AS ‘THE MACHINERY WAS MOVING,’ ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE OVERSIGHT, REVIEWS, AND CHECKS WERE SUBSUMED THE BY PROCESS ITSELF,’ RUBBER-STAMPING ‘SIGNIFICANT ABUSES’: “FISA warrants on American citizens require formal approval from the FISC and specifically require that there be probable cause to believe the proposed target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

A FISA warrant is among the most invasive ways an American citizen can be spied on... Several congressional testimonies reviewed for this article, however, reveal that FISA oversight may not be as robust as the American public has been led to believe...

The FISA process is generally viewed as one that typically takes months of preparation before an application is actually presented to the FISA court, but according to Baker the process could move very quickly, and could even be done orally if needed...

FISA warrants are used to obtain foreign intelligence, but as Baker testified, FISAs can have a criminal component to them as well—as long as a high-ranking national security official signs off... “The line between what is criminal and what is intelligence sometimes becomes blurred”...

Yet, despite the rigid description provided by Baker and Anderson, it appears the linearity process was not adhered to in the case of the Page FISA. According to Anderson, pre-approvals for the Page FISA were provided from both Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, before the FISA application was ever presented to her for review...

The signing process by the FBI Director appears to be more of an official act than any sort of actual review. Anderson testified that the Director might receive 15-20 FISAs to sign each day...

Even during normal circumstances, Anderson noted that she did not view it as her primary responsibility to provide any verification or fact-checking of the FISA. According to Anderson, FISA applications would typically return from DOJ inspection with a cover note that “summarized the FISA” and unless an issue had been identified by the cover note, she typically wouldn’t read the actual FISA...

Anderson also testified that the only way she would be aware of the legal predicate for probable cause would be through the DOJ cover note.

Anderson told investigators that her direct supervisor, FBI General Counsel Baker, had personally read and reviewed the Page FISA, lending her additional confidence in the review process. However, according to Baker, he had only read the “factual section” relating to probable cause, and had not read or reviewed any other section of the Page FISA, including the Woods file.

The Woods file, which provides facts supporting the allegations made in the FISA application, is attached to every FISA application and is provided by the originating FBI agent in each case.

Baker, during questioning as to why the FBI failed to disclose the political motivations of dossier author Steele to the FISA court testified this fact should have been vetted during lower levels of preparation.

“So the people filing the FISA application and the people who checked the Woods file to verify that the way this works is that they would not have had any information that was derogatory about Source #1 at the time that this was submitted,” Baker said...

“...I knew that it was sensitive.  I knew that it would be controversial … It was connected to a candidate — this person had connections to a candidate for the office of President of the United States. That alone was enough to make me worried about it and made me focus on it.”

Despite this admission, when asked if he had reviewed any of the three Page FISA renewals, Baker responded that he had not done so, telling investigators, “the machinery was moving and the renewals they had expiration dates and so on.”

...There is one final check in the FISA application process—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) itself. A federal judge would hear the FBI and DOJ arguments, questioning the process and the underlying evidence—except that never happened, and apparently it rarely does.

Given the obvious sensitivity of this particular FISA warrant, it seems surprising that no party thought it worthwhile to ask for a hearing—as provided for by FISA court practices.

A FISA warrant, as noted by Baker himself, is an intrusive surveillance technique that is only to be employed under very strict circumstances and subject to rigid oversight and processes. But as can be seen from the example of the Page FISA, the intent behind the process appears to have been subsumed by the process itself, relegating the various levels of oversight to what appears to have been a process of rubber-stamps. The FISA Court itself appears to have performed little better.

...The FISA court found that the government had been engaging in a long pattern of significant abuses that were revealed to the court by then-NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.

“On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court,” the FISC court ruling read.

The court noted the government’s failure to previously notify the court of these issues, referring to the government’s actions as exhibiting an institutional “lack of candor” while emphasizing that “this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

The litany of abuses contained within the April 26, 2017, ruling was shocking and detailed the use of private contractors by the FBI in relation to Section 702 data...

The FISA process has been the subject of ongoing abuse from various elements within the intelligence community and the processes and procedures that we have been told would protect us appear to be routinely compromised at will.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fbi-testimonies-on-carter-page-fisa-reveal-broken-oversight-process_2796818.html/