Constitutional Law

Proposed Amendments to FISA Discussed

Congress and the White House are deadlocked on amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), including whether to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that surveilled Americans without warrants at the Administration's behest and whether to codify that FISA constitutes the exclusive basis for wiretaps.

The Assistant Attorney General for National Security acknowledged that the administration's primary concern regarding the expiration of the Protect America Act (which had temporarily expanded FISA to allow warrantless wiretapping) is the reduced ability to intercept e-mail, and not foreign-to-foreign phone calls, as many believed.

Separately, a computer security consultant asserted that a U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia -- presumably the FBI's electronic surveillance operations -- has "direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance."

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 08, 2008 (boomark / email).