
Rubber Stamp Court Gave NSA, FBI Permission for all Electronic Surveillance - abhi3
http://sputniknews.com/us/20160430/1038900867/rubber-stamp-court-gave-nsa-fbi-permission-all-electronic-surveillance.html
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afarrell
In regular warrant proceedings, warrant requests are granted at a very high
rate. Is this because the judge is a rubber stamp? No. It is because the
prosecutor doesn't want to get a reputation for wasting judge's time with
requests that are likely to be rejected.[1]

I suspect the same thing is not operating on the FISA court. Why?

Normal warrants are used to collect evidence. That evidence is then used in
criminal prosecutions. Less than 10%[2] go to trial but before trial, there
are pretrial hearings. Here, the defense can challenge the validity of
evidence and have it excluded because, the warrant under which it was
collected is invalid. Furthermore, after the initial trial, the defense can to
to the appellate court to have a decision in a pretrial hearing reversed. If
the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, they can appeal to them. All of
the argument and reasoning here is openly available. At the cost of dealing
with a truly awful user experience, you can read the details of a warrant and
the decisions around it for free[3]. Law schools can debate both the validity
of the warrants and their execution. Judges errors can be corrected.

This appeals process does not occur with FISA warrants because they are not
used for criminal prosecutions. Therefore, they are not challenged and
debated.

[1] Nathan Burney,
[http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1664](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1664)

[2] [http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/types-
cases/cri...](http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/types-
cases/criminal-cases)

[3] yes, this is PACER. Under a certain number of documents, PACER is free.
The interface and payment system are both awful and state-of-the-art.

