• Background: Gives law enforcement expanded permissions for Electronic Surveillance.
• Recent Developments: Currently an Administration request for an extension to the act is before Congress being debated.

Background

• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in 1978 as a response to President Nixon’s usage of federal resources to spy on political and activist groups, which violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The act was created to provide Judicial and congressional oversight of the government's covert surveillance activities of foreign entities and individuals in the United States, while maintaining the secrecy needed to protect national security. It allowed warrantless surveillance within the United States for up to one year unless the "surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party". If a United States person is involved, judicial authorization was required within 72 hours after surveillance begins.

Court System

• The Act created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and enabled it to oversee requests for surveillance warrants by federal police agencies (primarily the F.B.I.) against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the U.S. The court is located within the Department of Justice headquarters building. The court is staffed by eleven judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to serve seven year terms.
• The New York Times published an article in 2005 that revealed the Bush administration's program of warrantless domestic wiretapping that has been carried out by the National Security Agency since 2002 (Source: NY Times). Other reports push the date back as early as June of 2000 (Source: bloomberg.com).

Debate

• Critics of the warrantless wiretapping program argue that it violates the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution that protects against warrantless searches.

  U.S. electronic monitoring equipment is possibly or could be located in foreign countries and operated by “trusted?” foreign nationals, which in-turn could be used to spy on American citizens and businesses residing in these countries for purposes unrelated to America’s “War on Terrorism”.

  Senator Dodd's FISA Floor Speech

• The Bush Administration instituted their enhanced revision of the FISA to counter terrorism after 9-11, which they claim to be affective (concise results are classified at this time).

Country Comparison

Recent Developments

• Before recessing on March 14, 2008 the House passed a bill which ensures judicial oversight of domestic surveillance and provides both the telecommunications companies and their consumers with access to the courts.

• On April 10, 2008 the Attorney General Michael Mukasey claimed that a pre-9/11 call from an "Afghan safe house" to a number somewhere in the U.S. wasn't intercepted because of the intelligence community's inadequate wiretapping capabilities under FISA. Mukasey implied that 9/11 could have been prevented if that call had been intercepted.

• April 9, 2008, the Washington Post published an article, which enlightened readers into the Quantico Circuits and the problems inherent within. The circuits link together the FBI and phone companies and are used during wiretap investigations. Last month, a whistleblower named Babak Pasdar came forward to disclose the existence of the Quantico circuit. They can tell FBI investigators the length of the call, the callers’ identities and the location of the callers — a nice reminder that when you’re using your phone you’re a walking homing beacon.

Additional Information

Study secretly tracks cell phone users outside US

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home. (Source: AP)