[colliric]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01 ... buses.html

Apparently it's a real shocker for Obama and confirms everything Trump said earlier in even more detail.

Everyone is calling for it to be released. Even Snowden has chimed in. And Assange is offering million bucks in Bitcoin for it.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/edwar ... le/2646425

[colliric]

Also anyone who doesn't know the 4 page document is a cliff-notes summary of this one that Alex brought up is a dumbass.

It's a Republican authored cliff-notes summary of this bigger FISA Memo and other FISA documents.

[quetzalcoatl]

Release of the memo, by itself (and without supporting evidentiary documents), won't accomplish anything. It amounts to nothing more than the musings of one Devin Nunes, who has proven to be an unreliable narrator at best. It's on the same level of Trump issuing a statement from his attorney as evidence - "See, this independent person said it, it has to be true."

I'm not against going after Obama, Trump, or Hillary, as they are all criminals and authentic enemies of the people. It has to be scrupulously done by the letter and the intent of the law, however. This rules out people like Nunes and Jones.

[colliric]

My guess is that's why Jones went ahead with this and as is his trademark, made it clickbait.

It one of the evidentiary documents. He will later say "I said I was releasing a FISA Memo, I never said it was the 4 page one, I released the original source for it". Lol.

He's basically just released one of the longer sources for the 4 page summary memo. The fact it was much much longer should have been the clue, but of cause the liberal idiots will focus on the semantics of the 4 pages. He's not stupid you know. Even though I love his work, it's easy to see how he crafts himself as a middle class battler and the leftists fall for it everytime.

[Hong Wu]

Release of the memo, by itself (and without supporting evidentiary documents), won't accomplish anything. It amounts to nothing more than the musings of one Devin Nunes, who has proven to be an unreliable narrator at best. It's on the same level of Trump issuing a statement from his attorney as evidence - "See, this independent person said it, it has to be true."

I'm not against going after Obama, Trump, or Hillary, as they are all criminals and authentic enemies of the people. It has to be scrupulously done by the letter and the intent of the law, however. This rules out people like Nunes and Jones.

You seem to be assuming that they would release something without any ability to corroborate it and without future plans in regards to it. This MO seems more typical of the Democrats lately. It seems likely that the memo will match up with things from the alleged FISA scandal and the related agencies generally keep extensive records. Although the FBI, NSA, IRS and Clintons have been blatantly destroying evidence lately the destruction of evidence tends to look bad in of itself.

[The Immortal Goon]

This smells like Grade-A horseshit to me.

House Republicans, led by Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes (R), wrote a memo about the Mueller, a registered Republican, being a Democrat patsy working to hurt Trump.

According to website bot trackers, Russian bots, Hannity, and InfoWars, are all pushing for the Republican written memo to be released.

This, weirdly, puts Trump in the position of being involved in the conspiracy to hold back the memo.

But, not to worry, the Republicans that wrote the memo to help Trump imagine Trump will finally end the conspiracy he's apparently heading to hurt himself and release the memo saying what a good boy he is:

“It’s pretty clear that since it is so favorable to President Trump that he would want it released,” said caucus member Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). “I think it’s fair to infer with about a 99 percent probability that since it helps the president so much, that he would be happy if the public knows about it.”

CNN came to the same chilling conclusion that the Republicans may release the Republican created memo about how the Republicans are all victims of the evil FBI:

Trump, his White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill have repeatedly sought to undermine Mueller's investigation ever since he was named special counsel in May. Those attacks have also led Trump and Republicans to attack the FBI and Department of Justice and the memo will likely be the next battlefront over whether the bureau has an anti-Trump bias.

Some of the same lawmakers demanding the memo be released have called on Trump to fire Mueller or for the president to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign.

Anyway, I'm sure when the Russians have their way in supporting the Republican Party's efforts to undermine the FBI, all questions about Russian collusion with the Republicans will completely disappear, the Democrats will be left with no reason to pursue this, and the American people will be happy that an investigation into the thing that stopped the investigation was stopped.

That would be so much more helpful to everyone than the investigation going on and letting whatever pathetic card the Democrats try to play land where it does.

[quetzalcoatl]

Well, we shall see. Despite GOP calls for a second special prosecutor, they really have no one at present who can credibly place these, er...documents, before a grand jury, and who can substantiate the documents with a federal investigative team (as in FBI).

[colliric]

That the memo is a dot points summary at just 4 pages and authored by Republicans indicates that the original source was much longer.....

Jones clearly got his hands on one of the much longer FISA source documents with most of the stuff in the 4 page version.

According to website bot trackers, Russian bots, Hannity, and InfoWars, are all pushing for the Republican written memo to be released

Really?

There is still zero evidence for this rather obvious Hillary Clinton sourced conspiracy theory.

Hannity, his employer Rupert and Alex Jones are all Republican Party supporters... So any good news for the Party is likely to reported by them because they are likely to find it interesting news. They are Republicans.

There are millions of Republican Party supporters on Twitter, of cause they are all sharing this stuff around. God it's like you people believe Twitter doesn't have a gajillion users that think alike politically on either side. It's got to be some stupid grand conspiracy because the raw Twitter numbers are too big for you to process despite the fact that the Republican Party has a gajillion supporters all using Twitter and going to tags they like just like you democratic die hards.

You have to prove the IP addresses of accounts came from Russia(which is difficult to do with certainty thanks to Proxy servers and other location hiding technology,), and further to that were not layperson Russians(or any other ethnic group living there) interested in American Politics(Twitter is a worldwide website) or American ex-pat Republicans.

You cannot and therefore have zero actual evidence.

[Drlee]

I would not believe anything that came from Nunes. Or from the Trump administration for that matter.

This issue is dead. Now we have a bribe offered. That adds to my certainty that there is nothing to see here.

Move along. There's a good chap.

[Hong Wu]

That of course won't be happening. The FBI's Strzok sent text messages indicating he was biased against Trump and discussed creating an "insurance policy" against the lawfully elected President. Then we learn that the FBI failed to lawfully maintain 5 month's worth of further Strzok text messages. The memo will obviously be related to this.

The comparison many people are making is to when Nixon's secretary accidentally deleted 18 minutes of audio tape. Here the FBI accidentally deletes (and will presumably argue that they can't recover) 5 months of digitally stored data that is normally always recoverable even when it has been deleted.

Following on the heels of evidence destruction at the IRS, Clinton's operations and the NSA, the right can't ignore this. If they do they are basically surrendering American democracy to people who clearly refuse to follow the law.

The sad thing is that people like Drlee were willing to have standards when Nixon did it but when the left does it over and over again they want to dismiss it. These people need to be dealt with firmly.

[The Immortal Goon]

Really?

There is still zero evidence for this rather obvious Hillary Clinton sourced conspiracy theory.

This is a Republican written memo promoted by Russian bots.

Whatever you may say about Hillary Clinton, and there's a lot, this is hardly some unbiased smoking gun. The only thing it will do is keep the howling true-believers satiated on their diet of bullshit.

I mean, turn this around.

Let us say that the Democrats wrote a memo about the FBI looking into the Clinton Foundation's ties to France.

How many Republicans do you think would really be fooled by French bots and Democrats demanding that memo get released as a smoking gun proving that the Republicans have corrupted the FBI into doing something worse than Watergate?

I'm surprised anybody would be so stupid as to buy into that hypothetical scenario, or this actual one.

[colliric]

Most would want the memo released to see both sides. Certainly there is no comparison, most Republicans would want to see the memo and release it(even if opposing it).

Use a better example than an ally as close as France is, then you might have made a better point.

Say China instead.....

Seriously giving you a pointer, France is actually a really really bad example because of it's historical closeness to the US(You saved the country from the Germans twice remember?).

No good Republican would object to that.

[Hong Wu]

FISA memo has allegedly been leaked, unless this is a fake: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C4M4tU ... 3b65S/view

It appears to have been written by a court, not by "Republicans" or Devin Nunes. This is what sometimes happens when people try to ad hominem attack something they know basically nothing about.

I'll read it, mull it over and post my thoughts later

[colliric]

That's the one Jones uncovered. It's most likely the original document that was summarised into the 4 page summary that they're all reading.

It's too big to pass around unsummarized. Especially printed out.

It's like the film script to the 4 page version's film treatment, most likely (we will hopefully see the summary soon). Nunes most likely summarised it for his colleagues, as you know, usually happens for such things.

It clearly mentions the Trump-Russia investigation (identifiable by the unredacted dates contained within the document) many times and it is obviously the main case discussed(there was a large amount of data collection from Trump Tower if the processes in this document were really followed, a large amount, in fact a massive amount of data), but there have been a large number of redactions(names, addresses, etc) so only the dates seem to remain viewable in this.

[The Immortal Goon]

Most would want the memo released to see both sides. Certainly there is no comparison, most Republicans would want to see the memo and release it(even if opposing it).

Use a better example than an ally as close as France is, then you might have made a better point.

Say China instead.....

Seriously giving you a pointer, France is actually a really really bad example because of it's historical closeness to the US(You saved the country from the Germans twice remember?).

No good Republican would object to that.

Oh for fuck's sake. Fine, imagine it was China. It hardly matters. The point is that a Democratic document about an investigation looking into Democrats would hardly be seen as some kind of legitimate document.

I have no objection releasing this at all. I just hardly see this as compelling in any way at all.

[Hong Wu]

That's the one Jones uncovered. It's most likely the original document that was summarised into the 4 page summary that they're all reading.

It's too big to pass around unsummarized. Especially printed out.

It's like the film script to the 4 page version's film treatment, most likely (we will hopefully see the summary soon). Nunes most likely summarised it for his colleagues, as you know, usually happens for such things.

It's an interesting read. I guess it's a little too long to pass around un-summarized, so I'll summarize it.

I guess the argument here is that people can't read 100 pages of highly important material (even though they're discussing said material) so shoot the messenger and problem solved.

Ultimately this will not work because if Nunes' summary is an accurate representation of the source material, minor synapses like me and the big movers will react to what it actually says, attacks on Nunes' character having little relevance.

[colliric]

I've speed read it.

The Trump investigation is identifiable by the dates within the document. It's mentioned over and over and over again and the court was highly concerned about the collection of way too much information than what was required, most obviously in this particular investigation from every major agency. Their recommendation appears to be summarisable as just plan "Slow down guys, at least try and do it by the book, holy crap you're collecting everything". Read the last few pages, as usual with any Court document that's where the court's opinion is contained. Alot of "You shall not act like this" recommendations.

This is worse than Watergate. But at least Hillary damn well lost anyway.

[Hong Wu]

I'm doing a full analysis of it, or least one that will take me a few hours. It's super interesting and it appears to extend way beyond just Trump. A violation of Trump's privacy here seems to relate to active violations by the NSA going back to at least 2011. So if they can spy on Trump with this justification they can also spy on pretty much anyone, seems to be what the court's opinion is getting at.

To the people attacking Nunes for writing a summary of this; read the full court opinion and discuss it, or shut up. You appear to be counting on people's laziness, apathy and ignorance to get away with shooting the messenger. As the left likes to say, history will not be kind

Again, this is not just about Trump, it appears to be a genuine clash between the pro-surveillance and anti-surveillance factions within the US government. This is historic stuff.

[Hong Wu]

Here's part one of my summary and analysis. It was a very interesting read and I'm nowhere near done yet.

Tl;dr -- this is bigger than just Trump. It appears to be the same things that Edward Snowden was discussing. If the USA allows these people to have spied on Trump, they are actually allowing for the continuation of routine violations of the NSA's (and other related agencies') surveillance procedures that are meant to protect the privacy of all US citizens, stretching back to at least 2011.

I don't believe that it would be an exaggeration to claim that this is a defining and existential issue for the United States. To tie it into something I wrote in another thread; the United States and other western countries have a very small sense of philia as Aristotle defined it. Eventually people will know that the government reads everything they do and that those in government will use that information. This is tolerated in China because the Chinese people are intensely patriotic; if it happens in a country that lacks for a strong sense of philia that country will tear itself apart pretty quickly.

Liberals should note that this would effectively quash the progressive dream wherein people of all races are able to get along with each other effectively enough to form viable nations. So consider that before you rush to shoot the messenger (Nunes, in this case) just because this whole thing is good for Trump and bad for Obama. Trump and Obama are short-term interests.

---

Pages 1-3: The court will review the application of procedures that protect US citizens from government surveillance.

Page 4: The court acknowledges admissions of repeated non-compliance as to "minimization procedures" meant to protect the privacy of US citizens (information acquired through the use of "US person identifiers" as will be further explained).
This presumably refers to the "unmasking" we keep hearing about. The court frames this as a reoccurring problem.

Page 4: The government requested an extension to explain the "unmasking" issues and was granted said extension.

Page 5: The court rejects initial explanations re: non-compliance. The court grants the government another extension.
Note that by this point in time, according to the dates mentioned in the court's opinion that the government has stalled the FISA court for long enough to surpass the date of Trump's inauguration. It appears to be the case that the government is allowed to conduct surveillance during said time period even though the court is still waiting on their arguments.

Page 6: At the request of the DOJ and the NSA, the court changes the rules, partially resolving the non-compliance issues.

Pages 6-7: The 2016 certifications were targeted at non-US citizens.
This appears to be referring to re-authorization of the FISA program generally, since it refers to certifications going as far back as 2008.

Page 7: Further discussion of past certifications for surveilling non-US citizens.
This is relevant because these certifications establish the rules regarding the "minimization" procedures that protect the privacy of US citizens.

Page 8: "It's the court's role to examine the application of the minimization procedures..." [sic]

Page 9: "... to ensure compliance with the procedures." [sic]

Page 10: "[Argument pertaining to the fulfillment of] all elements of the procedures have now been provided to the court." [sic]

Page 11: "The court also reviews the application of the minimization procedures for compliance with [various federal USC statutes]." [sic]

Page 11: "Targeting procedures must be reasonably designed so as to reasonably insure the targeting of individuals outside of the United States." [sic]

Page 11: "Applications may not intentionally target a United States citizen believed to be located outside of the United States." [sic]

Page 11: "To be consistent with the Fourth Amendment... the court considers steps taken to avoid targeting United States citizens." [sic]

Pages 11-12: The NSA is the lead agency for making targeting decisions. It makes these decisions based upon "selectors" such as phone numbers or email addresses.

Page 12: The purpose of minimization procedures is to protect the information (privacy) of United States citizens.

Page 13: An exception to the minimization procedures is when information on United States citizens is required, to aid in understanding or assessing the importance of the acquired intelligence.

Page 14: In 2016 the government proposed having un-minimized access to information related to international terrorism.
In other words, if information relates to terrorism, they proposed having no protections for US citizens.

Page 14: "The court will discuss these suggestions now." [sic]

Pages 14-15: The NSA frequently violated its own rules re: minimization procedures as to US persons in order to query information from internet "upstream" collection.
The term "internet "upstream" collection" is explained in the paragraphs that follow.

Page 15: Internet "upstream" collection refers to information that is not taken directly from an internet service provider.
This refers to intercepting cell phone communications, emails and so-on in a direct fashion.

Pages 15-16: The collection of "multiple communication transactions" such as emails between multiple sources makes separating US persons from non-US persons difficult (because individuals who fall into a variety of categories are interacting with each other) and this complicates the application of the minimization procedures.

Page 16: Internet "upstream" collection of MCTs can result in the collection of a large amount of data on a non-target.
I'm thinking of things like forwarded emails and so-on; irrelevant conversations that provide many details about a non-target could be captured like this, intentionally or otherwise.

Pages 16-17: MCT collection is the most common way that information on non-targets is gathered.

Page 17: "This is not to say that all MCTs are equally problematic."

Page 17: The court found in 2011 that the NSA has engaged in deficient application of minimization procedures.

Page 17: The NSA suggested changes to the procedures, such as a sequestration period for certain types of MCTs.
I assume the types referred to here are those MCTs that contain a certain threshold amount of information pertaining to US citizens and/or non-targets. An exception for "active users" is also discussed later on.

Pages 17-18: An MCT cannot be kept for longer than 2 years after the expiration of the certificate pursuant to how it was acquired, unless applicable retention criteria is met.

Page 18: "Of greatest relevance to the present discussion, those procedures categorically prohibited NSA analysts from using known U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of Internet upstream collection." The court approved the newly proposed procedures.

Page 18: MCTs to an "active user" are less problematic than other types. Identifying MCTs to and from an "active user" are consistent with FISA and the Fourth Amendment.
It's not explained how an "active user" is defined. My guess (or hope) is that it refers to active militants.

Pages 18-19: As discussed above, the 2016 certification re: active users only applies to the acquisition of MCTs when the target is the active user. This is pertinent to what is discussed below."
It appears then that the active user exemption was abused in the case at issue here.

Page 19: "The NSA was violating the minimization procedures with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the court." [sic]

Page 19: "The problem was widespread during all periods of review."

Pages 19-20: The NSA possesses an institutional "lack of candor" in addressing the problem which the court frames as a "serious Fourth Amendment issue."

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

One has to be literally autistic to not know that the NSA and other agencies routinely pry into the private communications of every American citizen, and as many foreigners, as it possibly can. Most of that information, though obviously logged and stored, is never looked at. Still, the fact remains that it is blindingly obvious those agencies, and others around the world, both do not care about privacy laws, and are protected by politicians who consider it a matter of national security to allow such agencies to continue to break the law.

Bush was aware of this stuff. Obama was aware of this stuff. During Trump's lucid moments where his attention span exceeds about 8 seconds in length, he's already been made aware of what the NSA, and other agencies, continue to flagrantly do (I'm honestly a bit surprised he hasn't blabbed it out in a tweet). It's literally an open secret.