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There was a big ruckus four years ago when the Associated Press announced that telephone records for 20 of its reporters had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department. The government was apparently looking for CIA leaks about an operation in Yemen. Well, a Washington source of mine tells me it’s happening again. The Justice Department has gotten a warrant from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — also known as the FISA court — to conduct electronic surveillance on a group of journalists who’ve been the recipient of leaked information, the source said.

".. The Justice Department has gotten a warrant from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — also known as the FISA court — to conduct electronic surveillance on a group of journalists who’ve been the recipient of leaked information, the source said."

Intelligence agencies violated the constitutional rights of American citizens through illegal surveillance during the Obama administration, recently declassified documents from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) show. The secretive court also notes a change for the better under President Trump’s team. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes two courts to provide judicial review for U.S. intelligence agencies when their activities require them to monitor people on U.S. soil. One is FISC, and the other is the court that hears appeals from FISC decisions, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR). The benches of FISC are comprised of...

from the whoa dept Okay, here's one that's just crazy. A few weeks ago, lots of folks, including us, covered the story of how the Justice Department claimed to a court that reporter James Rosen was "an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" in a leak of some State Department info concerning North Korea. He was none of the above. He was a reporter, but the DOJ was abusing its power in order to spy on his email and phone records, to try to find the source of the leak. Soon after that, it came out that the DOJ had been...

..."What this Reuters and Washington Post story actually does is prove the Obama Administration was spying on the Trump campaign. That’s the explosive angle to the story. It’s not the nothingburger report that Jared or anyone else was trying to set up communication lines that matters – the real story is Reuters and the Washington Post proving that Obama was spying on conversations about setting up those lines of communication.

The secret court that oversees government snooping took the Obama administration to task late last year, suggesting it created "a very serious Fourth Amendment issue" by violating rules the government itself had implemented regarding the surveillance of Americans. According to top-secret documents made public by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – often referred to as the FISA court – the government admitted that, just days before the 2016 election, NSA analysts were violating surveillance rules on a regular basis. This pattern of overreach, coupled with the timing of the government’s disclosure, resulted in an unusually harsh rebuke of the administration’s practices...

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said Congress would not reauthorize certain surveillance programs until questions about the “unmasking” of Americans’ identities under the past administration were answered. Gowdy argued it was a different issue separate from the leaks coming out of the federal government and said he wanted to know (who) had made the unmasking requests and why they had done so.(snip)

Thursday evening on the radio, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin broke big news. The Landmark Legal Foundation, of which Mark Levin is president, has filed a request with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The request asks the secret court to order an investigation into the leaking of surveillance activity conducted on members of Donald Trump’s team, in accordance with the rulings of FISA. The filing Levin read cited “a flurry of recent published reports” that show an “enormous” amount of leaked classified information has been used for political purposes in opposition to President Donald Trump.

The FBI reportedly used the explosive, unverified dossier detailing President Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia to bolster its case for a warrant that would allow it to surveil Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser to Trump's campaign. It's a key signal that the FBI had enough confidence in the validity of the document to work to corroborate it and present it in court. "In my long experience in dealing with FISA processing, unconfirmed information about a potential target cannot (and has not been) included in the application‎," said John Rizzo, the former acting general counsel of the CIA. "So,...

The FBI case into former Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page just took another legal twist. CNN is reporting that the FBI used that infamous Trump dossier as part of “the justification” to convince a FISA court to issue a warrant allowing them to secretly monitor Page. The investigation is reportedly probing possible ties between the one-time Trump advisor and Russia. But, what is particularly interesting from a legal stand point is Page’s reaction to this latest development. Apparently, he’s now planning on taking the Obama officials to court. He said in a statement: “I look forward to the Privacy...

Oh what a tangled web is weaved…. Apparently, the FBI used the Jeb Bush/DNC Commissioned opposition research dossier on candidate Trump as evidence to the FISA court to gain a warrant for surveillance.   Things just got more interesting. If this report via CNN is factual in its baseline accuracy, methinks the motive for the stuttering obfuscation of FBI Director James Comey just gained some sunlight. Washington (CNN) – The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump’s campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to...

Washington (CNN)The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation. The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe. This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)...

A former Trump campaign adviser on Russia and the target of a FISA warrant for surveillance by the Obama administration described himself at amazed that Democrats continue to use a debunked Trump dossier as a linchpin for investigations of the president’s alleged 2016 election collusion with Moscow. Page, a Trump campaign volunteer, told The Washington Times that he is stunned because the dossier is “completely false” and “full of lies” about his supposed conduct vis-a-vis Russia last summer. “The mistakes are so laughable and humorous they’re beyond words,” Carter Page said of a dossier that has him meeting with Russians...

Microsoft tries to thread the needle of transparency by telling its consuming audience as much about governmental collection of data as possible. Toward that end Microsoft releases a biannual transparency report. Within the latest transparency release Microsoft reports in the first half of 2016 they received a massive increase in FISA orders; primarily from U.S. governmental agencies. • “For the latest Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) data reported, Microsoft received 1,000-1,499 FISA orders seeking content disclosures affecting 12,000-12,499 accounts, compared to the 0-499 FISA orders seeking disclosure of content impacting 17,500-17,999 accounts reported for the previous period. We received 0-499...

A newly revealed FISA warrant shows that a Trump campaign advisor was under surveillance by the Deep State during the campaign, adding even more evidence to Trump's assertion that the Obama administration had targeted him and his campaign. When President Trump took to Twitter last month to blast the Obama administration for using the intelligence community to wiretap Trump Tower, the liberal mainstream media and the Obama administration used words such as “sensational” and “false.” As more and more information comes out, it is now clear that words such as “delusional” and “dishonest” would best describe those who denied what...

I assume this Washington Post story is true: “FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page.” It confirms what has been sporadically reported since late last year, that the Obama administration sought and ultimately received a FISA order to spy on at least one associate of Donald Trump. So Trump’s famous tweets were, in substance, true.***SNIP***UPDATE: We are now starting to get a picture of how sinister this whole Democratic Party misinformation campaign is. Through the last half of 2016, the Obama administration was desperately searching for evidence of some link between the Trump presidential campaign and...

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said. The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe...

The current scandal surrounding President Donald Trump’s tweeted accusations that his predecessor wiretapped Trump Tower is proof of what might be called the Salena Zito rule. Zito, of course, wrote the essay in the Atlantic how Trump’s supporters took him “seriously, but not literally,” whereas the press took him “literally, but not seriously.” This is a good way to understand the current state of the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Trump’s wild accusations against Barack Obama. Barring an unexpected turn of events, FBI director James Comey will confirm on Monday before the House Intelligence Committee that...

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