Word: fisa
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...Administration's main stated argument against the FISA court process is that obtaining warrants beforehand is simply too time-consuming in today's fast-paced world. But if speed were the only issue, there are some relatively easy fixes. The legal standard Justice Department lawyers must meet to obtain a FISA wiretap warrant could be lowered from the current threshold that there's "probable cause" to believe a crime has been committed or about to be committed. The paperwork required with a FISA warrant application could be trimmed. In emergencies, FISA now allows the attorney general to approve a wiretap...
...White House officials knowledgeable about the FISA process and NSA's surveillance capability say the problem isn't simply the time it takes to obtain a warrant. If it were to be altered, FISA must be changed "for a different sort of coverage by NSA," explains one administration official. "FISA was very much focused on getting one particular guy," says this administration official. "It was very much like a wiretap in a criminal case. You go to court and you have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime. So you go to FISA and get a wiretap...
...Republican senator's efforts to make it easier for the NSA to spy legally on persons in the U.S. In the summer of 2002, Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine introduced a bill to lower the level of proof the Justice Department and spy agencies would need to get a FISA warrant to wiretap foreigners, or non-U.S. citizens, who were in the United States. For these "non-U.S. persons" only, the threshold would drop from "probable cause" to "reasonable suspicion," which has long been a recognized standard in U.S. courts. However, at a July 31, 2002, Senate Intelligence...
...case, Justice officials claim that the secret NSA program has always used the "probable cause" standard even when a FISA warrant hadn't been obtained. But that explanation doesn't hold water with some legal experts. Last week, General Hayden himself admitted that in cases where the NSA does not first go to the courts, "the trigger is quicker and a bit softer than it is for a FISA warrant." Putting it more bluntly, Philip B. Heymann, a former Clinton Administration deputy attorney general, says, "The only reason they are doing warrantless searches is because they want to do them...
...Probable cause? Reasonable suspicion? Those kinds of semantic battles virtually guarantee that writing any new FISA law will tie Congress up in knots for quite a while. But Heymann, like many other critics of the warrantless wiretapping program, believes that the first sentence for any new FISA law, regardless of how else it is amended, should make one thing absolutely clear: "That the president shouldn't be doing things that the statute prohibits him from doing...