Essay on President Bush and FISA

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was originally enacted to protect entities from abuse of surveillance for national security reasons. FISA contains policies associated with the process of gathering foreign intelligence by the intelligence community for national security reasons (Addicott & McCaul, 2008, p. 46-47). FISA also consisted of a secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which had eleven unnamed federal judges who issued warrants regarding surveillance or searches for the intelligence community, and a court review board, which consisted of three federal judges who reviewed the actions of the secret court. After the passing of the Patriot Act by the Bush Administration, the NSA was essentially given full authority to collect information on citizens without a warrant, thereby circumventing the FISC, and Bush fully defended the NSA, stating “‘The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time.’” (Schwartz 2009

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 our country underwent a change that has drastically affected the fundamental values that our founding fathers instilled in this country. Since that tragic day in September the aftermath of the attacks has started to implicate our Civil Liberties that in this country we hold so dear. Just 45 days after the September 11 attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act on October 5th, 2001. This act expanded the surveillance powers of domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies. The controversy that must be discussed is whether or not this legislation fully or in part has violated the Constitution and/or endangered our civil

Henderson, in the article, remarks on the tremendous power, and insufficient accountability, that domestically operating law enforcement (ranging from local police to the FBI) are given under the surveillance clauses of The Patriot Act. Specifically, it is stated that law enforcement conducting domestic surveillance “no longer [have] the corresponding obligation to demonstrate that the target actually uses the device being tapped” (Henderson, 197). This is to say that, when submitting a request for domestic surveillance, the inquisitor of said request no longer has to supply proof that the device that would be tapped is actually in possession or use of the surveillance target. The Patriot Act’s revisions to electronic surveillance law are a staunch proliferation of already liberal surveillance requirements in place before 2001 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (commonly abbreviated as FISA); wherein surveillance restrictions were already relaxed. In fact, in a twenty four year period (from 1978 to 2002) only two requests for surveillance were ever rejected by FISA courts (Henderson,

Prior the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Act gave the procedures “for requesting judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States on behalf of a foreign power” (Aftergood 2). However after the 2001, the powers of the FISA Act had become augmented far beyond the provisions of its original 1978 bill. For example, the original use of the FISA Act was for only “the purpose of foreign intelligence” (Baker 12) but the language in the Patriot Act changed the purpose of the FISA Act to “a purpose, which thus making the FISA process generally available to law enforcement not engaged in foreign intelligence work” (Baker

If not for Edward Snowden, the public would be unaware that the surveillance programs existed. President Bush and President Obama concealed the scope of the program from Congress. Representative Sensenbrenner was the creator of the Patriot Act and was upset that the government used it in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used. He felt deceived by the government. As a result of the expense and ineffectiveness of the Section 215 program the USA Freedom Act was passed to decrease the misapplication

However, when the terrorists attacked in 2001, Bush immediately passed the Patriot Act in response. In section 215 of the Patriot Act, it allows the government to collect information regarding terrorist threats. Basically, the outcome of the Act resulted in easier access to information about any individual. Then in 2005, people of foreign countries began to find out that the government was listening to them, so Congress passed the FISA amendments of 2007, stating that the U.S. government would only interfere with communication if it felt it was a direct threat to the United States.

After 9/11, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which amended FISA and significantly enhanced the power it has. Now the agents like FBI only needs to show that “a significant purpose” of domestic surveillance is to gather foreign intelligence. And from what we searched in proceeding cases, the FISA court who rules on government requests for surveillance of foreigners has approved nearly every one of the surveillance orders that have come before the court, and their rulings are classified. So to some extent, we can say that these surveillance laws are being abused.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was first enacted in 1978, and later amended, including in 1994, by the Patriot Act, and by 2008 it became the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments. In 1972, the Supreme Court chose the case of United States v. United States District Court, otherwise called the "Keith" case, in which the Court considered the legality of an Attorney General approved warrantless electronic surveillance of a United States citizen blamed for bombing a Central Intelligence Agency building. The Court rejected the government's appeal to acknowledge a foreign intelligence special case to the per se warrant prerequisite, holding that the Fourth Amendment prohibited warrantless surveillance directed at domestic threats to United States national security. The Court directly refused to choose the legality of warrantless surveillances where "foreign powers or their agents" were included, leaving open the issue of the Executive's power to direct such operational activities at those persons or elements. The Court likewise firmly asked the Congress to supply a judicially- manageable standard appropriate to surveillances conducted for national security purposes.

One may wonder what exactly FISA stands for. FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and is exactly what opens the backdoor for programs such as Prism. IN 2012, the law was renewed which allows the NSA to partake in the collection of data with almost no reviewing of reasoning. Both articles mention that the Prism program is used only toward non-US citizens that are subjected to suspension; But The Atlantic shares a quote from an interview that alters the statement slightly, the article says, “The Director of National Intelligence emphasized yesterday that PRISM targets only "non-U.S. persons located outside the United States.” But the press release also acknowledges that “information about U.S. persons” may be "incidentally acquired" in such pursuits.” (Kaminski par. 5) This statement shows that even if accidental, there is still a chance our emails, phone call, and other data is still being collected. The Guardian article states, “In total, more than 77,000 intelligence reports have cited the PRISM program.” (Greenwald and MacAskill par. 35) Both articles discuss how important it is that people are aware of the collections not being aimed just toward non-citizens. The bigger question that is argued is why the FISA act was renewed by Congress in 2012, if there was an understanding of minimizing privacy

1. Since the release of NSA’s classified documents by the NSA ex-contractor Edward Snowden, the controversy of morality and legitimacy of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), and, in particular, section 702, has become a major issue of public debate in the context of national security and privacy rights. To understand the underlying controversy, it is important to understand what powers section 702 gives to the US intelligence agencies. Section 702 of the Federal Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) is the section that elaborates on the procedures and regulations for surveillance of non-United States persons while they are located outside the US. It defines US people as either citizens or permanent residence card (commonly known as green card) holders. Because determination of the person’s location can be hard (due to ambiguous borders in territorial agreements and ways to hide malefactors’ location), the law requires the targets to be only reasonably believed to be located overseas. Section 702 is flexible in terms of obtaining legal

For over forty years the U.S. government’s use of electronic surveillance was highly unregulated. They would conduct surveillance on foreign powers and their agents in order to gather intelligence, all this without the use of a warrant. This was made possible

With all this archivation and collection of data from average American citizens, the question has been asked, “is this constitutional?” In 2012 FISA was renewed again and it will expire in 2017. The White House says until then, Prism and its data harvesting are still legal. The government though, has reacted in many different ways. General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, says, “it’s completely legal and says it keeps Americans safe”(Bucci). Other political groups, like Florida based activist group Freedom Watch have said, “The NSA’s actions are illegal and Prism violates the constitution”(Kelion 3). The 4th amendment of the constitution prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures”. If you believe the average American citizen is a probable suspect for terrorism then Prism is constitutional. The group has filed a lawsuit against president Obama and several high ranking officials of the NSA(Savage). Obama initially supported the NSA’s actions 100% but recently has changed his stance. He has announced that he has come up with a proposal that will “end the aspect that most alarmed Americans”, the collection of calling data and habits. This reform gives the implication that it will stop the “NSA’s largest area of data

Before reading about it in the chapter, I had never heard of the FISA court. Maybe they need to get more attention as well since they are the ones that Bush put in charge of the supervision of the NSA. As the one of the roles of the media is the watchdog role, maybe they should shed some light on this particular topic. Looking at the 4th amendment, we have the right to privacy, and that privacy can only be infringed upon with an appropriate warrant. Therefore, I believe that the ones issuing the warrants should be more diligent about doing so. If this were done across the board, organizations in the government like the NSA would need to come up with good reasons for the blatant disregard of the privacy of American

But as the years have passed and the terrorist attacks seem further away, people have begun to question whether too many restrictions on law enforcement were rolled back. Recent news that President Bush has authorized the wiretapping of some phone calls in the United States without court orders upset many. While the government has defended these actions by saying that only suspected terrorists were targeted,

American government wiretapping activities are an exceptionally controversial issue that affect everyone in the country. Without a doubt this innovation can help law uphold authority recognize or distinguish unlawful or antagonistic activities; be that as it may, this raises extreme privacy concerns.The technology issue of governmental wiretapping impacts both public and private liberties. Legislation has majorly affected the utilizations and the shame of wiretapping for the war on terrorism. Though it is certain wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping are the sorts of observation that might help and assist criminal investigations. It is an invasion of privacy, betrayal of trust and violates the constitutional rights of American citizens Wiretapping should not be made first defense because it is a corrupted method and should be the final resort, if any resort at