Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
April 17, 2007
Pg. 10
Bill Would Permit More Spying On Foreigners In USA
By Richard Willing, USA Today
WASHINGTON — FBI agents and other federal investigators would have greater leeway to eavesdrop on foreigners in the USA suspected of having information on terrorism or national security threats, under a Bush administration proposal.
The bill has the backing of the Justice Department and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. It would allow the telephone calls, e-mails and other activities of persons who are not U.S. citizens or legal residents to be secretly monitored if they are thought to "possess significant foreign intelligence information." Individuals and groups who deal in "weapons of mass destruction" would also become surveillance targets, under the proposed law.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires that a surveillance target be an agent of a foreign power or connected to a terrorist group before a secret FISA court authorizes monitoring. The proposed law, a copy of which was furnished to USA TODAY by McConnell's office, would amend that requirement.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to conduct hearings on the bill today.
Other proposed changes would:
•Permit all forms of "electronic surveillance" and eliminate requirements that restrict monitoring to specific categories such as "radio" and "wire" intercepts.
•Allow the FBI, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies to intercept foreign phone calls and e-mails routed through U.S. carriers, even if the senders and recipients are based abroad. Currently, one party must be based in the USA.
•Provide for the first time immunity from lawsuits to communications companies that aid government investigators, retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001.
•Require that legal challenges to foreign surveillance operations be heard by a secret FISA court rather than in an open federal court as is now the case.
•Give investigators one week rather than the current 48 hours to perform surveillance before seeking approval from a FISA court judge.
•Let investigators keep information unrelated to the reason for the surveillance, provided it was collected "unintentionally" and contains "significant foreign intelligence." Current law requires such information be destroyed.
The proposed changes, the bill says, would enhance U.S. intelligence capabilities by taking into account the "revolutions in communications technology" since 1978, when FISA was first passed.
The bill does not address a controversial program that allows warrantless monitoring of telephone, e-mail and other communications between persons in the USA and abroad when at least one party is a terrorism suspect. That program, begun in October 2001 and revealed in December 2005, was struck down by a federal judge in Detroit in a ruling that the Bush administration has appealed.
The new law seemingly would remove such cases from federal court and require the FISA court to hear them in secret.
McConnell and Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, are among officials scheduled to testify in support of the legislation during today's hearing.
Jameel Jaffer, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national security project, said the proposed law would "not just be reforming (FISA) but doing away with it."
"No one has made the case that FISA needs to be changed," Jaffer said. "And no one has made the case that it has to be gutted, which is what this bill would do."
The bill's prospects are uncertain. A similar measure failed to pass the House of Representatives last year, when Republicans generally more sympathetic to the Bush administration controlled Congress.
April 17, 2007
Pg. 10
Bill Would Permit More Spying On Foreigners In USA
By Richard Willing, USA Today
WASHINGTON — FBI agents and other federal investigators would have greater leeway to eavesdrop on foreigners in the USA suspected of having information on terrorism or national security threats, under a Bush administration proposal.
The bill has the backing of the Justice Department and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. It would allow the telephone calls, e-mails and other activities of persons who are not U.S. citizens or legal residents to be secretly monitored if they are thought to "possess significant foreign intelligence information." Individuals and groups who deal in "weapons of mass destruction" would also become surveillance targets, under the proposed law.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires that a surveillance target be an agent of a foreign power or connected to a terrorist group before a secret FISA court authorizes monitoring. The proposed law, a copy of which was furnished to USA TODAY by McConnell's office, would amend that requirement.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to conduct hearings on the bill today.
Other proposed changes would:
•Permit all forms of "electronic surveillance" and eliminate requirements that restrict monitoring to specific categories such as "radio" and "wire" intercepts.
•Allow the FBI, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies to intercept foreign phone calls and e-mails routed through U.S. carriers, even if the senders and recipients are based abroad. Currently, one party must be based in the USA.
•Provide for the first time immunity from lawsuits to communications companies that aid government investigators, retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001.
•Require that legal challenges to foreign surveillance operations be heard by a secret FISA court rather than in an open federal court as is now the case.
•Give investigators one week rather than the current 48 hours to perform surveillance before seeking approval from a FISA court judge.
•Let investigators keep information unrelated to the reason for the surveillance, provided it was collected "unintentionally" and contains "significant foreign intelligence." Current law requires such information be destroyed.
The proposed changes, the bill says, would enhance U.S. intelligence capabilities by taking into account the "revolutions in communications technology" since 1978, when FISA was first passed.
The bill does not address a controversial program that allows warrantless monitoring of telephone, e-mail and other communications between persons in the USA and abroad when at least one party is a terrorism suspect. That program, begun in October 2001 and revealed in December 2005, was struck down by a federal judge in Detroit in a ruling that the Bush administration has appealed.
The new law seemingly would remove such cases from federal court and require the FISA court to hear them in secret.
McConnell and Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, are among officials scheduled to testify in support of the legislation during today's hearing.
Jameel Jaffer, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national security project, said the proposed law would "not just be reforming (FISA) but doing away with it."
"No one has made the case that FISA needs to be changed," Jaffer said. "And no one has made the case that it has to be gutted, which is what this bill would do."
The bill's prospects are uncertain. A similar measure failed to pass the House of Representatives last year, when Republicans generally more sympathetic to the Bush administration controlled Congress.