January 17, 2007

Now, was that so hard?

Spying goes under FISA:

The Justice Department announced today that the National Security Agency's controversial warrantless surveillance program has been placed under the authority of a secret surveillance court, marking an abrupt change in approach by the Bush administration after more than a year of heated debate.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said that orders issued on Jan. 10 by an unidentified judge puts the NSA program under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret panel that oversees most intelligence surveillance in the United States.

On second thought, don't answer that.

Posted by binky at January 17, 2007 04:10 PM | TrackBack | Posted to The Ever Shrinking Constitution


Comments

Don't count your chickens yet. There is ongoing debate as to whether this is a per-case FISA (Justice/NSA would have to apply to FISA for every case they find, like is spelled out in the statutes that created FISA), or a one-time-only FISA review (as the Spector/White House compromise language sought in the bill last year). Thus, it is possible that the Adminstration went to a pet FISA judge, had him sign off on the whole program, and is now trumpeting that the whole thing has judicial review.

This just broke, so I'll wait for the followup/analysis articles in the next few days.

Posted by: baltar at January 18, 2007 09:20 AM | PERMALINK
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