"First, where in what I said do you infer an accusation of lying? I never said, nor even thought such a thing. To the contrary, I'm actually rather thrilled to see someone that deeply involved in this nastiness stand up and say what he's just said."
Parent implied he was lying, not you :) See " I wouldn't put it past FISA judges/spokesmodels/whatever to claim that nobody ever challenged an order when there's actually no procedure to perform such a challenge, and no attempts to challenge have even been recognized."
"and he's directly and personally responsible for whatever abuses of the law have passed across his bench — and I'm willing to bet everything I have that abuses of the law have crossed his bench, and been approved by him."
I doubt this highly. He's not going to approve things he believes violate the law. He has no reason to do so, and every reason not to. My guess is instead, you do not believe the current law is constitutional, which is not the same thing. It's not his place to rule on it. Not even because "just following orders", but for starters, because nobody has challenged it. Not because they didn't know, BTW, Verizon knew, Yahoo, knew, etc.
"Second, how exactly does one not characterize a situation in which, "In short, it appears that the government only submits applications that it knows will get approved—after having first gotten them modified to meet that approval," as more or less a rubber stamp?"
By this logic, almost every motion to almost every court in a real case is a rubber stamp. In larger cases, you generally don't submit motions without talking to someone first either, and making sure it will go over well, or you don't submit it.
Judges don't want to see motions, for example, that just piss on the other side.
Here, they modified the requests to conform to law. If they had been passed through FISC after not conforming to law, that would be a rubber stamp. How can you suggest that telling people "X is illegal, you'd can't do X", so that they don't submit the motion, is a rubber stamp. The idea of a rubber stamp is that it doesn't matter what you give them, they'll stamp it. Here, instead, they are doing exactly the opposite. They tell people ahead of time "we aren't going to stamp that", so nobody bothers.
> It's not his place to rule on it. Not even because "just following orders", but for starters, because nobody has challenged it.
Then he is still responsible for his role in it.
> By this logic, almost every motion to almost every court in a real case is a rubber stamp.
If you believe that, you haven't followed many cases. Motions gets denied extremely often. Not least because there is a general understanding that it is worth fighting them because they often get denied, but also unilaterally by the judge when the judge believes on party is going too far.
This is what is bizarre about the FISC and that makes it worthy of being called a rubber stamp. There's absolutely zero indication that they are providing anything remotely like oversight, other than making sure the paperwork has the right wording to let the judges wash their hands of the matter.
How often do motions get denied? Do they ever get denied? How many years go between two denials?
Never denying a surveillance request is a whole lot different than rarely denying. One is a rubber stamp, the other is a general tendency.
Beyond that, the circumstances (all of the judges appointed by one person, no opposing advocate, no eventual public release of information, no witnesses) do not lend themselves to anything other than abuse and injustice. You can argue all you want, but the circumstances surrounding FISA court will should cause suspicion in everyone.
"How often do motions get denied? Do they ever get denied? How many years go between two denials?
"
This is, as I (and the article) pointed out, completely and totally irrelevant to whether something is a rubber stamp, because the real question is "how many times do bad surveillance orders get through" not "how many times do things get denied".
No regular court would deny motions either if every judge or staff attorney had time to talk to you about your motions ahead of time.
You have not shown how the denial rate has any relation to anything. As i've argued, what actually matters is "how many illegal orders are getting approved".
> No regular court would deny motions either if every judge or staff attorney had time to talk to you about your motions ahead of time.
Yes, they would, because the interests of the parties, and the law, are often wildly at odds, and even when they know the judge will deny a motion, a party will often want to raise it because raising certain issues are important if you believe the judge is wrong and want to raise issues on appeal.
A court that does not deny motions is ridiculous on the face of it. It's pretty much unheard of outside of banana republic dictatorships.
Your entire argument is basically "current rules require it for preserving on appeal". Sure. If the FRCP/FRAP/etc didn't require that, can you think of another reason?
We aren't talking about opinions, or motions to decide the case of various forms that will produce such opinions, but just every day motions on requests for production or whatever (which is what FISC is dealing with).
I mean, this is in fact, the whole point of things like magistrate judges.
Parent implied he was lying, not you :) See " I wouldn't put it past FISA judges/spokesmodels/whatever to claim that nobody ever challenged an order when there's actually no procedure to perform such a challenge, and no attempts to challenge have even been recognized."
"and he's directly and personally responsible for whatever abuses of the law have passed across his bench — and I'm willing to bet everything I have that abuses of the law have crossed his bench, and been approved by him."
I doubt this highly. He's not going to approve things he believes violate the law. He has no reason to do so, and every reason not to. My guess is instead, you do not believe the current law is constitutional, which is not the same thing. It's not his place to rule on it. Not even because "just following orders", but for starters, because nobody has challenged it. Not because they didn't know, BTW, Verizon knew, Yahoo, knew, etc.
"Second, how exactly does one not characterize a situation in which, "In short, it appears that the government only submits applications that it knows will get approved—after having first gotten them modified to meet that approval," as more or less a rubber stamp?"
By this logic, almost every motion to almost every court in a real case is a rubber stamp. In larger cases, you generally don't submit motions without talking to someone first either, and making sure it will go over well, or you don't submit it. Judges don't want to see motions, for example, that just piss on the other side.
Here, they modified the requests to conform to law. If they had been passed through FISC after not conforming to law, that would be a rubber stamp. How can you suggest that telling people "X is illegal, you'd can't do X", so that they don't submit the motion, is a rubber stamp. The idea of a rubber stamp is that it doesn't matter what you give them, they'll stamp it. Here, instead, they are doing exactly the opposite. They tell people ahead of time "we aren't going to stamp that", so nobody bothers.