FBI Director James Comey has praised a White House review of government surveillance initiatives but warned that a proposal to require court review of certain procedures could hinder some work of intelligence agencies, Politico reported Thursday.Josh Gerstein writes that Comey disagreed with the idea of requiring a judge to authorize any requests for business records as part of an anti-terror probe.
Comey claimed an application to a judge for a national security letter could take days or even weeks to implement.
“What worries me about their suggestion that we impose a judicial procedure on NSLs is that it would actually make it harder for us to do national security investigations than bank fraud investigations,” Comey said, according to the report.
