DOJ: Change in Electronic Surveillance Definition Doesn’t Allow Warrantless Searches

The head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, Kenneth Wainstein, clarified something that had perplexed several national-security experts: the Protect America Act’s change in the definition of “electronic surveillance” under FISA — essentially, the definition that spells out what kind of communications the government can collect — doesn’t mean that warrantless physical searches in the U.S. are now allowed. “It’s to let us get the assistance of communications providers,” he said, who aren’t going to be the people who “let us see your mail or get into your basement.”