Today on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com, debunked the White House’s claim that the new FISA law requires “court approval” prior to spying on an “individual located in the United States.” In fact, as Greenwald explained, the law now allows the government to “listen to our conversations, read our e-mails, with no connection to terrorism, with no proof that anyone has ever done anything wrong” — without judicial oversight.
Specifically, the new FISA law permits warrantless domestic surveillance in the U.S. as long as the target of the call or e-mail is “reasonably believed” to be overseas. The implication of this loose clause, Greenwald notes, is far-reaching:
The government can monitor every single phone call that London is making to you in Washington, D.C., to any of the viewers at home. … They can listen to every single international call that you make or receive, every e-mail that you write, and e-mail that you receive, in complete and total secrecy.
On Truthout, reporter Walter Pincus of the Washington Post gives his insights in the FISA bill:
The law, signed Sunday by President Bush after being pushed through the Senate and House over the weekend, does not contain provisions for outside oversight - unlike an earlier House measure that called for audits every 60 days by the Justice Department's inspector general.
In a conference call with reporters yesterday, officials familiar with the program said they had not worked out all the details of internal oversight, noting that the law was only a day old. But the officials, who spoke to reporters on the condition that they not be identified, said surveillance activities would require a sworn certificate and affidavit, which would be reviewed for accuracy by inspectors general from the Justice Department or intelligence agencies.
Congress would be briefed on the activities, said the officials, who noted that the House and Senate intelligence committees have been given repeated classified briefings on the controversial eavesdropping program, commonly referred to as the terrorist surveillance program. "We're going to want to make sure the committees are kept informed," one official said.
The controversial changes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were approved by both chambers of the Democratic-controlled Congress despite privacy concerns raised by Democratic leaders and civil liberties advocacy groups. The measure must be renewed in 180 days or the changes will expire.
Central to the new program is the collection of foreign intelligence from "communication service providers," which the officials declined to identify, citing secrecy concerns. During congressional debates last week, however, both Republicans and Democrats referred to global communication networks that route foreign phone calls and e-mails through wires, cables and switching stations owned by U.S. companies and located on U.S. soil.
Under the new law, the attorney general is required to draw up the governing procedures for surveillance activity, for approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which supervises the warrantless collection of eavesdropping inside the United States when it involves foreign intelligence.
Once the procedures are established, the attorney general and director of national intelligence will formally certify that the collection of data is authorized - a determination based on affidavits from intelligence officials. But the certification will be placed under seal "unless the certification is necessary to determine the legality of the acquisition," according to the law signed by Bush.
It is left to the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to "assess compliance with such procedures" and report their assessments to the House and Senate intelligence panels, the statute states.
Gonzalez is also required to provide semiannual reports to the House and Senate intelligence and Judiciary committees, which are to include any accounts of abuse or noncompliance that Justice and intelligence officials discover in their internal reviews.
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