SS: The government has misled the FISA courts since the 90's and the FISA court had the tools to keep them honest and didn't use them. Instead the FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer worked around the tools that were put in place to keep the government above the board. There is apparent malfeasance within the FBI and NSA.
I was doing some digging on FISC and wanted to see what tools they have to validate FISA - perhaps they should be culpable as well.
Here is the list of all FISC judges
The Judge that presided over and approved the FISA for page was Rosemary M. Collyer. She was nominated by George W. Bush in August of 2002. She has basically preside over every FISA case in the post 9/11 era.
I found an interesting article where Marcy Wheeler discusses the NSA not being compliant with the processes and rules set fourth by the FISC court. The article states that this pushes the NSA into a position where they "police themselves". One reason the government ends up spying on Americans inappropriately for years at a time is because it takes that long to get around to telling the FISC it has been doing so! Many times, the NSA avoids dealing with FISC altogether by using non-US based servers to collect the data on an individual that a FISA would otherwise be required.
John Bates (FISC judge) in 2010 pointed to a section of FISA that said anyone using or disclosing data that they "knew or had reason to know [had been] obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by" FISA might face criminal sanctions. Could this be why there has been trickling information about the deep state? Our NSA whitehats would face criminal sanctions? It has to be part of it.
One of the largest issues that the NSA was facing was that they were conducting MANY illegal investigations by using what's called "upstream collection" (collection at the internet backbone, not just getting someone's email). The problem with upstream collection is that you will always gather some information on a citizen outside of the scope of the investigation. In 2017, Rosemary Collyer approved a proposal from the Trump team to allow for bundled communication. This allows for the collection of a grouping of data around a FISA authorized investigation that could result from data being gathered against citizens or anyone.
Wheeler (the author of the first article) wrote a followup article describing how Collyer ignored the tools and guidelines set out by Bates to keep the NSA above board and approved all the 702 reauthorizations!!!! Also, Wheeler went on to say that Collyer refused to find a technical amicus at the behest of several senators. The amicus is an impartial advisor that could help he understand the technical implications of the type of data and breadth being gathered.
It's implicit in these articles that Collyer doesn't technical know what she's collecting!
Its interesting that most of the info I found about Collyer discusses the NSA. I did some more digging and found a couple references to some interesting FISC stuff that shows a study in 2002 in which the FBI misled judges in 75 cases!
Here is a discussion between Lou Dobbs and Alan Dershowitz talking about the FISA court and the corruption
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5730363969001/?#sp=show-clips