{"id":1274,"date":"2007-08-23T07:25:36","date_gmt":"2007-08-23T07:25:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-23T07:25:36","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=1274","title":{"rendered":"FISA overhaul revealed necessary because FISA court held wiretapping program unconstitutional"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was revealed yesterday that the FISA overhaul, previously referred to here<\/a>, was necessited by the FISA Court holding the government’s previous surveillance activities unconstitutional. That necessitated a quick fix, according to the NYTimes.com<\/a> posted at 10 last night. From the L.A. Times today: Spy chief reveals details of operations \/ The intelligence director confirms the FISA court ruling and defends wiretapping as a ‘surgical’ process<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The nation’s top intelligence official has confirmed that a federal court did rule the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was in violation of the law, prompting the mad rush in Congress this month to overhaul key espionage provisions.<\/p>\n

In an interview with a Texas newspaper, Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell also disclosed that the number of people in the United States who are under surveillance by the nation’s spy services is “100 or less,” a figure he said showed that the government was not engaged in widespread spying on Americans.<\/p>\n

His comments represent an exceedingly rare public description of one of the nation’s most closely guarded and controversial espionage operations. Many of the details he described — such as the deliberations of the special intelligence court and the scope of the surveillance operation — are usually considered classified.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s adverse ruling earlier this year delivered a major blow to U.S. spying operations, McConnell said, even as intelligence analysts were expressing growing alarm that the Al Qaeda terrorist network was regrouping.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

The government obtained a temporary stay allowing it to continue intercepting e-mails and phone calls without individual warrants through May 31, McConnell said, as he began sounding alarms on Capitol Hill that a key piece of the nation’s counter-terrorism capabilities was about to be crippled.<\/p>\n

Those warnings fueled a frantic, end-of-summer push in Congress to rewrite laws passed three decades ago, after U.S. intelligence agencies had been caught spying on student groups and other domestic targets. The emergency legislation, which is set to expire in six months, allowed the government to resume its eavesdropping operations without individual warrants.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Because so many of these calls travel through networks in the United States, McConnell said, the FISA court ruling created a significant new burden: Putting together a FISA warrant required “about 200 man-hours to do one telephone number.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is unclear is whether Congress ever knew about this justification for the rush to amend the FISA law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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