Bush Says FISA Needs An Update
And he’s right, too. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was signed into law 30 years ago, which was a world without email, blogs, text messaging, cell phones, satellite phones and disposable cell phones. There is absolutely nothing controversial about wanting to update an important bit of decades old national security law to reflect the realities of modern technology.
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Saturday pushed Congress to modernize a law that governs how the U.S. intelligence community monitors the communications of suspected terrorists.
“This law is badly out of date,” Bush said in his weekly radio address.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — also known as FISA — provides a legal foundation that allows the U.S. intelligence community to collect information about terrorists’ communications without violating the civil liberties of Americans.
Bush said terrorists now use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate, recruit operatives and plan attacks — tools that weren’t available when FISA passed nearly 30 years ago. He underscored this call for modernizing the law by citing a recently released intelligence estimate that concluded that al-Qaida is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on U.S. soil.
“Badly out of date” is exactly right, and I can only hope Democrats are capable of setting partisan politics aside long enough to see meaningful reform enacted.
