Tuesday, February 13, 2018

A Look At How The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Really Works


The Hill: Explained: How the secret spy court really works

The allegations of surveillance abuse raised by House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) hinge on a 1978 law that governs surveillance for the purposes of foreign intelligence.

That surveillance must be conducted with a warrant when the collection takes place in the United States. Those warrants are granted by a secretive court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is known colloquially as “the FISC.”

Nunes claims in a memo that the Department of Justice hoodwinked the FISC by failing to disclose that some of the information it used to apply for a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was drawn from opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The warrant application included a footnote saying the provenance of the information was political opposition research, but did not specify Clinton or the DNC.

Here’s how the court works.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: 98% of applications are approved. Did someone say rubber-stamp?

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