[everdrive]

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.

[yxwvut]

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.

[creer]

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.

[withinboredom]

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.