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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

Here's the full quote:

> "A warrant requirement would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or because, when the standard could be met, it would be so only after the expenditure of scarce resources, the submission and review of a lengthy legal filing, and the passage of significant time — which, in the world of rapidly evolving threats, the government often does not have," Wray said.

That's even worse than the abbreviated statement.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ... you can't get fooled again.

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> would not meet the legal standard to win court approval;

That is to say, they're targeting individuals who they have no substantial reason to believe actually did anything wrong.

"We have to spy on you to know whether you are worth spying on."

Remember that you can't even sue for having been warrentlessly wiretapped unless you can prove the government did it ahead of time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapper_v._Amnesty_Internation...)

That isn't true. It means it wouldn't reach probable cause. There are plenty of crimes and suspected crimes for which it's hard to gather enough evidence to reach probable cause.

He said it correctly: it wouldn't meet the legal standard. That should mean, correctly, you cannot invade people's privacy, but again it's pretty unrelated to "are they investigating crimes or not."

Edit: GP's comment was edited from "That is to say, they're not even investigating a crime." That claim is untrue.

If it doesn't meet legal standard nop the fuck out of here. Why even have a legal standard if you can bypass it and do whatever you want?

I didn't suggest they should. I'm saying a "doesn't meet the legal standard" != "not investigating a crime."

i see. when you are investigating a crime and you break or bypass the law I would say that the investigation should not happen in the first place. Everything has to be done within the legal framework that our society is allegedly built on or we descend into anarchy.

Legally this is already the case in the US. Obviously not always followed, but investigators do get hit on the point very frequently.

Feds got a search warrant for me because an unnamed dog I never met accused me of wrongdoing and told an unnamed officer who told a named detective who told a judge. The bar is low. Sounds like they need an imaginary dog that can't be held to testify so we'll just have to believe it .

Technically that unnamed dog accusing you of wrongdoing is all it takes for a search of your car and person.

If they don't have enough evidence it's hard to say that have substantial reasons. It sounds like they have a hunch.

They don't even need to have a hunch. They just need to say they do, and in the cases where it even goes in front of a judge, it gets rubberstamped with a 97%+ approval rate.

Sure, different claim than "they're not investigating a crime."

> That is to say, they're targeting individuals who they have no substantial reason to believe actually did anything wrong.

> That isn't true. It means it wouldn't reach probable cause.

So, investigating a crime should lead you to some evidence that you would than have a substantial reason to request a warrant to target an individual. You're letting the tail wag the dog if they can do the targeting before they know who to target. If they don't have any evidence to target a person but they suspect that person of doing something illegal then that's called a hunch. Scooby doo and his gang were great at following hunches, but that shouldn't be how the FBI operates.

GP's comment was edited. It originally said: "That is to say, they're not even investigating a crime."

But they aren't investigating a crime!

The reason for allowing them to spy on foreigners isn't because foreigners are criminals. It's because we believe surveillance of foreigners might provide some protection for us. They are trying to prevent crimes, not solve them.

"applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval"

Which translates to we will not be able to go around Constitutional protections or ignore laws with impunity.

The FBI has it tough (and rightfully so). Their role as law enforcement and domestic counter-espionage agency are almost opposed to one another when it comes to evidence. What passes for actionable intelligence is very different than evidence needed for criminal court. Aside the standards being different, an actor who is a national security threat and a criminal are often very different, even though they both might "break the law."

That quote will never get old.

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