Here's my fix: put the systems under the control of the Judicial branch. This way, Intelligence is not asking for permission, they are asking for access. The tech who does the search is going to answer to the branch of government that cares about the law rather than the branch of government that has the conflicts which create the rush to misuse the systems.

In the end you don't propose changing the tech at all only the procedure for getting the data (the law). It's not a bad idea to be honest.

In my opinion the problem is the mass surveillance of Americans in the first place. End that, and suddenly they can't look into their co-worker's lives or stalk women. They'd only have foreign intelligence information available. You'd also get the benefit of government upholding the people's constitutional rights for a change.

I feel like the real problem is the technology, the law, and the (lack of) enforcement of the law. Every one of these violations should have resulted in a criminal prosecution for a variety of criminal offenses against the government agents who illegally used these databases. Every American who was the subject of one of these illegal searches had their Constitutional rights violated. Neglecting to prosecute government agents who clearly and deliberately violate the law and the Constitution makes a mockery of our entire system of "justice".

That part can be solved with technology by requiring multiple approvals for access to data so no one agent can't look up his girlfriend (or be bribed to look up information by a private investigator) unless he can convince his supervisor (or an audit department) that person is related to some active investigation.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's the right kind of bureaucratic quagmire to actually make a difference.

The reality is if you want to keep your privacy you need to use end-to-end encryption on your devices and make sure your devices don't have malware on it. All big tech or major corporation will just comply with requests for data from any alphabet agency which is why you need to use end-to-end encryption on everything.

The people at the bottom aren't responsible for anything, they were just following their process

This was true for many years, until recently that was disallowed.

There are a ton of exceptions where they can see your full data. They just use an exception, like the abandonded email exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

Rumour is that it will be released next week.

How do you know this? My understanding is that the agencies will try not to submit anything to the FISA court that they know will be rejected as it would be a wasteful use of time and money.

If I was a judge on the panel and I knew there will be little to no public scrutiny, and even when there is scrutiny like the article it zero details are given and no punishments, I wouldn't try nearly as hard to protect people's rights above everything.

Especially if the only people arguing for it is the government, there's no one defending the people except the judges themselves. All day long they live in a security bubble listening the most paranoid people in the country.

It's just too convenient of an excuse to say that they are simply getting it right every time so nothing to see here.

Secret courts are never an adequate solution IMO.

> Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests.

I really tend to doubt the agencies are that good at threading the needle.

(It's also a unique court, in that there's no opposing side. Just the government asking. I'd be much more comfortable with a setup where a group like the ACLU is permitted to object, while still being subject to security clearance and non-disclosure requirements.)

eg the judge will look it over and says that there's no specific crime listed like the law requires, two weeks later there are money laundering allegations also listed, the judge approves it without asking where the new allegations came from.

> Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004.

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/eo12333.html

Anyone can give a reason for anything.