Indeed, the FISA court only exists to rubber-stamp warrants.

In 33 years the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, in that same time only 12 were denied, a rejection rate of 0.03% [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

The rejection rate, in a vacuum, isn't evidence that they are rubber stamping warrants.

From a logical perspective, it could mean that those submitting requests are able to avoid sending weak ones and choose to do so.

I'm not saying I believe you/the standard view is wrong, but there must be some other evidence.

On the contrary, a rejection rate that low implies rubber-stamping, prima facie. You would need positive evidence to support your assertion, e.g. that FISA submissions are unusually high-quality. The actual case is, I am sure, that the system was constructed to make allowing the warrant to be easy, rejecting it hard, and the people involved are just responding to incentives. Namely, since it's all secret they are only accountable to each other, so why give each other a hard time?

>a rejection rate that low implies rubber-stamping, prima facie. You would need positive evidence to support your assertion

I've deftly avoided ever taking a class in statistics, but I have gathered there are two schools - Bayesians, who are honest about having priors, and everyone else.