When Congress “revised” FISA a few weeks ago, lawmakers gave the White House the unchecked surveillance power Bush wanted — and then some.
Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include â without court approval â certain types of physical searches of American citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said. […]
The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought. It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. Two weeks after the legislation was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.
âThis may give the administration even more authority than people thought,â said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of âNational Security Investigation and Prosecutions,â a new book on surveillance law.
Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of âelectronic surveillance,â the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.
These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called âtrap and traceâ operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.
