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Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: Rulings
built 613 days ago
With the recent news about a secret court granting the government broad wiretap permission, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was placed squarely in the spotlight. How is a secret court supposed to be secret if everyone's talking about it?
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"Any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," Gonzales wrote in the two-page letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
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"The only way to determine whether those requirements have been met -- I mean the first step -- is obviously to see what they told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. But that's exactly where you run into the first catch-22," said Thomas.
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Previously, foreign intelligence had to be a "primary purpose" of the investigation. Now only a "significant purpose" is required. Another purpose -- indeed, even the "primary purpose" -- now can be to gather, not foreign intelligence, but evidence for a foreign-intelligence-related criminal prosecution.
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These guidelines cover the disclosure of foreign intelligence gathered in a criminal investigation to the Director of Central Intelligence and Homeland Security officials. [Note: This is a pdf file; Adobe Acrobat required]
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[A] "significant" purpose of the investigation must be foreign intelligence. So the investigation of the Iraq spy cannot be dedicated, for instance, to investigating his series of suspected parking violations, or his use of prostitutes.
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