A Very Brief Reply to Steve Vladeck
Let’s clear away the underbrush: The buried lede in Judge Walton’s letter of July 29---which is the one that matters---is the comparison of FISA scrutiny to that of district courts assessing Title III warrants, and not simply the raw percentage of modified applications.
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Let’s clear away the underbrush: The buried lede in Judge Walton’s letter of July 29---which is the one that matters---is the comparison of FISA scrutiny to that of district courts assessing Title III warrants, and not simply the raw percentage of modified applications. The media missed that.
The broader questions Steve implicitly raises are, first, what should the approval process for FISA warrants should look like? And second, how should the scope of the surveillance authority be delimited? These are the right questions, but we won’t find the answer to either one by demanding more data about the current process, as Steve seems to suggest.
Joel F. Brenner specializes in cyber and physical security, data protection and privacy, intelligence law, the administration of classified information and facilities, and the regulation of sensitive cross-border transactions. He was Senior Counsel at the National Security Agency, advising Agency leadership on the public-private effort to create better security for the Internet. From 2006 until mid-2009, he was the head of U.S. counterintelligence under the Director of National Intelligence and was responsible for integrating the counterintelligence activities of the 17 departments and agencies with intelligence authorities, including the FBI and CIA and elements of the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security. From 2002 – 2006, Mr. Brenner was NSA’s Inspector General, responsible for that agency’s top-secret internal audits and investigations. He is the author of America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare.
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