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The Butterfly Effect in Law Enforcement
How two tiny farts caused a Crossfire Hurricane.
During my time as an active judge, I signed hundreds of search warrants and attended many judicial training sessions. But I had never seen a FISA application. To the limited extent I was allowed to make public statements, I opposed the existence of the FISA court, a minor devil spawn of the greater evil known formally as the USA-PATRIOT Act of 2001 and informally as God’s gift to the surveillance state.
The formal name of the law contained the advantages of being unbearably cute and suggesting that those of us who opposed the new law were either evil or too stupid to hold offices of public trust: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The law had the desired effect in the Senate, where the one senator with the cojones to vote against it (Feingold of Wisconsin) was subsequently voted out, as was another senator who was not present for the vote (Landrieu of Louisiana).
My beef about FISA remains the same as at its creation. A secret court is not a real court. Justice is transparent, so everybody can see that it is administered in an impartial manner. That is why all states by custom and some states by law guarantee open courtrooms. In my jurisdiction, there were people —…
