but it seems british intelligence is worried that some detail in it might be revealing of their operations.

Only thing I think may have been a problem is that it corroborates news reports that the investigation started with Papadopoulous in July. Oddly, that is actually bad for their case.

For example, I don't think we knew before that Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein signed off on the applications. I guess theoretically that would make them targets for anyone wanting to find out who the sources were.

And it calls out Christopher Steele by name and alleges that he was leaking stories to news media. Maybe that's the "British intelligence technique" that the IC was so concerned about exposing?

I have to face one thing, this whole FISA "secret court" thing disturbs me, I wonder what the Founding Fathers would have said about it. Except John Adams, of course, I think he would have been gung-ho for it, as it has that "Alien and Sedition Act" feeling about it.

Fast forward two years, if the story came out that Trump, as president, tried to use the FBI and the secret court system to defame our Democratic nominee, we'd be pissed. A lot of things happened in the wake of 9/11 that seemed smart at the time, but will come back to bite freedom in the ass.

All it does is issue warrants.

It's not as if anyone is normally present for a warrant proceeding anyway.

And, still, if the warrant was issued on a defective basis, then the evidence can be thrown out if used at trial.

The Founding Fathers would not recognize our criminal justice system in many respects, as criminal prosecution at that time was an entirely different sort of ballgame. Most of the due process safeguards in place today would have seemed downright odd back then. The right to counsel, for example, was long understood as the right to hire one, not the right to have one appointed for you if you could not afford one.

so it may have contained information then was taken out before released.

The NSA is known as "no such agency" for years.

to make it seem like there was actual substance to this shitcaked piece of flimflammery. What nonsense.

I'm not sure what is from these other sources. I also wonder about the "firing" of Steele paragraph. Where did that come from?

That sounds like something Trump would do. And remember, all those Republican staffers who wrote this stupid memo, are inexperienced, unqualified, incompetent stooges. They live in a bubble and think they're are so brilliant they don't need to bring in the experts to vet their story.

Which we've suspected for quite some time now.

And it gives the Ending Secret Laws Act (a Democratic proposal) some teeth.

It implicitly threatens the status quo.

Of course the American public doesn't really care what the FISA courts do (otherwise the Assange revelations would've actually led to something) but this is a clear and direct attack on the intelligence community.

I thought the concerning part was how much was omitted to skew the context of what is described in it.
Do you think surveiling Papadalplous or Paige was a bad thing?

They purposely left out that Paige was being investigated as far back as 2013. Timing helps context a lot.

I don't think the FISA warrants were without merit, because they've been used successfully. I do think that because they are secret, however, that weak intel is more easily used to gain stronger intel (which could be exculpatory, mind you).

What's significant is that the 90 day renewal period passed and they were able to get the FISA warrant renewed, which they admit. So the fishing expedition was with merit.

It appears they had great reasons to keep an eye on what he was doing. Given the absolute lack of self scrutiny and security checks and opaque manner of everything this WH is doing, it seems a necessity that someone is watching. These are not ordinary citizen, but very powerful people who are trying to determine the future of our country in complete secrecy.

...what conversations with him have been recorded.

That's big.