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Daily podcast for Wednesday, May 12, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

A secret federal court designed for foreign intelligence

has once again ratified the somewhat careless methods

of intelligence agencies, and that implicates your right not to be the victim of government snooping.

Julian Sanchez details how the FISA court seems to regularly trust intelligence gathering agencies when that trust, like most secret

surveillance of Americans, is unwarranted.

Before we get into exactly what the FISA court said here, what is our understanding

about the police and investigative agencies' abilities to collect data without a warrant approved by a judge.

So in 2018, Congress added to Section 702, the authority that permits targeting for foreign intelligence purposes of

non-US persons outside the US, added a requirement that was fairly narrow but meant to respond to concerns about so-called

backdoor searches, the idea that you might have foreign intelligence collection in theory directed abroad but that

ultimately is used to get information about Americans that may even be

used in ordinary criminal

safeguards that apply to ordinary

wiretaps. So when James Clapper says that the US government is not

...