Good judges are those who don't legislate from the bench, don't release serial killers on a technicality and care more for the victims than the criminals.
He interpreted the law as it had always been interpreted and he had experienced 75 abuses of the law by Reno during the Clinton administration!
"in the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called "Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists"
HERE
"In March of 2001 [right after the Bush administration took over], the government informed the [FISA] Court of an error contained in a series of FISA applications. This error arose in the description of a ``wall'' procedure. The Presiding Judge of the Court at the time, Royce Lamberth, wrote to the Attorney General expressing concern over this error and barred one specifically-named FBI agent from appearing before the Court as a FISA affiant. . . . FBI Director Freeh personally met twice with then-Presiding Judge Lamberth to discuss the accuracy problems and necessary solutions.''
As the Committee later learned from review of the FISA Court's May 17, 2002, opinion, that Court had complained of 75 inaccuracies in FISA affidavits submitted by the FBI...
a memorandum dated April 21, 2000, from the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, [] details a series of inaccuracies and errors in handling FISA applications and wiretaps that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ``wall.'' Such mistakes included videotaping a meeting when videotaping was not allowed under the relevant FISA Court order, continuing to intercept a person's email after there was no authorization to do so, and continuing a wiretap on a cell phone even after the phone number had changed to a new subscriber who spoke a different language from the target. "
The article is a continuation of this "big Lie" coverup:Court Cited Clinton-Era Abuses Suppressed by Networks...
That probably isn't very clear LOL!
So to summarize: the "federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to wiretap terrorists" probably refers to Lamberth's reaction to the March 2001 report of Clinton and Reno era abuses.