The FISA Court approved the warrant against Carter Paige and then renewed it three more times, allowing the FBI to spy on a US citizen for 9 months.
I don’t understand — what exactly is the the job of FISA judges???
Are they supposed to blindly accept the evidence in FBI warrants? Do they have no responsibility to ask questions about/discuss the evidence in these warrants???
> Do they have no responsibility to ask questions about/discuss the evidence in these warrants?
Well, no. That's why the whole FISA setup was so heavily criticised from the start. Cross-examining the state's evidence is the job of the defence, not the judge, in British-derived systems like the US. But since there is no defence in FISA, it's entirely one-sided, an adversarial system with no adversary. The FBI just has to score on an empty net.
But FISA Court judges have denied warrant requests...rare, but it does happen.
I like your “empty net” analogy.
It happens occasionally that even an empty net gets missed, in which case the referee properly denies the goal.
The real problem is not in a particular case where the court issued the warrant, it's in the system designed to remove all obstacles to the state getting warrants as it wishes. When supporters say, "Support the police! They need this tool to fight terrorists," it's important to be cautious.
