News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by XorNot on Monday March 13, 2017 @05:41PM (#13862706)
The rate of rejections does not actually tell you anything about the effectiveness of the court.

Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests.

Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by grandalf on Monday March 13, 2017 @06:26PM (#13863102)
> Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests.

Fair enough, but then one could argue that law enforcement are under-utilizing the powers they ought to have since so many requests are sailing through without impediment.

Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by lern_too_spel on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @01:53AM (#13874094)
If the agency submitting requests are denied often, the judge would look at future requests from that agency more closely and deny at an even higher rate. You don't go to the judge with garbage for probable cause.

More directly, looking at the approval rate for FISA requests without also looking at the high approval rate for search warrants is going to cause you to reach nonsensical conclusions. https://www.quora.com/How-often-are-requests-for-a-search-wa...

Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by grandalf on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @11:56AM (#13876981)
> More directly, looking at the approval rate for FISA requests without also looking at the high approval rate for search warrants is going to cause you to reach nonsensical conclusions

So you are arguing that search warrants are always rubber stamped?

Seemingly, in a public environment where search warrants and the justification for them is public, there is great pressure on the judge and law enforcement to act properly. No such check exists in the FISA system.

Think about the lax punishment of Brock Turner and all the attention it received. This is because the miscarriage of justice was public knowledge.

Behind closed doors people behave badly. There are numerous examples of this, including reproducible experiments.

Re:Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communicatio... by lern_too_spel on Friday March 17, 2017 @02:28AM (#13891984)
> So you are arguing that search warrants are always rubber stamped?

No, you're arguing that FISA warrants are rubber-stamped, but if you believe that, you must also believe that search warrants are rubber-stamped, which is the "nonsensical conclusion" I alluded to earlier.

> Seemingly, in a public environment where search warrants and the justification for them is public....

Search warrants and the justification for them are not guaranteed to be public and can be sealed like FISA warrants, and both can and have been unsealed following legal challenge. Therein lies part of your error. The second part of your error is that FISA warrants can only be used to search the records of non-citizen foreigners, who do not have fourth amendment rights, and people who have already been proven to be agents of a foreign power.