[Infowarrior] - Administration Seeks to Expand Surveillance Law

[Richard Forno]

Administration Seeks to Expand Surveillance Law
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR2007041301
932_pf.html
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 14, 2007; A03

The Bush administration yesterday asked Congress to make more non-citizens
subject to intelligence surveillance and to authorize the interception of
foreign communications routed through the United States.

Currently, under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, individuals
have to be associated with a foreign terrorism suspect or a foreign power to
fall under the auspices of the FISA court, which can grant the authority to
institute federal surveillance. The White House proposes expanding potential
targets to include non-citizens believed to possess, transmit or receive
important foreign intelligence information, as well as those engaged in the
United States in activities related to the purchase or development of
weapons of mass destruction.

The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to keep
information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the
surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign intelligence." Currently
such information is destroyed unless it indicates threat of death or serious
bodily harm.

And they provide for compelling telecommunications companies and e-mail
providers to cooperate with investigations while protecting them from being
sued by their subscribers. The legal protection would be applied
retroactively to those companies that cooperated with the government after
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The White House draft offered the first specifics of the proposal, which
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said Tuesday is needed to
respond to "dramatic" changes in communications technology used by
intelligence targets in this country.

The proposed changes do not address the controversial intelligence program,
initiated in October 2001 and first disclosed in December 2005, that
monitors communications between people in the United States and other
countries when one party is suspected of having terrorist connections,
according to senior administration officials.

The White House also threatened to veto a Senate version of the annual
intelligence authorization bill, primarily over provisions that require a
response within 15 days to Senate intelligence committee requests for
particular documents, and reports to all committee members upon the
initiation of extraordinarily sensitive activities, under threat of
withholding funds. Under current practice, only committee chairmen and vice
chairmen are told of such activities.

The White House, in a "statement of administration policy" sent to the
Senate on Thursday, questioned the 4 percent reduction in funding that the
intelligence committee applied to national intelligence programs and its
threat of prohibiting funding for several classified projects pending
reports to the panel.

Saying such provisions are "inconsistent with the need for the effective
conduct of intelligence activities . . . and legislative-executive comity
and cooperation," the policy document said Bush's "senior advisers would
recommend he veto the bill" if it retains the provisions.