There should be a designated lawyer to argue against government requests to the FISC (the FISC grants roughly 99+% of government requests); 2.
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It is highly unlikely that FISC "turned down" the FBI's application, because FISC has never turned down any warrant request that we know of.
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Justice Department and FBI procedures, along with FISC rules, require that every factual assertion in an application to the FISC be verified and accurate.
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The FISC received 1,752 applications in 2016, granted 1,378 orders, modified 339, denied in part 26 orders, and denied in full 9 applications, according to FISC disclosures.
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Because FISC proceedings are classified and oversight is carried out in classified channels as well, many people have a sense of unease about FISA and the FISC.
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Other reporting has suggested the FISC has the power to authorize government personnel to compel such technical assistance without even notifying the FISC of what exactly is required.
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They did not inform the FISC court of what was going on.
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LNG trains, most of which are built in Asia, are FISC components.
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On Wednesday, the ACLU went to the FISC to challenge that determination.
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It is unknown whether the FISC will make the administration's responses public.
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Ken Cuccinelli II, a CNN legal expert, has litigated in the FISC.
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For the first time we know of, a FISC judge was enforcing FISA's "exclusive means" provision—or perhaps more importantly, the authority of FISC to enforce the rules it set on NSA's collection—with threats of criminal sanctions.
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Mueller does not appear ever to have publicly addressed his appearance before the FISC.
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For those reasons, the silence of the FISC and Chief Justice Roberts is deafening.
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The Ohrs' relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.
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The FISC claimed in a response to EFF that "no responsive applications" for warrants exist.
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The FISC then reviews the application in secret, and decides whether to approve the warrant.
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But in the FISC, with rare exceptions, the judges hear only from the executive branch.
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They share his alarm: the legal opinion in the FISC order looks unconstitutional to them.
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Both the FISC and Congress oversee how well the government is complying with its minimization procedures.
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The purpose of the procedure is to prevent false or unverified information from reaching the FISC.
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The inspector general's (IG) report outlines shocking deception of the FISC and violations of Page's civil rights.
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And the same Republicans that have repeatedly voted to expand the surveillance powers of America's spying apparatus—who have held many of the most important surveillance debates related to FISA and FISC in closed sessions—are suddenly outraged at FISC overreach and champion themselves as fighters for transparency.
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But nowhere does the memo indicate that Steele faked, forged, or doctored any information presented to the FISC.
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All 11 of the judges on the FISC are appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
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The shadowy FISC always meets behind closed doors and is tasked with overseeing operations at U.S. intelligence agencies.
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As of 2013, the FISC had only rejected 11 of the more than 30,000 cases put before them.
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Due to the sensitive nature of foreign intelligence activity, FISA submissions (including renewals) before the FISC are classified.
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I think that's the way to blow a giant hole in American medicine as well as the federal fisc.
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If the FISC cannot ensure that intelligence officials honor the codified standards of integrity and transparency, the system fails.
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She has nothing to say, though, about the uncomfortable fact that the FISC did a poor job here, too.
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The FBI and DOJ obtained one initial FISA warrant targeting Carter Page and three FISA renewals from the FISC.
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It would be illogical to open the FISC to the public, "given the national security sensitivities," the Justice Department argued.
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They attributed everything in that FISC, if you read the application, what&aposs been released, they say, this absolute fact.
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"The FISC expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the Court," the judge added.
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The law implemented a set of reforms to FISC, which as of 2016 had rarely turned down requests from the government.
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In fact, from 2702 to 2702, the NSA was always engaging in collection the FISC would go on to deem unauthorized.
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One of the criticisms of the FISC has been that it approves a large majority of the requests that it receives.
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The point here is that privacy and civil liberties-minded people have wanted more insight into the FISC process for years.
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The FISC issued the ruling, released on Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in October 2018.
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Congress wanted to bring an end to secret surveillance law, so it required that all significant FISC opinions be declassified and released.
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Clarification: An earlier version of this article did not include enough detail about the last time the FISC rejected a warrant request.
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The FISC is one of the only courts in America where the accused gets no representation, and the public gets no visibility.
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All FISA applications go through a lengthy process of approvals within the executive branch as well as in front of the FISC.
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In his letter, Nadler wrote that Goodlatte did not consult with the minority before sending the letter to the FISC presiding judge.
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EFF wants to find out if the government has sought similar court orders that have been hidden by the secrecy of the FISC.
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After all, the FISC issued not one but four warrants allowing the FBI to monitor Page for nearly nine months into Trump's presidency.
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Obtaining access to underlying evidence used as a basis for FISC-approved surveillance has been one of the great quests of this decade.
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By way of a few examples, we can start with the scathing 2016 election-year ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
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Once the application is ready to file, it goes to the FISC, where court rules require -- except in emergencies -- that the application be filed at least a week in advance to give the FISC staff attorneys and judge plenty of time to review and determine whether they need additional information, need to have a hearing to ask the government questions in person, etc.
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On two occasions, for example, the FISC made NSA get rid of data it retained in "management systems" that it was supposed to purge.
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The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruled last year that some FBI surveillance violated the targets' constitutional rights, the intelligence community revealed Tuesday.
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FISA The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a secretive court that can approve or disapprove spying requests.
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Those files would show just what was included in the warrant application presented to the FISC court judge who approved the surveillance of Carter Page.
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The anonymous sourcing of The Guardian article leaves several options, one of them much more plausible than the other considering what we know about FISC.
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A newly released court opinion from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) shows that for years the NSA improperly and perhaps illegally surveilled Americans.
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According to the order, in 2016, the FISC asked the NSA to prove that Section 702 collection involving Americans was legal under the Fourth Amendment.
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For most of the past 6900 years, Mueller's closed-door encounter escaped public notice because of the secrecy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
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And that begs the question: What do the FISC judges and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the ultimate judicial disciplinarian, think about what happened?
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But in practice, the FISC has often acted more as a rubber stamp for NSA surveillance requests than a robust check on overreach or abuse.
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According to Democrats, authorities did tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that information included in the warrant request came from a politically motivated source.
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Trump believes the FBI tricked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to surveil a former campaign member, Carter Page, based on a Democrat-connected dossier.
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According to the Department of Justice's official numbers, of the thousands of applications made by the federal government to FISC, none have been denied since 803.
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And after years of surveillance abuses well-documented by the FISC and others, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that there have never been any.
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In the case of Carter Page, the government had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts.
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The unverified allegations in the dossier were nevertheless presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to obtain a FISA warrant and three renewals on Mr. Page.
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In 2013, NPR reported the FISC was essentially a "rubber stamp," as almost all of its proceedings are secret and it almost never rejects government surveillance requests.
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President Donald Trump last month gave the public a glimpse into the surveillance court's inner workings when he declassified a document that discussed FISC orders concerning Page.
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There are no cops patrolling the streets to make sure no one breaks the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law the FISC oversees, and then charging scofflaws.
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In general, however, the FISC and Congress have to rely on the NSA or DOJ to report any violations of FISA; NSA, effectively, gets to police itself.
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Under Section 702, the NSA is allowed to collect domestic communication if Americans are communicating directly with a "foreign intelligence target" as approved by the FISC court.
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Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.
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And the notion that the Steele dossier alone is enough to convince four judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to grant a warrant is patently ridiculous.
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Even requiring a court order isn't even really a great solution on its own, as the FISC has generally granted the government broad surveillance powers in court rulings.
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Ms Sotomayor noted that 39 states have no-aid provisions in their constitutions because they "don't want to spend money from the public fisc on houses of worship".
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Such omissions are a serious matter at the FISC, because it is the one court in America where the accused gets no representation or chance to defend himself.
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The law establishes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and creates a set of procedures for federal judges to review the government's requests for surveillance approval under FISA.
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But in a notice to the FISC last July, the government said that it was retaining some data on two systems used by the spy agency for longer.
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Who, within our intel community, dropped the ball on verifying the information and, instead, leaked it to the press and presented it to the FISC as if legitimate?
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We found that the offered explanations for these serious errors did not excuse them, or the repeated failures to ensure the accuracy of information presented to the FISC.
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The FISC, however, is simply demanding to be satisfied that the FBI has done what it has led the court to believe it has been doing all along.
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On December 5, the FISC ordered the executive branch to identify for it "all other matters currently or previously before this Court" that involved FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.
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On October 21, 2016, DOJ and FBI sought and received a FISA probable cause order (not under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC.
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The FISC eventually released several opinions explaining judges' legal reasoning behind their approval of the government's requests, with portions redacted based on a classification review by the executive branch.
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The ideal American president, in other words, is someone with an honest job who sees the public fisc as a burden to manage and not as money to spend.
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In a statement releasing the decision and two other orders from the FISC on Tuesday, the nation's top spy office suggested that the violations were the result of miscommunication.
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Each government attorney is supposed to carefully review the documents to ensure the accuracy of the information that is to be presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
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Critics argued that he selected too many Republican-appointed judges to the FISC — 11 in total — including presiding judge Rosemary Collyer, who was originally appointed by George W. Bush.
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In a filing, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to release significant rulings it has issued since the terror attacks of Sept.
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LNG Canada had asked Canada's Finance Ministry to exempt it from the 45.8 percent anti-dumping tariffs, which apply to certain FISC components imported from Spain, South Korea and China.
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In a report from April of this year, the FISC accused the NSA of an "institutional lack of candor" (lack of candor being a fireable offense for individual federal employees).
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"Most of the documents tell a story of the IC overstepping boundaries, getting reprimanded by the FISC, but nevertheless being allowed to continue and even expand surveillance under the law."
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The American Civil Liberties Union is currently engaged in an ongoing court battle to obtain more of the primary source documents used for the FISC order released by The Guardian.
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Investigation Update On October 22016, 24, DOJ and FBI sought and received a ISA probable cause order (not under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC.
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The fact that Page's FISA warrant was not only approved but re-authorized three times suggests that a FISC judge found plenty of evidence to suggest the warrant was necessary.
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Investigation Update On October 22016, 24, DOJ and FBI sought and received a FISA probable cause order (up; under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC.
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The government got the FISC to approve collection of what it claimed was only metadata off the telecom switches to replace the Internet dragnet part of President Bush's Stellar Wind program.
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Comey, according to the memo, signed off on three FISA applications when it pursued the warrant to surveil Page in FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) during his tenure as FBI director.
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The department delivered its conclusion in a December letter to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secretive federal body that approved the department's four surveillance applications of the Trump aide.
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But in the coming days, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- known as the FISA court or FISC -- will get more attention after President Donald Trump claimed he was wiretapped during the Obama administration.
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SOLOMON: The conspiracy that we&aposre going to all be looking at in a month for now will be the one inside the Justice Department to defraud the FISC Court, the FISA court.
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The deep dive comes amid growing concerns about the potential for abuse of the FISC after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found 17 "significant inaccuracies and omissions" in the Page warrant application.
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The new revelation comes from a recently declassified FISC order and follows the court's admonishment last month to FBI agents accused of creating a misleading impression as they sought approval to monitor Page.
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"We take every compliance incident very seriously and continually strive to improve compliance through our oversight regime and as evidence by our reporting requirements to the FISC and Congress," he told The Hill.
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The FISC order also asks for information on whether Clinesmith -- referred to as "an attorney in the FBI's Office of the General Counsel" in the order -- faces possible disciplinary action from the bar.
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Signed into law in 1978, FISA requires the government to obtain permission from a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in order to surveil communications on domestic soil for national security reasons.
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"Based on our investigation and open source information, the FISC may have not lived up to the Constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in approving U.S. citizens targeted without probable cause," Meadows wrote.
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"Although the primary ground for the provider challenge is redacted, the FISC ultimately upheld Section 702, and ordered the provider to comply," EFF staff attorney Mark Rumold explained in a post discussing the documents.
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Warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are rarely denied — in fact, from 1979 to 2013, a FISC judge denied warrant requests just 12 times (with 533 requests for modifications to the warrant).
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Civil liberties and press freedom groups argue this right extends to opinions issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC), which reviews government applications to carry out electronic surveillance and other types of spying.
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"Under Mr. Rosenstein's supervision, the Department of Justice and FBI intentionally obfuscated the fact the dossier was originally a political opposition research document before the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]," the articles of impeachment state.
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Though we don't have a great understanding of what happens at the FISC, we do know that when the federal government asks for a warrant to spy on someone, that it always gets its wish.
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On at least four other occasions, the FISC used that "exclusive means" section to ensure (or to try to ensure) that NSA didn't get away with keeping the data it obtained by breaking the rules.
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In 2011, after four years, the government first told the FISC that when it conducted "about" collection (searching for emails that refer to Osama bin Laden's phone number), it sometimes got entire bundles of communication.
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Now we know that at least part of that announcement was made because the FISC court ordered the agency to, because the NSA could not prove that the surveillance was legal under the Fourth Amendment.
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As required by statute (22017 U.S.C. §20173(d)(22017)), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 25 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause.
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As required by statute (50 U.S.C §1805(d)(1)), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 90 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause.
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As required by statute (22017 U.S.C. 20173 (d)(22017)) a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 25 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause.
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The heavily-redacted application outlining the justifications for surveiling Page, which was approved and renewed several times by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), was released over the weekend after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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The heavily redacted application outlining the justifications for surveiling Page, which was approved and renewed several times by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), was released over the weekend after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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The documents show officials testified they had never needed to obtain such an FISC order, though they declined to tell the committee whether they had "ever asked a company to add an encryption backdoor," per ZDNet.
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Calitz did not make clear why the FISC duties were no longer an issue, but said the modules have been contracted and the company has more clarity on the parameters and legal application of the tariffs.
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Entitlement reform would be a good idea for the long-term health of the federal fisc, but a Republican Congress that can't pass tax reform certainly isn't going to change Medicare and Social Security anytime soon.
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That is the 1978 legislation that created the FISC, intruding the judiciary into the innately political function of intelligence collection — political in the sense that national security is a responsibility of the political branches of government.
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He gets a job as an analyst at the National Security Agency, and while there he runs across a copy of the infamous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ( FISC ) authorization, under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
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"The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the FISC," Schiff said in a statement.
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" Schiff said earlier Saturday that the release of the Democratic memo "should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the FISC.
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The order, signed by FISC Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, said the court concluded that a surveillance application, apparently submitted by the NSA, met the requirements of the USA Freedom Act, which President Barack Obama signed last year.
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The FISC, also established in 1978, along with judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, makes decisions as to whether to approve wiretaps, data collection, and government requests regarding monitoring suspected terrorists and spies.
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Here are eight surprising examples of practices that show our intel community spying on us: In October of 2016, the FISC demanded the intel community adopt policies to correct abuses flagged by the court and inspector general.
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Between the internal processes at the FBI, DOJ, and other agencies who may be involved in a particular order, and the review by FISC attorneys and judges, each application is gone over with a fine-toothed comb.
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The ruling was made in October 2018 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a secret government court responsible for reviewing and authorizing searches of foreign individuals inside and outside the US. It was just made public today.
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It shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that extreme abuses of authority and bad faith were instrumental in getting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to approve a counterintelligence warrant that circumvents normal 4th Amendment processes for an American citizen.
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Moreover, proceedings before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—which is responsible for ruling on applications for FISA orders—are ex parte, meaning that unlike most court proceedings, the government is the only party present for the proceedings.
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The FISC is responsible for evaluating the use of these spy tools in secret as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which pushed these governmental deliberations behind closed doors under the guise of protecting national security.
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If they do not continue to stand behind their representation to the court and public announcement to the committee, have they corrected the record with the FISC or the House Intelligence Committee (there not having been any public retraction)?
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A FISC court order was published by The Guardian in 2013 as part of the Edward Snowden documents; portions of a National Security Letter were released in 2015 by Calyx, a nonprofit ISP after an 11-year court battle.
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The Republican memo purports to reveal "abuses" by the Justice Department and the FBI in seeking a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to electronically monitor conversations of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor.
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FBI TOLD FISA COURT SEVERAL TIMES THAT CLINTON-FUNDED SPY WASN&aposT SOURCE FOR MEDIA REPORT Video A key part of the government&aposs application to the FISC to surveil Page was an unverified dossier containing salacious allegations about President Trump.
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As for the FISC opinions at issue, Kaufman said the public should be able to understand to the fullest extent possible the body of "secret law" that led judges to sign off on the NSA surveillance programs revealed by Snowden.
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But while the memo claims that Andrew McCabe, the deputy FBI director, has testified "that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information," Democrats are arguing that Nunes is mischaracterizing what McCabe said.
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The relationship between Steele and the Ohrs was "inexplicably concealed from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)," during the FBI's effort to obtain a FISA warrant on former Trump campaign official Carter Page, House intel Republicans alleged in a memo.
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In adopting the solution to the "about" problem pitched by the Trump Administration, FISC presiding judge Rosemary Collyer, the latest judge to deal with such violations, did less than her predecessors to ensure that such violations don't cause ongoing privacy violations.
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By maintaining retention of the information, the spy agency violated "several provisions" of its internal policies, and was "potentially" in violation of the law, Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) claimed in the heavily redacted order.
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"The government has informed the court that there was no intent to leave the FISC with a misimpression or misunderstanding, and it has acknowledged that its prior representations could have been clearer," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence claimed.
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Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September—before the Page application was submitted to the FISC in October—but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts.
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The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued a stinging rebuke to the FBI in the wake of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on the bureau's serial abuses in the surveillance of Carter Page.
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One of the major criticisms of the secretive court has long been that only one party, the U.S. government, is represented at FISC proceedings — meaning that the targets themselves don't have a chance to argue that their surveillance is unlawful.
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But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- known as the FISA court or FISC -- is again in the spotlight after a report that the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to monitor the communications of Carter Page, a former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump.
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In another instance, FISC made NSA double check that data collected during a period when its post-collection checks ensuring targets really were located overseas were on the fritz, to make sure that targets hadn't entered the US while they were targeted.
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The NSA will continue collecting data under Section 702 of the Patriot Act, but the FISC court ordered that the NSA must "limit all acquisitions to communications to or from an authorized 702 target" in order to comply with the Fourth Amendment.
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The suit argues that DOJ must disclose if the government has ever sought or obtained an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) requiring third parties -- like Apple or Google -- to provide technical assistance to carry out surveillance, according to EFF.
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Some FISA experts have suggested that the easiest resolution to the question of whether or not the FBI and the Justice Department misled the court about the provenance of information in the Page application would be for the FISC to speak for itself.
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Spying on an American citizen isn't something that law enforcement is allowed to do willy-nilly but it is something they are allowed to do if the FISC judge decides they have offered sufficient evidence to prove their need to do so.
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Finally, the government can use upstream surveillance to collect on different kinds of selectors—things like a server hosted at a particular IP address, or an encryption key—that create problems not covered by many of the FISC opinions envisioning targeting of email addresses.
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A declassified FISC order from 2002 gives a glimpse into how serious the omissions were: In one case the FBI failed to tell the court that the person they were seeking a FISA warrant to surveil was, in fact, one of their own informants.
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"As the Presiding Judge of the FISC, you must be similarly concerned that the Executive Branch allegedly used an unverified dossier as evidence showing probable cause that someone connected with the Trump campaign, Carter Page, was an agent of a foreign power," Goodlatte wrote.
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Both Nunes and Gowdy have expressed surprise that the law enforcement and national security personnel involved in requesting a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which approves FISA applications, might not have told that court every bit of information available at that time.
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Even the GOP memo's claim that then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe—who retired this week—testified that "no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information" is incomplete; by providing such a claim out of context, McCabe's meaning remains unclear.
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A bloc of congressional Republicans, including Nunes and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), claim that the FBI inappropriately relied on politically biased material to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to spy on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.
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"Based on public disclosures, it is clear that over the past fifteen years the FISC has developed an extensive body of law — one that defines the reach of the government's surveillance powers and broadly affects the privacy interests of Americans," ACLU lawyers claimed in their motion.
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Every year, the Department of Justice and the director of national intelligence must give the FISC written descriptions of how NSA proposes to use this legal provision in the coming year and describe the controls that are in place to ensure that the proposed collection is lawfully implemented.
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"The court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the court's authorizations in [two applications] were not valid," wrote Judge James Emanuel Boasberg, a federal district judge in Washington who also serves on the FISC, in the court's latest order.
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Our findings, which are detailed below, 22016) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and 23) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the ISA process.
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Our findings, which are detailed below, 1) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and 2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.
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The watchdog outlined seven "significant inaccuracies and omissions" in the FBI's application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to monitor Page, some of them related to the FBI's assertions or omissions regarding information they received from ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who authored the Trump-Russia dossier.
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Our findings, which are detailed below, 22016) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Court (FISC), and 23) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.
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The order on Yahoo from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) last year resulted from the government's drive to change decades of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment right of people to be secure against "unreasonable searches and seizures," intelligence officials and others familiar with the strategy told Reuters.
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The court has no investigative powers and relies on the intelligence agencies themselves to report noncompliance with their orders — although at least one former FISC judge, James Robertson, has argued that because the court now effectively makes the rules for conduct of surveillance programs, it is acting as an administrative agency.
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Trisha Anderson, who recently stepped down as the FBI's principal deputy general counsel, told House investigators late last year in an interview that early in Mueller's FBI tenure, nearly two decades ago, the FISC summoned the new director to appear before the judges to address concerns about extensive cheating on FISA warrants.
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The fact that it's an ex parte proceeding -- that in nearly all cases, only the government is present -- means that the government and the FISC all go to extra lengths to make sure that an application is reviewed in a fair and neutral way to try to eliminate any impropriety or bias.
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If public reports are correct that the information in the memo is derived from applications that had been presented to and approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) then the information could include sensitive investigative information, and information about sources and methods; that is, how the intelligence community obtains its information.
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"As demonstrated in numerous declassified court opinions and other materials, the FISC exercises rigorous independent oversight of activities conducted pursuant to Section 702 to ensure that incidents of non-compliance are addressed through appropriate remedial action," the government's letter to Congress claims, in spite of all the evidence that oversight, even from more aggressive judges, has been insufficient.
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Further, surveillance of Page was justified by ample corroborating evidence beyond the so-called "Steele dossier" and was renewed several times because judges — all appointed to the federal bench by GOP presidents and selected for FISC duty by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who was also appointed by a Republican — deemed the ongoing surveillance to be fruitful.
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Here is the relevant paragraph from The Guardian's article (which followed a flurry of stories about an unsubstantiated report circulating around Washington about Trump's Russia ties): Named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the FISC has been used to rubber-stamp warrants that grant the US intelligence community broad surveillance powers under amendments to that original law passed in 2008.
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Two years ago this month, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) issued a warrant authorizing the FBI to spy on Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE.
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They're all sitting federal judges who are busy with a full docket of cases in their home districts around the country, and they all travel to the FISC courthouse in Washington, DC on a rotating schedule in order to review FISA applications, hear arguments from the government, address any compliance issues that have arisen from FISA matters and issue orders.
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FISA DOCUMENT RELEASE SHOWS FBI MAY HAVE USED &aposCIRCULAR REPORTING&apos TO JUSTIFY SPYING ON TRUMP CAMP Video But London court records show that contrary to the FBI&aposs assessments that were presented to the FISC, ex-spy Christopher Steele briefed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS -- the opposition research firm behind the dossier.
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The question now is, do the current FISC judges and Justice Department supervisors — Deputy Attorney General Rod RosensteinRod RosensteinWhy the presumption of innocence doesn't apply to Trump McCabe sues FBI, DOJ, blames Trump for his firing Rosenstein: Trump should focus on preventing people from 'becoming violent white supremacists' MORE and FBI Director Christopher Wray among them — care the same about the integrity of the FISA process?
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This does indeed solve the "going dark" problem as now the FBI can go to Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, or Google with a warrant and say "push out an update to this target" … Almost immediately, the NSA is going to secretly request the same authority through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court … How many honestly believe the FISC wouldn't rule in the NSA's favor after the FBI succeeds in getting the authority?
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To give themselves the courage necessary to be serious, prudent stewards of the public fisc, they should have the government send in every household every year a letter stating how much keeping the government solvent in the long run will cost the average family annually in tax increases or spending cuts, how that figure has changed under the current Congress and how much it will grow if Congress delays decision.
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Citing allegations raised in a controversial memo authored by staff for House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin NunesDevin Gerald NunesJuan Williams: Trump, his allies and the betrayal of America Trump expected to nominate Texas GOP lawmaker to replace Dan Coats: report House Republicans claim victory after Mueller hearings MORE (R-Calif.), Collins said he sees a need for the Judiciary panel to examine the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) process.
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Although the judges aren't in Washington full time, the FISC is staffed by fully cleared personnel, including staff attorneys who review all of the applications and can make recommendations to the judge about whether there are novel issues in the application, whether the government should be required to submit additional information, whether a particular application can be decided on the pleadings -- the paperwork -- or should have a hearing where the judge can ask the government questions about the application (including evidence in it), etc.
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Among the allegations in the three-and-a-half page document was a claim that the Justice Department did not adequately represent to the FISC — the clandestine court that reviews such warrant requests — that the opposition research had been paid for in part by Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonTop Sanders adviser: Warren isn't competing for 'same pool of voters' Anti-Trump vets join Steyer group in pressing Democrats to impeach Trump Republicans plot comeback in New Jersey MORE's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
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According to a memo spearheaded by Nunes and declassified by President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE last week, the FBI failed to disclose to the FISC that some of the information in the warrant application was opposition research paid for by Democratic candidate Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonTop Sanders adviser: Warren isn't competing for 'same pool of voters' Anti-Trump vets join Steyer group in pressing Democrats to impeach Trump Republicans plot comeback in New Jersey MORE and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
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Nancy Pelosi, DCCC says petition will block Putin's visit , misleading donors: report 'Sunday Morning Futures' Interview: Goodlatte says House Republicans ready to call John Brennan to testify Spicer rips media for Trump-Putin furor , as half of Americans disapprove of Trump's job in Finland Howard Kurtz: Behind the hostility: How Trump and the media descended to mutual disgust FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: DISSECTING THE CARTER PAGE FISA APPLICATION - Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee asked President Trump last month to declassify key sections of the surveillance warrant application for ex-campaign aide Carter Page , according to a letter obtained by Fox News ... The heavily-redacted application outlining the justifications for surveilling Page, which was approved and renewed several times by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), was released over the weekend after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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