This is exactly the case. The reason there are almost no denials is that there would have been a great amount of due diligence performed to ensure that FISA collection was warranted. The fact that there are any denials after such analytic rigor takes place, suggests that the FISA court is not a rubber stamp.
Every single year people who are read onto FISA must complete a comprehensive course on how to deal with FISA data, and it's not taken lightly. People lose their job over mishandling of this type of data, for reasons such as: poor query construction, failure to timely delete accidental collection on US Persons, or collecting without prior justification.
> failure to timely delete accidental collection on US Persons
You mean that rule which previously said you had to delete accidental collected information regarding US persons after 6 months? That rule was changed a year ago to 5 years, and in 4 years there won't be any systems left that can delete information and the 5 years will be extended again and again, in the same way as copyright.
It's believable that FISA approval is hard to get, but it's not reassuring. What gets through FISA and what people want the government to do don't match well at all. We've already seen leaked examples of what gets through FISA, and a lot of them are sweeping, invasive, and don't respect the US persons standard in the ways most people would like.
Basically, there's no way to claim the system works when we can watch it produce bad results.
The issue seems to be what is considered warranted/justified. Legal vs Moral
If the rules/procedures/expectations are well defined, one will attain a great rate of success simply by virtue of having a system which can be predicted ( failing candidates early, prior to submission ). This doesn't mean that the system is a rubber stamp, simply that it is reasonably consistent and that the expectations are clear.
This view of rigor/justice contradicts perhaps a common sense understanding which could be rephrased perhaps along the lines of 'should this be warranted/justified?'
It is frustrating perhaps as a result of this mismatch.
The problem with your argument is that nobody can legally validate it's central premise, because nobody is allowed to review applications to the FISC.
Unless you have some sort of inside track, I must ask you how you know that applications are thorough and well constructed? Because the only way to be sure is to allow for public scrutiny, but the whole point of the FISC is to avoid this.
This reeks of the typical police brutality / killing internal affairs investigation: we investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong. Trust us.
The NSA has re-interpreted the meaning of the word "relevant" (for investigation) in order to collect millions of people's data at once. How can the FISA judges ever approve that?
Also, you're forgetting that a federal Court has just said that the Patriot Act NEVER allowed for bulk collection. Yet the FISA Court allowed it. Why?! But that's what you get with a secret spy Court that has no accountability.
>The fact that there are any denials after such analytic rigor takes place, suggests that the FISA court is not a rubber stamp.
The fact that there are any indictments after such extensive training takes place suggests that Internal Investigations is not dismissing warranted claims of illegal police behavior.
Every single year people who are read onto FISA must complete a comprehensive course on how to deal with FISA data, and it's not taken lightly. People lose their job over mishandling of this type of data, for reasons such as: poor query construction, failure to timely delete accidental collection on US Persons, or collecting without prior justification.