Click here to return to Congressman Grene's home page
October 28, 2007
Restoring order and efficiency to America’s intelligence operation
 
By Congressman Gene Green
 
Washington, DC - The U.S. House of Representatives plans to fix foreign surveillance laws that have serious flaws and in some cases were rushed into practice without much thought for long term consequences. The RESTORE Act of 2007 (H.R. 3773) is designed to make it easier for American intelligence agencies to do their jobs well while simultaneously protecting the rights and civil liberties of American citizens.

 

Government eavesdropping has become a very hot topic since September 11, 2001, when it became clear that our best efforts to prevent terrorism were insufficient. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which became law in 1978, gave special federal courts oversight of domestic wiretapping of suspected foreign agents in our country. After 9/11, FISA seemed inadequate. Intelligence agencies had to use valuable time and resources to obtain warrants instead of moving quickly – it was becoming difficult in some cases to keep up with fast-moving suspects.

 

Instead of asking Congress to pass a new law to address the realities of technological advances in surveillance, the Bush Administration chose to secretly authorize monitoring of Americans’ electronic communications with the help of some major American communications companies. Even then Attorney General John Ashcroft was uneasy with this shadowy Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) – you may have heard the story of Alberto Gonzalez’s 2004 race to his hospital room to urge him to sign off on the program.

 

Earlier this year, after a Democratic Congress took office, the Administration agreed to institute a secret FISA court to oversee the TSP, giving the process the slightest hint of daylight and accountability. But when the FISA court didn’t do exactly what the executive branch wanted, the Administration’s Protect America Act, an overly broad bill with many loopholes, was hastily assembled and narrowly passed by Congress without my vote in August. This bill had a sunset provision that would terminate the law after six months so Congress could revisit the issue. Now is that time.

 

The RESTORE Act returns traditional oversight of surveillance activities to the judiciary and updates the law to account for the latest technology. The RESTORE Act does not require the government to get a warrant for every foreign individual or group outside the United States it wants to monitor. Instead, the FISA court would evaluate requests for year-long blanket permission for such surveillance programs. This will make intelligence gathering more efficient while protecting Americans’ rights, providing a simple, legal way to monitor the communications of suspected foreign terrorists. The RESTORE Act also requires an individual finding of probable cause before spying on Americans abroad. The government would be allowed to monitor Americans abroad for a short time incidental to their communication with a foreign individual suspected of terrorist activity, but the bill obligates the Justice Department to keep track of how often this happens and to inform the FISA court and Congress periodically of those activities.       

 

The language of the quickly-passed Protect America Act could be interpreted to mean that the government could search American homes, offices, computers and medical records without a warrant. The Administration has said it didn’t intend the legislation to allow such searches, but the RESTORE Act clarifies the law to explicitly prohibit such unconstitutional spying on Americans. Under the RESTORE Act, as under current law, Americans in the United States could be monitored by the government only if the FISA court has issued a targeted warrant.

 

The RESTORE Act will keep government accountable to the people while eliminating some red tape that has kept our intelligence agents from working efficiently. It restores the checks and balances our nation’s Founding Fathers thoughtfully and with great foresight included in the Constitution to ensure that no branch of government would become too powerful.

 

Click here to Print this PagePrint this page

 

Click here to return to the News Center