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Look, it’s either this or the whole FBI. Take it or leave it. Speaking of warrants, I’d like to start seeing judges held accountable for “bad warrants”, the ru

Look, it’s either this or the whole FBI. Take it or leave it. Speaking of warrants, I’d like to start seeing judges held accountable for “bad warrants”, the rubber-stamp problem is real.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> the rubber-stamp problem is real. If it's real then please provide supporting evidence for that claim.
- SteveNuts 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... > FISA warrant requests are rarely denied. During the 25 years from 1979 to 2004, 18,742 warrants were granted, while only four were rejected. Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being submitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few were before the year 2000. During the next eight years, from 2004 to 2012, there were over 15,100 additional warrants granted, and another seven being rejected. Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests.[4] This does not include the number of warrants that were modified by the FISA court
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    That they're rarely denied doesn't mean they're a rubber stamp.
    - function_seven 3y ago
      That's the literal definition of a "rubber stamp" process! That you won't be denied, that the granting of your request is essentially automatic.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        How do we know it's automatic without knowing the quality of each request? I think the FBI understands the process and doesn't send flimsy requests in the first place. > four were rejected. If it's a rubber stamp, why are any rejected?
        function_seven 3y ago
        When a government makes a court secret, I tend to infer the worst interpretation of the activities they're hiding from us. We have no means of checking whether the FBI is putting any care into their warrant applications. We have no way of knowing if the judges even read the affidavits, or what level of scrutiny they apply to the requests, etc. All we know is that they grant 99.98% of the warrants asked-for. That's a massively suspicious rate of approval that is more likely explained by the rubber stamp than careful consideration and evaluation. Nothing in this world has that kind of success rate without some sort of shenanigans.
        2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        > We have no means of checking whether the FBI is putting any care into their warrant applications. Congress does. > Nothing in this world has that kind of success rate without some sort of shenanigans. That's your assumption. I have a higher success rate of safely driving to work.
        A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
        Sure and so far it was only Wyden that even was allowed to shed some light on what is happening behind the curtain and even then, when IC officials are dragged in front that body that is supposed to be the buck where it all stops, IC representative simply lied ( wiki Clapper for more info ). It is silly that all this is happening in plain sight and we still argue like it is some sort of assumption.
        nostrademons 3y ago
        Would you believe that any process where 18,742 requests were granted and 4 are denied is because of "the quality of each request"? What would you think about a class where 18,742 students passed it and 4 failed it, or a company where 18,742 employees have acceptable performance and 4 are fired?
    - cool_dude85 3y ago
      Well let's just take a look at the public facts and evidence provided to secure these warrants to decide.
      - lern_too_spel 3y ago
        That's Congress's job.
    - UncleMeat 3y ago
      Two possibilities. Either the government is incredibly careful to only submit requests with sufficient evidence and justification to the secret court or its a rubber stamp. I wonder.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
        Having seen some submissions from various LEOs ( non-FISA stuff mind ), I have zero problem accepting the premise that the government is not that selective. Fishing expedition concept exists for a reason.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        That's the neat thing about priors, ain't it.
      - bigstrat2003 3y ago
        I certainly agree that the FISA court is almost certainly just a rubber stamp. I do not believe they provide meaningful oversight. But I must agree with 2OEH8eoCRo0 on this: we don't know, and we need to know when we're in the context of discussing what public policy should be. It's not enough to strongly suspect. What needs to happen is that the whole process needs to be made open to the public, as it should always have been. There is no acceptable reason to hide a process like this from the public. Once it is in the public view, we can properly judge whether the requests are truly just being rubber stamped. And, as a bonus, being forced to make these requests public would almost certainly reduce (though likely not eliminate) any extant abuse of this process.
    - upsidesinclude 3y ago
      This is sarcasm?
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      "How many cases did they lead to?" "How many convictions resulted from those warrants?"
  - lern_too_spel 3y ago
    Same article: "In a following letter Walton stated that the government had revamped 24.4% of its requests in the face of court questions and demands in time from July 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013." "When [the Government] prepares an application for [a section 215 order, it] first submit[s] to the [FISC] what's called a 'read copy,' which the court staff will review and comment on. [A]nd they will almost invariably come back with questions, concerns, problems that they see. And there is an iterative process back and forth between the Government and the [FISC] to take care of those concerns so that at the end of the day, we're confident that we're presenting something that the [FISC] will approve. That is hardly a rubber stamp. It's rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process." https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/is-the-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court-really-a-rubber-stamp/ https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/is-the-foreign-inte... explains why the final win rate is so high and that it is exactly in line with other ex parte court orders: "Title III statistics strongly support the basic prediction that a lopsided win rate is a general feature of ex parte proceedings, not a unique characteristic of the FISC. Between 1968 and 2012, state and federal agencies made 50,419 requests for Title III wiretaps, and federal courts approved 99.93% of these requests." "Ultimately, we should care about the substance of what the court approves, not the frequency with which it does so. And if the substance of what the court does affects how the government selects applications, there’s no reason to think FISC reforms will change the win rate." That substance is reviewed by Congress.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  The evidence: https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liberty-or-paper-shield/ https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liber... - Calling it a rubber stamp is unfair; sometimes actual rubber stamps run out of ink. To the downvoters - please think about what you're doing by punishing a request for evidence/a source. It does not make for a healthy discussion forum where one can expect to make claims without having to support them, or where asking for that support is seen as an attack. Even if it is an attack, it should not be treated as hostile.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    [flagged]
- pc86 3y ago
  /me gestures vaguely at everything
alphazard 3y ago
Exactly this. A judge signing off on a warrant is essentially making a prediction that a party is guilty of something involving the target of the warrant. The judge should have skin in the game. It could be tied to their salary. It could be a 3 strikes policy. Something they care about should be put on the line when they sign a warrant. If they get it wrong and the warrant was frivolous, they lose something. If they get it right, and the search produces exactly what they predicted, then they get something. Judges would very quickly turn away investigators with insufficient evidence. It would also produce some very wealthy judges who would be worthy of their title according to an objective measure. The best judges would be the wealthiest. Needless to say, they shouldn't be presiding over the trial, which determines whether the warrant produces a guilty verdict.
- thesnide 3y ago
  Aren't judges elected ? If they are, having their hit track record fully publicly available would help. Not in detail of course, but aggregated by crime type for example. It will be prone to abuse. But any system/solution will be. The trick is to find the one that is the least affected. Or when it is abused, doesn't come with huge side effects.
  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
    Some state and local judges are elected. The Federal Judiciary is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
  - giardini 3y ago
    Some are elected by the great unwashed masses and some others are appointed. You must examine the rules for the particular judgeship to know.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Not all judges, in particular Federal judges are all appointed.
  - upget_tiding 3y ago
bradleyjg 3y ago
The US constitution limits accountability for federal judges to the impeachment process. That requires a 2/3rds majority in the Senate to remove. If your suggestion is that we ought to change the constitution, good luck.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > The US constitution limits accountability for federal judges to the impeachment process. No, it (arguably, it doesn't actually do this directly) [0] limits removal from office to the impeachment process. It doesn't prevent judges from being liable for civil or criminal penalties for misconduct without impeachment, and indeed impeachment has been known to be initiated after criminal conviction if a judge for misconduct when the judge stubbornly refuses to resign before that. [0] the limitation is inferred from the “in good behavior” term of office and the availability of impeachment.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    > It doesn't prevent judges from being liable for civil or criminal penalties for misconduct That process does however lead through other judges who have plenty of motivation to find a reasoning that leads to judges being hard to attack civilly or criminally. We already have tons of little loop holes of accountability to sail right through.
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    If you think that there’s ever going to be criminal penalties for approving a warrant that on the balance ought not to have been approved, I don’t know what to tell you. We are living on different planets.
helpfulContrib 3y ago
[dead]

Look, it’s either this or the whole FBI. Take it or leave it. Speaking of warrants, I’d like to start seeing judges held accountable for “bad warrants”, the rubber-stamp problem is real.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> the rubber-stamp problem is real. If it's real then please provide supporting evidence for that claim.

SteveNuts 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... > FISA warrant requests are rarely denied. During the 25 years from 1979 to 2004, 18,742 warrants were granted, while only four were rejected. Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being submitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few were before the year 2000. During the next eight years, from 2004 to 2012, there were over 15,100 additional warrants granted, and another seven being rejected. Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests.[4] This does not include the number of warrants that were modified by the FISA court
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  That they're rarely denied doesn't mean they're a rubber stamp.
  - function_seven 3y ago
    That's the literal definition of a "rubber stamp" process! That you won't be denied, that the granting of your request is essentially automatic.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
      How do we know it's automatic without knowing the quality of each request? I think the FBI understands the process and doesn't send flimsy requests in the first place. > four were rejected. If it's a rubber stamp, why are any rejected?
      - function_seven 3y ago
        When a government makes a court secret, I tend to infer the worst interpretation of the activities they're hiding from us. We have no means of checking whether the FBI is putting any care into their warrant applications. We have no way of knowing if the judges even read the affidavits, or what level of scrutiny they apply to the requests, etc. All we know is that they grant 99.98% of the warrants asked-for. That's a massively suspicious rate of approval that is more likely explained by the rubber stamp than careful consideration and evaluation. Nothing in this world has that kind of success rate without some sort of shenanigans.
        2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        > We have no means of checking whether the FBI is putting any care into their warrant applications. Congress does. > Nothing in this world has that kind of success rate without some sort of shenanigans. That's your assumption. I have a higher success rate of safely driving to work.
        A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
        Sure and so far it was only Wyden that even was allowed to shed some light on what is happening behind the curtain and even then, when IC officials are dragged in front that body that is supposed to be the buck where it all stops, IC representative simply lied ( wiki Clapper for more info ). It is silly that all this is happening in plain sight and we still argue like it is some sort of assumption.
      - nostrademons 3y ago
        Would you believe that any process where 18,742 requests were granted and 4 are denied is because of "the quality of each request"? What would you think about a class where 18,742 students passed it and 4 failed it, or a company where 18,742 employees have acceptable performance and 4 are fired?
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    Well let's just take a look at the public facts and evidence provided to secure these warrants to decide.
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      That's Congress's job.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    Two possibilities. Either the government is incredibly careful to only submit requests with sufficient evidence and justification to the secret court or its a rubber stamp. I wonder.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
      Having seen some submissions from various LEOs ( non-FISA stuff mind ), I have zero problem accepting the premise that the government is not that selective. Fishing expedition concept exists for a reason.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      That's the neat thing about priors, ain't it.
    - bigstrat2003 3y ago
      I certainly agree that the FISA court is almost certainly just a rubber stamp. I do not believe they provide meaningful oversight. But I must agree with 2OEH8eoCRo0 on this: we don't know, and we need to know when we're in the context of discussing what public policy should be. It's not enough to strongly suspect. What needs to happen is that the whole process needs to be made open to the public, as it should always have been. There is no acceptable reason to hide a process like this from the public. Once it is in the public view, we can properly judge whether the requests are truly just being rubber stamped. And, as a bonus, being forced to make these requests public would almost certainly reduce (though likely not eliminate) any extant abuse of this process.
  - upsidesinclude 3y ago
    This is sarcasm?
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    "How many cases did they lead to?" "How many convictions resulted from those warrants?"
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  Same article: "In a following letter Walton stated that the government had revamped 24.4% of its requests in the face of court questions and demands in time from July 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013." "When [the Government] prepares an application for [a section 215 order, it] first submit[s] to the [FISC] what's called a 'read copy,' which the court staff will review and comment on. [A]nd they will almost invariably come back with questions, concerns, problems that they see. And there is an iterative process back and forth between the Government and the [FISC] to take care of those concerns so that at the end of the day, we're confident that we're presenting something that the [FISC] will approve. That is hardly a rubber stamp. It's rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process." https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/is-the-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court-really-a-rubber-stamp/ https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/is-the-foreign-inte... explains why the final win rate is so high and that it is exactly in line with other ex parte court orders: "Title III statistics strongly support the basic prediction that a lopsided win rate is a general feature of ex parte proceedings, not a unique characteristic of the FISC. Between 1968 and 2012, state and federal agencies made 50,419 requests for Title III wiretaps, and federal courts approved 99.93% of these requests." "Ultimately, we should care about the substance of what the court approves, not the frequency with which it does so. And if the substance of what the court does affects how the government selects applications, there’s no reason to think FISC reforms will change the win rate." That substance is reviewed by Congress.
SenAnder 3y ago
The evidence: https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liberty-or-paper-shield/ https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liber... - Calling it a rubber stamp is unfair; sometimes actual rubber stamps run out of ink. To the downvoters - please think about what you're doing by punishing a request for evidence/a source. It does not make for a healthy discussion forum where one can expect to make claims without having to support them, or where asking for that support is seen as an attack. Even if it is an attack, it should not be treated as hostile.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  [flagged]
pc86 3y ago
/me gestures vaguely at everything

alphazard 3y ago

Exactly this. A judge signing off on a warrant is essentially making a prediction that a party is guilty of something involving the target of the warrant. The judge should have skin in the game. It could be tied to their salary. It could be a 3 strikes policy. Something they care about should be put on the line when they sign a warrant. If they get it wrong and the warrant was frivolous, they lose something. If they get it right, and the search produces exactly what they predicted, then they get something. Judges would very quickly turn away investigators with insufficient evidence. It would also produce some very wealthy judges who would be worthy of their title according to an objective measure. The best judges would be the wealthiest. Needless to say, they shouldn't be presiding over the trial, which determines whether the warrant produces a guilty verdict.

thesnide 3y ago
Aren't judges elected ? If they are, having their hit track record fully publicly available would help. Not in detail of course, but aggregated by crime type for example. It will be prone to abuse. But any system/solution will be. The trick is to find the one that is the least affected. Or when it is abused, doesn't come with huge side effects.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  Some state and local judges are elected. The Federal Judiciary is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
- giardini 3y ago
  Some are elected by the great unwashed masses and some others are appointed. You must examine the rules for the particular judgeship to know.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Not all judges, in particular Federal judges are all appointed.
- upget_tiding 3y ago

bradleyjg 3y ago

The US constitution limits accountability for federal judges to the impeachment process. That requires a 2/3rds majority in the Senate to remove. If your suggestion is that we ought to change the constitution, good luck.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> The US constitution limits accountability for federal judges to the impeachment process. No, it (arguably, it doesn't actually do this directly) [0] limits removal from office to the impeachment process. It doesn't prevent judges from being liable for civil or criminal penalties for misconduct without impeachment, and indeed impeachment has been known to be initiated after criminal conviction if a judge for misconduct when the judge stubbornly refuses to resign before that. [0] the limitation is inferred from the “in good behavior” term of office and the availability of impeachment.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  > It doesn't prevent judges from being liable for civil or criminal penalties for misconduct That process does however lead through other judges who have plenty of motivation to find a reasoning that leads to judges being hard to attack civilly or criminally. We already have tons of little loop holes of accountability to sail right through.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  If you think that there’s ever going to be criminal penalties for approving a warrant that on the balance ought not to have been approved, I don’t know what to tell you. We are living on different planets.

helpfulContrib 3y ago

[dead]