Bush Asks Congress To Expand Surveillance
CBS 3

July 28, 2007

In the midst of a festering public scandal surrounding the administration's secret wiretapping program and the attorney general's efforts to have it extended, President George W. Bush is calling on Congress to expand the law governing the issuance of warrants to intelligence agencies for surveillance.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, provides a legal foundation that allows information about terrorists' communications to be collected without violating civil liberties.

President George W. Bush wants Congress to rewrite the law to incorporate new advances in technology which, he says, are not covered by the FISA.

"This law is badly out-of-date," Mr. Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

Mr. Bush noted that terrorists now use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate, recruit operatives and plan attacks; such tools were not available when FISA was passed nearly 30 years ago. He also cited a recently released intelligence estimate that concluded al Qaeda is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on U.S. soil.
"Our intelligence community warns that under the current statute, we are missing a significant amount of foreign intelligence that we should be collecting to protect our country," Bush said. "Congress needs to act immediately to pass this bill, so that our national security professionals can close intelligence gaps and provide critical warning time for our country."

The 1978 law set up a court that meets in secret to review applications from the FBI, the National Security Agency and other agencies for warrants to wiretap or search the homes of people in the United States in terrorist or espionage cases.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush authorized the NSA to spy on calls between people in the U.S. and suspected terrorists abroad without FISA court warrants. The administration said it needed to act more quickly than the court could issue warrants; it also said the president had inherent authority to order warrantless domestic spying in spite of Constitutional protections.

b]After the program became public and was challenged in court, Mr. Bush put it under FISA court supervision this year. [/b]

The national intelligence director, in a letter Wednesday to the House intelligence committee, stressed the need to be able to collect intelligence about foreign terrorists overseas. Mike McConnell said intelligence agencies should be able to do that without requirements imposed by an "out-of-date" law.

"Simply put, in a significant number of cases, we are in the unfortunate position of having to obtain court orders to effectively collect foreign intelligence about foreign targets located overseas," he wrote the committee chairman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes.

Democrats want to ensure that any changes do not give the executive branch unfettered surveillance powers.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, contends the White House is asking for more power to conduct warrantless domestic and international surveillance.

"The administration claims the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be 'modernized,'" she said. "The reality is, their proposal would gut FISA.

"The President claims that they need to expand FISA based on new technology - they are wrong," said Fredrickson. "FISA was written to be technology-neutral. There is absolutely no new technology that cannot be intercepted with a warrant under FISA. None."

Frederickson also says that hidden within the bill is immunity from both criminal prosecution and civil liability for telecommunication companies who participate in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, which would be retroactive.

This could affect a lawsuit before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing AT&T for violating the rights of its customers by assisting the NSA with spying. The government has sought to have the suit dismissed on the grounds that state secrets would be exposed in a trial.

"It takes an enormous amount of hubris to ask for more power on the heels of revelations that the President tried to go around his own attorney general on his NSA domestic electronic eavesdropping program," Frederickson said. "The already-shaky legal ground on which this domestic spying program stood is crumbling beneath those who defend it."

The ACLU urged lawmakers to find out the full extent of current intelligence gathering under FISA before making changes.

"The only thing more outrageous than the administration's call for even more unfettered power is a Congress that would consider giving it to them," Frederickson said.

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