50% would be a lot. I don't know what the optimum number is, but 0.02% (0.0002 rate) is just not plausible. One way to resolve this is to not have secret court

50% would be a lot. I don't know what the optimum number is, but 0.02% (0.0002 rate) is just not plausible. One way to resolve this is to not have secret courts. Then we can judge the merits of these warrant applications in the light of day. If National Security is an issue, then delay the publication of court records by some fixed amount, and require an onerous process to keep the ongoing stuff sealed for those rare cases where it's needed. But in practice, you or I or anyone else should be able to pull up all the warrants issued in 2016, or 1994, or 2021. We should be able to assess the quality of the supporting PC, we should be able to track the success rate of these searches (How many ultimately went nowhere? What was the FBI focused on in a particular year? Etc.) All of this is a bare minimum requirement for a free and open society. Instead we get secret courts and a single statistic (99.98% acceptance rate). That's basically the same as a North Korean approval rating, or the electoral performance of a dictator. It's just too perfect to pass muster.