Left wants to hang up on enemy intelligence

Cecil Turner:

The President signed a six-month modification to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on Sunday, after the Democrat-controlled Congress agreed to Administration provisions. The move was met by howls of protest from the ACLU and the left leaning punditry; and Speaker Pelosi moved to change the law before it was even signed.

But is this law the end of the Fourth Amendment? And if it's so bad, why did Democrats vote for it? What are we talking about, anyway?

Pop quiz, hotshot: You're an NSA officer, trying to track down Al Qaeda's “big surprise" -- the next terrorist operation in the US. You're listening in on a routine intercept of an overseas communication, the source of which is a known terrorist operations cell. Osama bin Laden himself comes on the line. He dials somebody in the U.S. and begins to give orders. Do you:

1.Record the call and start an immediate trace of the domestic end;

2. Alert the FBI to a possible impending terrorist attack;

3. Try to determine enemy communications protocols for future intercepts;

4. All of the above; or,

5. Hang up the intercept immediately, because it's against the law to eavesdrop on people inside the U.S.?

Hope you answered number 5, because that's the law.

FISA was enacted in the aftermath of domestic surveillance abuses of the Nixon Administration. It's designed to enable surveillance of our enemies overseas, while protecting Americans against eavesdropping. It allows interception of overseas communications, and it also allows warrant less monitoring in the US to acquire foreign intelligence, provided: [1802.a.(1)] (B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party. It allows monitoring with a warrant, provided there is probable cause to believe: [1805.a.(3)] (A) the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power

In a nutshell, the NSA can intercept any foreign signals (as long as they're intercepted outside the U.S.). It can intercept domestic signals only if it has probable cause to believe the person on the domestic end is an agent of a foreign power, and gets a warrant. The problem in relation to the current conflict is when known terrorists call people in the U.S. One of the reasons to conduct such surveillance is to identify agents already here... but the Catch-22 is that we can't listen in on their phone calls until after we know they're agents. And in the case of Al Qaeda sleeper agents, that may be too late.

...

There should be an assumption that anyone al Qaeda is calling in this country is one of their agents and the communication should be intercepted. Even if they are just calling Amazon to buy a book that should be gathered as evidence of al Qaeda's intent and direction. Anyone who thinks we should not listen to al Qaeda calls to people in this country just do not care about preventing the next terrorist attack by al Qaeda or they would rather have the attack than intrude on the privacy of the terrorist. That is indefensible.