[baddox]

It gets worse. Moments later, he says:

"if anybody in government wanted to go further than just that top-line data and wanted to, for example, listen to Jackie Calmes’s phone call, they’d have to go back to a federal judge and — and — and indicate why, in fact, they were doing further — further probing."

Great. So they can't listen to your phone call, unless they indicate why they want to listen to your phone call. I'm sure everyone involved in this program was cherry-picked to ensure that no one says "no" to any of these requests. Oh, and I'm sure all the logs (who asked who for permission, what the reasons were, which requests were granted or denied, etc.) are also conveniently "classified," which you should remember is different than "secret."

[rayiner]

So now you're objecting to the very concept of a warrant?

[baddox]

I'm saying that the concept doesn't make sense when they're being issued by people who have very similar incentives to the people executing the warrant. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution essentially says "the government cannot perform a search unless the government drafts a piece of paper saying that they can do a search."

[betterunix]

Did FISC warrants suddenly start requiring probable cause? Did the court itself suddenly start scrutinizing requests (how would we even know)?

Don't conflate FISC warrants issued for criminal investigations. FISC is barely even a speedbump when it comes to this sort of surveillance.

[rayiner]

The quote isn't talking about FISC warrants. Its talking about regular Article III warrants.

What's deeply ironic about the outrage here is that FISC was created as an extra layer to safeguard privacy. FISC warrants give law enforcement officials permission to initiate an investigation, not to access information that would otherwise require an Article III warrant.