This is a Cator Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. The screw-ups with regard to surveillance

of Trump campaign advisors have focused some rare attention on broad federal surveillance powers.

Much of that attention is aimed at how the most secretive court in America does its job.

Rand Paul is the junior US senator from Kentucky, he doesn't believe the foreign intelligence surveillance court can be made

constitutional but he's still offering changes to how it does its job. We spoke

today. For those who've been following it, there are substantial systemic problems with the way that the foreign intelligence surveillance court operates.

Some of those were highlighted by surveillance of political advisors to the Trump campaign in 2016.

What is the largest problem that you see in how

intelligence agencies are able to do their work? is problematic for the rights of Americans.

I don't think the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is constitutional.

They work on a standard that is less than the constitutional standard.

So the Fourth Amendment says that you can get a warrant if you have a probable cause to believe

a crime has been committed or going to be committed.

This foreign intelligence court works on a standard that says, we have probable cause not of a crime

being committed, the probable cause that someone has an association with a foreign government.

So that's not in our Constitution and it's a lower standard than the Fourth Amendment.

So right now we're going through this debate in Washington.

How can we reform or make it less likely that the FISA court could be used to investigate a political campaign or a political person?

So some of the reforms are like having an amicus or a friend of the court that sort of argues kind of like you have a lawyer, but you don't have a real lawyer.

But it would still be done in secret.

So I don't think that any of the hatchwork reforms, although I may support some of them, I don't think any of them fix the situation.

I think the FISA court

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