechanism to be activated
Application ~ A comprehensive formulation by those requesting to activate the mechanism, requiring a thorough and threshold-meeting description of the evidence supporting the request
Review ~ In the case of FISA applications, judicial examination of said applications to ensure that the evidentiary requirements are valid and meet the threshold
Accountability ~ Any and every case of misstep, mistake, or misinformation in any aspect of the Application, Review, and Procedure should involve a retributive amelioration. Simply, punishment for incompetence or corruption.
Currently, and for many years now, there is no accountability in government, and this is among the most egregious examples. Those who submitted the applications don’t care to do them accurately or completely (certainly in order to claim incompetence rather than corruption in most cases). The judges who approved the badly flawed applications are therefore either equally incompetent, equally corrupt, or some combination of the two. And when uncovered, nobody is punished.
If Hillary can get away with heinous and intentional mishandling of classified materials, then how should anybody be punished for similar corruptions? It’s time for government functionaries to be dressed in orange for their crimes.
Start with James Comey, and watch the floodgates open.
As Bill said it wasn’t the system that failed. I didn’t hear Scott mention that the form was too complicated to fill out correctly. If the agent submits the form, the supervisor that should check it over did not find problems, and judge saw no problems and approved it… that’s three people that all suffer from rank incompetence or consuming rot.
These are the kinds of failure or corruption that as you say have people wearing orange, or white (presuming we use white feathers).
The line “a government should be afraid of its people, not the people afraid of their government” comes to mind.
And where was the Judicial review that rejected these 29 applications for their errors? Don’t judges have the right to send these forms back for corrections before granting permission?
Yes, the judges are as much at fault for these flawed applications getting approved. Analogous to the media being as much at fault for not doing their job in reporting when they learn of corruption from people prefer…
The FISA process does not require the criteria of “beyond a reasonable doubt” to qualify for a warrant. In fact, no warrant requires that level of scrutiny.
As I see it, the biggest problem with the FISA process is that it appears to be done secretly, without public oversight. This must be stopped. As an aside, the whole Patriot Act must be eliminated due to its overarching authority to intrude upon the liberties and its implicit promotion of the abuse of FISA (i.e., Warrantless domestic wiretapping program).
I could not agree more Bill about the FBI. One of the most troubling things about this menagerie is how many people are in prison right now with bad warrants. I tell you right now if I was in prison based on evidence gathered in a FISA Warrant I would be contacting my lawyer and doing whatever I could do to be released.