Carter Page release: Do not believe in FISA? Read it.

Doss : The FISA process dates back to the late 1970s. In the 1970s, in the post-Watergate era Congress and the American public feared that the US government would spy on Americans, especially on progressive causes like the civil rights movement and protesters against the Vietnam War. public hearings in Congress – known as church and pike committees – a number of reforms were put in place that would limit the government's ability to spy on people in the United States and create oversight mechanisms more stringent than, if intelligence or law enforcement agencies (CIA, FBI, and others) believed they needed to collect information about specific Americans for intelligence or counterintelligence purposes, agencies should meet very clear criteria. threat, what information they sought to gather about the person, and how the information would be protected.

The Intelligen Foreign The law on supervision was a key element of these reforms. Adopted in 1978, it created a framework for federal judges to oversee any government request to use electronic surveillance – tapping – to spy on Americans. It created a parliamentary oversight structure for wiretapping and transparency requests for Congress. in FISA court decisions. FISA legislation contains complex definitions of what constitutes "electronic surveillance", what it means to be an "agent of a foreign power" and the process of approving electronic surveillance under different circumstances. .

The law establishes the Foreign Intelligence Monitoring Court (FISC) and creates a set of procedures for federal judges to review requests for government oversight approval under FISA. The 11 judges of the IFCS are all appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. They all sit at federal judges who are busy with a complete business brief in their districts of the country, and they go to the IFCS court house in Washington, DC, on a rotating schedule to review the FISA requests the government to address all compliance issues that have arisen from FISA issues and issues orders.

Although the judges are not full-time in Washington, the IFCS is made up of fully-authorized staff, including lawyers who review all applications and can make recommendations to the judge to find out if there is new problems in the application, the government should be required to submit additional information, whether a particular request can be decided on the pleadings – the paperwork – or should have a hearing where the judge can ask the government questions about the application ( including evidence), etc. According to the rules of the FISA court, the judge may order the government to provide any additional information that the court considers necessary to make a decision.

Finally, it is useful to remember what part of the FISA statute we are discussing here. In 2017, there was much debate over the re-authorization of a different section of Section 702 of FISA, which deals with the collection of communications from non-US people outside the United States. The documents made public Saturday, however, have nothing to do with Article 702. This was an application under Title I of FISA, alleging that a citizen American in the United States acted as the agent of a foreign power.

[19459005Cillizza:IsitcedifficiledtoobtainamandatefromFISA?

Doss : Get approval of a title application I FISA asks a lot of work – like it should be, since an authorization allows wiretapping of American people. You can see how much detail and effort goes into these applications just by looking at the documents themselves: the initial application on Carter Page was close to 70 pages, and – although some of the information is redacted – you can see that it includes general information about Russian intelligence operations in general and Russian attempts to influence the US elections, as well as the FBI's concerns about the activities of the particular subject in this application, Mr. Page

This is much more than just a paperwork exercise. All FISA applications go through a lengthy process of approval within the executive branch as well as in front of the IFCS. The details of the process vary depending on which section of the FISA legislation is used to support the application. But the key points for any application of the title I FISA are that they undergo long internal control at the originating agency – in this case, at the FBI. This control includes a large number of career FBI agents and lawyers and a special supervisory officer before obtaining approval from the FBI director or deputy director. . The same thing happens at the Department of Justice, where the National Security Division's career lawyers review the application before it is submitted to NSD for approval, and then to the Attorney General or the Attorney General. -Attorney General.

Once the application is ready to be filed, it is sent to the IFCS, where the court rules require – except in urgent cases – that the application be filed at least one week in advance. advanced. review and determine if they need additional information, need a hearing to ask questions to the government in person, etc.

Since this particular type of FISA authorization is only valid for 90 days, the government must return to court if it wants to continue its surveillance activities. Whenever he submits a renewal application, the FBI must show that there is always a probable cause. This usually includes all the information from the original application that is still relevant, as well as any new information that the government might have collected, either as a result of the previous FISA order or from other sources.

One of the critics of the IFCS has been that he approves a large majority of the demands that he receives. However, this does not mean that the cases are not well managed or examined. Between the internal procedures of the FBI, the DOJ and other agencies that may be involved in a particular order, and the examination by the lawyers and judges of the IFCS, each application is scrutinized. The fact that it is an ex parte procedure – in almost all cases, only the government is present – means that the government and the IFCS are all making extra efforts to s & # 39; ensure that an application is examined in a fair and neutral manner. try to eliminate any irregularities or biases.

It is also important to note that there are also privacy protection measures. If a request from FISA is approved, the government does not have any latitude to do what it wants with the information that it collects. The government must manage all the information it receives according to the minimization procedures that impose strict limits on who can view the information, how long it can be kept, whether it can be disseminated and how it can be used. The IFCS and Congress are overseeing how the government is complying with its minimization procedures.

Cillizza: Now to Page. Tell us the back lines of what we learned from the published documents

Doss : The most important things we learned are: 1) The Government relied on the information developed over several years 2) Steele's record was only some of the information invoked by the FBI 3) the government informed the IFCS that the information in the file had been developed for 4) each time the application was renewed, the government presented enough evidence that An impartial federal judge believed that there were likely reasons to allow the government to continue its investigation.

It is important to remember that the fact that the government was investigating Mr. Page does not mean that he is guilty of anything – it means that there have been a number of Activities and dubious circumstances that led the FBI to believe investigating. There was no public statement on the results of this investigation, if any. But you can imagine the risks to national security if foreign intelligence resources actually tried to infiltrate and influence presidential political campaigns or the administration. Only time will tell if one of the ongoing investigations concludes that Americans have knowingly cooperated with Russian efforts to interfere with US policy and the democratic process. But – faced with allegations of this kind in FISA's demands – the government would fail in its duty if it did not pursue at least those tracks to see if there was anything substantial.

Cillizza President Trump said the publication of FISA made the whole Russian inquiry useless. Is he right?

Doss: To clearly think of the Russian investigation, it is really important to keep the context in mind and to make the difference between what the Russian government has done and what it is. There were Americans. – knowingly or unknowingly – helped in this effort.

The President often seems to focus on the issue of the "collusion" – whether there were individuals in his campaign or associated with him who knowingly helped the Russian government achieve its goals. Although these questions are of crucial importance, they are only a subset of the overall questions about what happened in 2016. We know that all those who have done a thorough review and responsible for the underlying facts concluded that the Russian government elections by various means: by spreading messages of division on social media using trolls and bots, attacking the electoral infrastructure, hacking and publishing emails from one of the presidential campaigns.

In this context, even if you assume that none of the FBI's concerns about Mr. Page proves, and that he was only knowingly or unconsciously pursuing the objectives of the Russian government, we are still with overwhelming mountain of further evidence about Russia's efforts to influence and undermine our elections in 2016. So no, I do not think this particular FISA application, or its renewals, are determinative of the situation in its together.

Cillizza: Finish this sentence: "The most important thing to remember from this version of FISA is _________________." Now, explains.

Doss : The most important thing to remember from this FISA publication is that the legislative framework is sound and that the process works.

As the IFCS procedures are classified and monitoring is also conducted in classified channels, many people experience some discomfort with FISA and IFCS. Releasing a FISA application like this is unprecedented, and it is unfortunate that transparency was born in this way, in a very charged political environment where so many people are wondering what information they can trust and how to interpret it. information that they see again. But, hopefully, the documents give some idea of ​​how FISA works in such situations.

Since the adoption of FISA in 1978, calls have been made for the law to strike the right balance between privacy and national security. . These are important debates that we should continue to have. For those who think it is all too easy to meet the standard of probable causes in FISA applications, consider whether this standard should be changed in law. But do not confuse legitimately different ideas about what the law "should be" with a debate over whether the law has been applied correctly in this particular case. The publication of these long, mostly unpublished documents should help everyone – from law professors to journalists to politicians – to better see the cost of a request from FISA for the required approvals. . I hope this transparency will help people to candidly evaluate whether they think the law sets the right bar for the standard of investigation and to reassure them that the current standard is being met. , even in cases like this. potential to be so politically charged.