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A few words in response to the many people who have pointed out to me the government's win-loss rate in the FISA Court. /1/
The government's rate of success in getting normal Title III criminal wiretaps and normal old search warrants is also very high. /2/
When there's a known standard and a great deal of experience meeting it, a litigant knows what it needs to do and when it's there. /3/
The win-loss rate in the FISA context is, in addition, a little deceptive, because FISC practice is, when an application is deficient, /4/
to identify the defects and allow the application to be revised and resubmitted. This is an informal but long-standing practice. This... /5/
happens both with the FISA judges and also with the court's staff attorneys who help the judges. So the finished FISA application... /6/
should really be understood—at least sometimes—as an iterative back and forth not just between the FBI and the DOJ NSD, but also ... /7/
between NSD and the court. This isn't necessary in the simple cases, but it is relatively routine. And it warps the win-loss ratio, ... /8/
making it seem like the court is far more of a rubber stamp than it really is. /9/
FISA applications do not generally become public but there are two bodies of evidence—other than the descriptions of the process ... /10/
by participants—that give a window into its rigor. One is the declassified litigations that took place before the court over errors... /11/
on the government's part in both the 215 and 702 programs. Only someone with real ideological blinders can read those documents and ... /12/
fail to see a serious judicial oversight process. The second, and more directly relevant, case is the many instances of specific... /13/
FISA surveillances that have faced federal court challenge when their fruits have ended up in criminal proceedings. This doesn't... /14/
happen all that often, but it does happen, and the cases have added up over the nearly 40 years of FISA's life. Many cases have been... /15/
reviewed by both federal district courts and federal courts of appeals. There is not a single case in which a subsequent reviewing... /16/
court has found a FISA wiretap or physical search application defective. That should tell you a lot about the integrity of the... /17/
underlying processes. Yes, I know that publications like @theintercept have written stories alleging that lots of FISA surveillance... /18
is unjustified. That's as easy for a journalist to write as it is for Paul Manafort to declare his (apparent) monitoring political. /19/
There simply is no history of FISA warrants being subsequently found illegal. /20/
Finally, the Administrative Office of the US Courts now reports the number of FISA warrants "modified"—as opposed to granted... /21/
or rejected. As you can see, the number is not trivial. /22/ uscourts.gov/sites/default/… 
That's all I got. /23/
