I'm saying that the concept doesn't make sense when they're being issued by people who have very similar incentives to the people executing the warrant. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution essentially says "the government cannot perform a search unless the government drafts a piece of paper saying that they can do a search."

Did FISC warrants suddenly start requiring probable cause? Did the court itself suddenly start scrutinizing requests (how would we even know)?

Don't conflate FISC warrants issued for criminal investigations. FISC is barely even a speedbump when it comes to this sort of surveillance.

The quote isn't talking about FISC warrants. Its talking about regular Article III warrants.

What's deeply ironic about the outrage here is that FISC was created as an extra layer to safeguard privacy. FISC warrants give law enforcement officials permission to initiate an investigation, not to access information that would otherwise require an Article III warrant.