Fisa Court Ruling Gives Helping Hand to Terrorists

Summary

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Little did they know it, but terrorist suspects living in Pakistan recently had their rights to privacy enhanced. It happened through the magic of adventurous judicial interpretation of an outdated U.S. law.

Back in 1978, when disco was king, gas lines were long and no one owned a cellular telephone, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It sought to constrain the president's power to monitor communications for intelligence purposes here in the U.S. by requiring him to get a warrant from a special FISA court. The court would have to be convinced that there was probable cause to believe that a target of surveillance was an "agent of a foreign power."

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Extract

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Fisa Court Ruling Gives Helping Hand to Terrorists

Congress didn't mean to include overseas communications under the law. So "wire" communications came under the law's purview, but not most "radio" intercepts, since chatter abroa...

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