
US surveillance court reportedly rejected zero spying requests last year - obi1kenobi
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/30/11545982/us-surveillance-spying-court-requests-memo-2015
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awinter-py
right, because the FIS judges who say no get fired. this is survivor bias in
action.

Congress and law enforcement are behaving as if the core problem facing the
legal system is a new one, 'how do you catch criminals on tor'. Pro-privacy
activists are saying it's 'how do you engineer the social contract to prevent
rebellion' (i.e. the same problem legal systems have always faced).

In general, privacy rights and property rights are linked. It's not a
coincidence that the brandeis paper which introduced privacy to american
jurisprudence was phrased in the vocabulary of real estate & tresspass. It's
no coincidence that large institutions that pay for things (home loan banks &
health insurers) have an automatic right of tresspass in many cases.

It will be interesting to see if erosion of information privacy leads to
erosion of property rights. You can argue that increasing police seizures is
already a symptom of this. Let's cross our fingers that at the point where
property rights are at risk, courts (the non-secret ones) will start doing
their job again and reverse the balance.

~~~
schoen
> right, because the FIS judges who say no get fired. this is survivor bias in
> action.

Any indication that judges have ever been "fired" from the FISA Court?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#Composition)

~~~
awinter-py
The judges take turns in one week duty cycles
([http://fas.org/irp/news/2013/07/fisc-
leahy.pdf](http://fas.org/irp/news/2013/07/fisc-leahy.pdf)). One can assume
DOJ is smart enough to avoid the judge who says no.

Page 8 of the PDF is worth a read. The head judge of the FISC is claiming that
non-government entities have the opportunity to be heard by the court because
they can (1) refuse a court order which (2) triggers a contempt hearing if (3)
the DOJ permits it.

~~~
schoen
> One can assume DOJ is smart enough to avoid the judge who says no.

I can imagine that that happens to some extent, but it's quite a bit weaker
than what you originally suggested (and maybe there are other factors that
prevent or deter the applicants from exercising complete control over who
reviews their applications).

~~~
awinter-py
Hmm, maybe. Given the court's secrecy and the general tendency of judges to
defer to law enforcement on what constitutes an emergency, I assume there are
cases where the gov't acts first and gets permission afterwards. If that's the
case (and I recognize it's an if), and if every request is approved by the
weak-willed judges (history suggests yes), then they have complete freedom to
choose their judge.

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bediger4000
Personally, I think that the FISA court is a travesty, and rejecting zero
surveillance requests is just rubber stamping.

But how would I refute the "Federal judges warrant rejection rates are very
low because the law enforcement doesn't want to present questionable warrants
in the first place" argument?

It seems to me that a place to start is to ask where the FISA warrants get
reviewed - in regular (non-terrorist) cases there's all kinds of warrant
review and challenge and argument before a trial, but I'm not sure that kind
of review happens with FISA warrants.

~~~
ngdndvvcx
> _But how would I refute the "Federal judges warrant rejection rates are very
> low because the law enforcement doesn't want to present questionable
> warrants in the first place" argument?_

Even if every LEO is trying their best to avoid filing questionable warrants,
they will end up being mistaken far more than 0 out of 48,642 times. What's
the point of having this oversight apparatus if they provide no apparent
oversight whatsoever?

~~~
Godel_unicode
So many things wrong for such a short paragraph:

"Reuters writes that the 1,457 requests made last year by the NSA and FBI were
all approved"

1,457 < 48,642.

> "Even if every LEO..."

NSA != LEO. Do you believe their requests were not being made by lawyers with
the relevant act open on their other monitor?

> "no apparent oversight..."

The court's previous rejection rate was .03%. .03% of 1457 is less than 1.
IOW, this is the expected outcome even if no greater care was taken to write
bullet-proof requests. Also, this:

"The memo did reportedly show an marked increase in requests that were
modified by the court before approval: 80 applications were changed, as
opposed to 19 in 2014"

~~~
bobwaycott
I believe the parent mistook NSLs for warrant requests.

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morsch
Also: "The FBI also reportedly sent 48,642 national security letters in 2015."

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blisterpeanuts
Good to know the FISA court is watching out for us. </sarcasm>

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dang
We changed the HN title to be that of the article.

The submitted title ("US surveillance court rejected ZERO spying requests in
2015") broke the HN guidelines twice: first by rewriting the title to make it
more misleading and linkbaity—the site rule calls strictly for making titles
_less_ so—and second by using all caps for emphasis. Please don't do that.

~~~
obi1kenobi
OP here -- sorry about that. I'll keep that in mind in the future.

~~~
dang
Thanks!

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dsacco
Could we change the title to de-capitalize "ZERO"? It sounds like the sky is
falling as presently written.

~~~
BEEdwards
There is a secret court with secret interpretations of the law and it
literally never has any problem with our governments request to spy, even on
its own citizens.

Not the sky, but the forth amendment is falling, the fifth too for that
matter.

