Democracy Arsenal

« Stop Darfur's Freefall | Main | Pre-blog »

January 31, 2006

More on FISA
Posted by Morton H. Halperin

Michael Signer and I seem to have reached agreement. Progressives need to make clear that they recognize the serious terrorist threat and the need for surveillance; the lawless program needs to be condemned, but we should recognize that there might be a case to permit more surveillance.

Before we can decide that, however, we need to know more about precisely what the administration is doing.  It is now increasingly clear that there are two different programs: One, which administration officials refer to as the program which the President described, and the other, which we still know almost nothing about.

The program which the President described and which General Hayden explained in some detail does not, as he said, involve any new technology or reviewing masses of data for key words  - that is the other program. So first, what more is there to say about the program the President described?

This program clearly involves targeting a US person to intercept his or her overseas phone calls after that person receives a call from someone suspected of being a member of al Qaeda or an affiliated organization. FISA clearly prohibits such intercepts, but not of the actual calls from the suspected al Qaeda person.  If the administration thinks it needs to intercept such calls it should ask the Congress for authority to do so.  If it thinks the warrant and emergency procedures of FISA do not work for such surveillance it should explain why and ask Congress to authorize a different procedure.  Some of this explanation may need to be in secret, but most of it can be public, including an explanation of how this would be compatible with the Fourth Amendment.

As to the other program, we still know very little.  There are many complicated questions.  As the Justice Department points out in its White Paper (fn 6),  Congress, when it enacted FISA, did not cover certain then-current NSA activities or any interception done overseas.  It appears that NSA has been using this authority more aggressively since 9/11, but until we learn more it is hard to evaluate. 

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c04d69e200d8355b5a3269e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference More on FISA:

Comments

My friends and I like to buy kal geons, because the kal gold is very useful to upgrade equipment. Only your equipment becomes better, then you can win this game. In kal online geons, you can buy everything you want in this game. Yesterday is my birthday, so my friends bought me some kal online gold as gifts. I am so happy.

my brother says rose zulie is his favorite games gold he likes,

I hope i can get GuildWars Gold in low price.
i buy Guild Wars Gold for you.

Once I played wonderland, I did not know how to get strong, someone told me that you must have wonderland Gold. He gave me some wonderland online Gold.

I another friend do not like twelve sky Gold. She like in home along 12sky gold.

Do you like playing the game where you need to use priston tale Gold, when you do not have priston tale Money,

Do you like playing the game where you need to use priston tale Gold

Do you like playing the game where you need to use priston tale Gold

Thank you for your sharing! I like i very much!

Thank you for your sharing! I like i very much!

Post a comment

If you have a TypeKey or TypePad account, please Sign In.

Guest Contributors
Founder
Subscribe
Sign-up to receive a weekly digest of the latest posts from Democracy Arsenal.
Email: 
Powered by TypePad

Disclaimer

The opinions voiced on Democracy Arsenal are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of any other organization or institution with which any author may be affiliated.
Read Terms of Use