We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security Surveillance. It Was Ugly.

/fisa-surveillance-fbi.html

  • We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security #Surveillance. It Was Ugly. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/fisa-surveillance-fbi.html

    La #FISA ne refuse rien au #FBI, ce qui confirme plus que jamais que sa principale fonction est de lui servir de couverture, et le FBI en profite pour abuser très largement de son pouvoir. Rien de nouveau (https://seenthis.net/messages/153964) sauf que ces abus ne concernent plus que le seul citoyen lambda (notamment de religion musulmane) mais également les membres de l’#establishment.

    WASHINGTON — When a long-awaited inspector general report about the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation became public this week, partisans across the political spectrum mined it to argue about whether President Trump falsely smeared the F.B.I. or was its victim. But the report was also important for reasons that had nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

    [...]

    The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, and his team uncovered a staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process in how the F.B.I. went about obtaining and renewing court permission under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

    [...]

    Civil libertarians for years have called the surveillance court a rubber stamp because it only rarely rejects wiretap applications. Out of 1,080 requests by the government in 2018, for example, government records showed that the court fully denied only one.

    Defenders of the system have argued that the low rejection rate stems in part from how well the Justice Department self-polices and avoids presenting the court with requests that fall short of the legal standard. They have also stressed that officials obey a heightened duty to be candid and provide any mitigating evidence that might undercut their request.

    But the inspector general found major errors, material omissions and unsupported statements about Mr. Page in the materials that went to the court. F.B.I. agents cherry-picked the evidence, telling the Justice Department information that made Mr. Page look suspicious and omitting material that cut the other way, and the department passed that misleading portrait onto the court.

    [...]

    Mr. Horowitz also said senior-level supervisors bore responsibility for permitting systemic failures to fester, and his office has begun a broader audit of unrelated FISA applications.

    His exposé left some former officials who generally defend government surveillance practices aghast.

    [...]

    #deep_state #état_profond