To a casual observer, debates about national security spying can seem like a hopeless game of he-said/she-said. Government officials and congressional surveillance hawks characterize the authorities provided by measures like the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 in one way, while paranoid civil libertarians like me tell a more unsettling story. Who can say who’s right?
Fortunately, there is an authoritative unclassified source that explains what the law means: the revised 2012 edition of National Security Investigations and Prosecutions by David S. Kris (who headed the Justice Department’s National Security Division from 2009–2011) and J. Douglas Wilson. As the definitive (unclassified) treatise on what foreign intelligence surveillance law says, means, and permits, it’s the same resource you’d expect the government attorneys who apply for surveillance authority to consult for guidance on what the law does and doesn’t allow spy agencies to do. Let’s see what it says about the scope of surveillance authorized by the FAA:
[The FAA's] certification provision states that the government under Section 1881a is “not required to identify the specific facilities, places premises, or property at which an acquisition … will be directed or conducted.” This is a significant grant of authority, because it allows for authorized acquisition—surveillance or a search—directed at any facility or location. For example, an authorization targeting “al Qaeda”—which is a non-U.S. person located abroad—could allow the government to wiretap any telephone that it believes will yield information from or about al Qaeda, either because the telephone is registered to a person whom the government believes is affiliated with al Qaeda, or because the government believes that the person communicates with others who are affiliated with al Qaeda, regardless of the location of the telephone. Unless the FISC attempts to address the issue under the rubric of minimization, no judge will contemporaneously review the government’s choice of facilities or places at which to direct acquisition. [….] Review of the certification is limited to the question “whether [it] contains all the required elements”; the FISC does not look behind the government’s assertion’s. Thus, for example, the FISC could not second-guess the government’s foreign intelligence purpose of conducting the acquisition, as long as the certification in fact asserts such a purpose.
Read more at http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/what-the-manual-by-dojs-top-intelligence-lawyer-says-about-the-fisa-amendments-act/
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