The president’s decision to allow a secret intelligence court to oversee the government’s controversial electronic surveillance program is a welcome shift.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is fully capable of handling the administration’s requests for valid warrants without jeopardizing national security.
After many months of defending President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the change Wednesday in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He noted the FISA court had issued orders Jan. 10 that bring the classified program under the judges’ supervision. The attorney general didn’t give details on the court’s order.
The court was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. Operating in secret, it handles requests for wiretapping or eavesdropping warrants in national security and counterterrorism cases. President Bush had argued that waiting for warrants was too cumbersome and claimed for himself the authority to ask the National Security Agency to do warrantless eavesdropping of domestic communications.
The FISA court will now have to approve “any electronic surveillance” that was occurring under the domestic program, Gonzales said.
It was a year ago that a whistleblower revealed the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans without obtaining warrants. The president had signed a secret executive order in 2001 authorizing the program, skirting the 1978 act that requires a FISA OK before electronic surveillance can be conducted on a U.S. citizen. Gonzales claimed that executive authority trumped the 1978 law, a claim that was being contested.
Gonzales’ announcement came the day before he was to be questioned about the NSA program by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats said after the November elections that the new Congress would conduct a review of the NSA program. The new judiciary chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., got it right Wednesday when he said, “We know that we must engage in surveillance to prevent acts of terror, but we can and should do it” in a way that follows the law.
Congress needs now to proceed with its review of the NSA program. Lawmakers also ought to review whether FISA needs to be updated to account for new technologies or to streamline the warrant process.
The effort to dodge FISA requirements was a dishonorable attempt to circumvent the protections of a court that has proved its worth over many years. It’s heartening to see the president has chosen instead to cede supervision to the court.
