When I worked at a certain three-letter-agency, much of the annual legal training amounted to "Here's our incredibly tortuous interpretation of every relevant term in the letter of the law. Don't like it? There's the door."
You don't want a whole bunch of analysts taking their own interpretation of FISA, either. There's the interpretation set by OGC. You're painting this as a bad thing, but it could easily go the other way: some analyst takes an overly broad or permissive personal interpretation of FISA, and ends up doing negative and abusive things. And not just abusive from the point of view of the privacy community, but abusive from the point of view of internal OGC and the law.
It would frankly be insane if your three-letter agency _didn't_ work this way. Everyone needs to understand what the interpretation of the law is, what the legal guardrails are. If you disagree with this, the answer is not just do what you want with FISA.
The point to my post was that there's no dissent allowed from the party line of 'this is definitely kosher'. If you thought the agency was overreaching in its interpretation, you better keep that to yourself, because it was a near-heretical opinion that would be eyed with suspicion, and it's not like you, a lowly rank-and-file employee, were ever going to sway things on that front.
I don't think they meant that interpretation was overly narrow. More like the interpretation was already stretching things well past the intended limit.
That is, the interpretation was meant to justify what people might be tempted to do.
When I was in interrogation school in the US Army, we were told we were only allowed to interrogate non-US citizens off US soil. However, even if a US citizen told us they were a US citizen off US soil, we were allowed to say they "were lying" (and any documents are counterfeit) and interrogate them anyway.
Isn't it ridiculous how they want top talent to find 'sploits or crack codes or whatever but "Sorry, pay is capped at G5, there's nothing we can do. Do it for your love of country", but when it comes to the Constitution? "Bah, don't worry about it!"
Well, I left for exactly that reason. I imagine those who stayed took an 'ends justify the means' stance that I couldn't abide. The organizations themselves are insatiable - there's no way that, left to their own devices, any three-letter-agency would ever say "Oh, this is beyond our scope, we shouldn't be allowed to access this.", and that combined with rubber stamp 'checks' allowed this surveillance creep.
I think this comment deserves to be read more widely. It always seems all around the world that the three letter agencies are trying very hard to convince people to spy more and I have often wondered where the justification comes from internally and if they have any debate inside.
Self selection would be one example. To be fair, when I once had a beer with someone who worked in that area before coming to academia she basically said you could work out how many intelligence officers a country had, and realise that given the amount of time effort and money it takes to properly surveil someone they were limited to a small multiple of that number of people to spy on "properly". I felt reassured by that. I can also see it being a justification for RoboCop.
if a phone is tied to a govt ID, and the phone is required for interaction with benefits or protections, then the phone is a place where the spy happens, including location basically all the time. "you can turn the phone off" or "you can not take it with you" sounds OK at first, but realize that the critical parts of your life, to sleep, purchase and go to places of social importance, will naturally be included in the location tracking.
It would frankly be insane if your three-letter agency _didn't_ work this way. Everyone needs to understand what the interpretation of the law is, what the legal guardrails are. If you disagree with this, the answer is not just do what you want with FISA.