Literal
wiretaps probably weren’t used in any of the relevant cases.
Wiretapping is old-school technology. It is still sometimes used, just
not very often now, as compared to the constant monitoring of digital
communications. Today, digital communications data is recorded in bulk,
and searched later for the targets that become interesting to
intelligence or law enforcement, for one reason or another. That
includes voice data (“phone calls”), as well as text-based data of
various kinds.
When
FISA warrants were sought against Trump-connected communications twice
in 2016 – and I pointed this out in the earlier posts – they would have
been warrants to retrieve data from
the store of it that is constantly recorded. We can be sure the data is
constantly recorded on Trump Tower, in particular, because there are
targets of national security interest with space leased there. Those
targets include the two Russian banks mentioned in the June 2016 warrant
application (see my 6 March post).
In
the two earlier posts, I alluded to the Executive Order 12333 revision
made by James Clapper and Loretta Lynch that loosened the rules for
agencies retrieving “unminimized” data on Americans. Clapper and Lynch
made this change in the very last weeks of the Obama administration –
and their revisions basically loosened the rules into meaninglessness.
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