FISA. It’s Everywhere You Want to Be

By Bill Maher

After spending over a million dollars – and freaking out the Internet – the FBI “unlocked” the San Bernardino terrorists’ iPhone. You would have thought they were asking to waterboard Siri. Like Thurgood Marshall said, “If you’ve got a warrant, I guess you’re gonna come in.” And speaking of warrants, it turns out when spooks ask for one, the answer is always yes. According to The Guardian:

The secretive US foreign intelligence surveillance court (FISA) did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes… The court received 1,457 requests last year on behalf of the National Security Agency and the FBI for authority to intercept communications, including email and phone calls… The court did not reject any of the applications in whole or in part… The total represented a slight uptick from 2014, when the court received 1,379 applications and rejected none.

The court “modified” 80 applications. Whatever that means. The Feds also made 142 applications for access to business records. The court approved them all. Forget all the other hi-tech gadgets spies and hackers use – the most effective device of all is a rubber stamp.