Latest in FISA
The release of the Carter Page FISA applications represents a monumental disclosure to the public—and underlines just how disingenuous House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes has been.
The Justice Department filed a brief with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on behalf of the United States arguing that the court lacks the jurisdiction to hear cases from private parties requesting the release of records. The full document is available below:
Recent headlines about foreign intelligence surveillance—e.g., “In Trump’s first year, FISA court denied record number of surveillance orders”—are misleading.
You wouldn’t know it from the endless public discussion of the Nunes Memo and the Democratic response to it, but the House of Representatives does not get to decide whether a FISA application is valid. Congress gets to decide what the legal standards are under FISA. But at the end of the day, the judge of any individual FISA application is not the chairman of the House intelligence committee. It’s not the ranking member either. It’s actually not even the President of the United States either.
In response to a FOIA request from the ACLU, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice released FISA Amendments Act Section 702 documents on August 23. Below, we summarize each document. Note that redactions necessarily leave noticeable gaps in some of the summaries.
As Lawfare readers are likely aware, last Thursday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a trove of documents relating to FISA targeting and minimization procedures.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released several sets of documents relating to FISA Section 702. The documents are too numerous to embed in this post, but are linked below by category.
On Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its fourth Annual Statistical Transparency Report relating to the use of national security authorities. The report is based on a mix of statutory requirements under the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 and the Intelligence Community’s internal guidance document entitled Principles of Intelligence Transparency.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its annual transparency report regarding use of national security authorities for calendar year 2016, available here and below. Lawfare will publish a summary shortly.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts today released its statutorily mandated annual report on activities of the FISA courts.