Does this FISA court itself need to be prosecuted?

[EternalFantasies]

nvm plz delete

Plz Delete.

 

[Comshaw]

And can we wash away those WA & HI judges along with them?

Its becoming snowflake paradise; which essentially is the opposite.

Since one was a conservative appointee and one a liberal appointee, you don't care who appointed them, you just would like them removed if they don't rule as you think they should? Here's a strange foreign idea for you: perhaps, if they were presented with an argument that was constitutional they would rule as you think they should. My God what an idea! Ruling by established law! What will they think of next?????? Judges actually doing what they should! Amazing!!! I'm totally astounded!





Comshaw

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Plz Delete.

So much for the moot court competition. Damn.

 

[EternalFantasies]

So much for the moot court competition. Damn.

Well, go right ahead. It seems that Comshaw fellow thought he had a point, and still kept the thread alive.

I thought prosecuting that fisa court is actually a stretched and unnecessary idea so i digressed. you think its worth it?

I also no longer wanted to mix this up with the immigration ban flaky judges.

 

[EternalFantasies]

....................

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

I believe that a secret court like the FISA court is blatantly unconstitutional. What's worse, it's essentially a rubber stamp for the government. I believe they favor the Federal government 98% of the time. And the idea that this called a court is a joke. There are three judges, a "prosecutor" that's trying to get a warrant or whatever, but there's no defender to fight against what the prosecutor wants.

 

[NorthFloridian]

I believe that a secret court like the FISA court is blatantly unconstitutional. What's worse, it's essentially a rubber stamp for the government. I believe they favor the Federal government 98% of the time. And the idea that this called a court is a joke. There are three judges, a "prosecutor" that's trying to get a warrant or whatever, but there's no defender to fight against what the prosecutor wants.

https://up4.xhcdn.com/000/134/904/165_1000.gif

 

[KingOrfeo]

Judges can't be prosecuted for their decisions anyway.

 

[ryan8558]

I believe that a secret court like the FISA court is blatantly unconstitutional. What's worse, it's essentially a rubber stamp for the government. I believe they favor the Federal government 98% of the time. And the idea that this called a court is a joke. There are three judges, a "prosecutor" that's trying to get a warrant or whatever, but there's no defender to fight against what the prosecutor wants.

You mean we have attorneys that fight against warrants????

You're joking right???

 

[KingOrfeo]

I believe that a secret court like the FISA court is blatantly unconstitutional.

It's one more legacy of our national overreaction to 9/11, which, amazingly, we don't seem to be finished with yet.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

I believe that a secret court like the FISA court is blatantly unconstitutional. What's worse, it's essentially a rubber stamp for the government. I believe they favor the Federal government 98% of the time. And the idea that this called a court is a joke. There are three judges, a "prosecutor" that's trying to get a warrant or whatever, but there's no defender to fight against what the prosecutor wants.

And if you understood the parallel process in civilian courts, you would understand there isn't one there either. That's what ryan8558 is trying to tell you.

The FISA court (FISC) is as old as the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Do the math. In its 38-plus years of existence it has been staffed by 60 different federal district judges (including current serving judges) from at least 26 different states and the District of Columbia. Prior to the current administration, it has served three Democratic and three Republican presidential administrations.

While various programs and procedures authorized by the court have been criticized and legally challenged, the basic Constitutional premise has not been. Why?

The basic function of the court is merely to issue surveillance warrants to the government in order to collect foreign intelligence from specific foreign agents and sources. And in preparation for debate on the proposed FISA legislation, the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice responded to Congressional requests for legal advice as follows:

In support, OLC pointed out that in normal criminal cases, the government is permitted to persuade a court of the need for a warrant without the target being present.

A similar reasoning underpinned later court decisions upholding FISA against Article III challenges. As explained by the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the “case or controversy” standard was met because surveillance applications under the statute “involve concrete questions respecting the application of the Act and are in a form such that a judge is capable of acting on them, much as he might otherwise act on an ex parte application for a warrant.”

Courts also relied on the similarity to regular warrants in rejecting the argument that FISA Court proceedings violate Article III because the court hears applications solely on an ex parte basis (i.e., with only one party appearing before it) and never conducts adversarial proceedings (i.e., with the opposing parties present).

Those opposed to the legislation during its consideration, however, emphasized that FISA Court orders were not like regular warrants because their validity could not be attacked in later proceedings. As then-Professor Laurence Silberman argued: “Although it is true that judges have traditionally issued search warrants ex parte, they have done so as part of a criminal investigative process which … for the most part, leads to a trial, a traditional adversary proceeding.”

In a criminal trial, the defendant has the opportunity to challenge the means by which the government obtained its evidence, thus subjecting the search to adversarial testing. These concerns prompted an important amendment to the legislation, intended to facilitate “collateral attacks” — challenges that take place in subsequent or parallel legal proceedings — in at least some cases. The government was required to notify the defendant when “any information obtained or derived from an electronic surveillance” of that individual was to be used in criminal prosecutions or other legal proceedings.

These notice provisions allowed the initial spate of challenges to warrants issued under the 1978 version of FISA. As the above discussion makes clear, in designing the FISA Court, Congress took account of the strictures of Article III; and both Congress and the courts drew comfort from the similarities between the procedures used by the special court and those used for regular warrants.

https://www.scribd.com/document/259083922/What-Went-Wrong-With-the-FISA-Court (page 14)

Moreover, since the information collected from FISA warrants is predominantly related to foreign intelligence operations, it is, in most cases, highly unlikely to result in a domestic criminal prosecution in any event. Thus, no Constitutional rights of a non-citizen foreigner OR the rights of a "United States person" who might be collaterally surveilled under the warrant are being violated. The situation is not materially different than you being a witness to a murder in a brothel. If your identity is known and your presence at the scene of the crime is established, you can be subpoenaed to appear and testify despite your personal embarrassment at being someplace you would have rather kept private. You DON'T HAVE a right to privacy in that instance. Conversely, the government doesn't have to stop surveilling suspected spies just because YOU are in the picture or on the other end of the phone.

Arguably, even if you could prove a violation of your Fourth Amendment right against an unreasonable search, the normal extent of the remedy for that violation is exclusion of the illegally procured evidence at trial. You are NOT going to successfully sue the government for "malicious prosecution," "defamation" or "invasion of privacy" when the government is "acting in good faith" which ANY court is going to rule as the result of a foreign intelligence operation NOT SPECIFICALLY DIRECTED AT YOU!!!

 

[Colonel Hogan]

It's one more legacy of our national overreaction to 9/11, which, amazingly, we don't seem to be finished with yet.

As noted above, the FISA court was an immediate consequence of the 1978 associated legislation.

But thanks again for playing and being flagrantly wrong.