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Feingold Amendments to FISA Bill
Fact Sheet – Potential Feingold Amendments
to FISA Bill January 24, 2008
As the Senate resumes consideration of
the Senate Intelligence Committee’s FISA bill, Senator Feingold
will continue to oppose any FISA legislation that does not
adequately protect the privacy of innocent Americans or contains
immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated
in the President’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
He also plans to offer a series of amendments to help fix
the deeply flawed bill.
Dodd-Feingold Amendment Stripping Retroactive Immunity
Along with Senator Chris Dodd, Senator Feingold will offer
an amendment to strike Title II of the Intelligence Committee
bill, which provides immunity to telecommunications companies
that allegedly cooperated with the President’s illegal warrantless
wiretapping program.
Feingold-Webb-Tester Amendment
to Provide Protections for Americans
Senator Feingold intends to offer an amendment along with
Senators Jim Webb and Jon Tester to allow the government to
get the information it needs about terrorists and purely foreign
communications, while providing additional checks and balances
for communications involving Americans. Under the Intelligence
Committee bill, many law-abiding Americans who communicate
with completely innocent people overseas will have their communications
swept up, with virtually no judicial involvement or oversight.
Use Limits Amendment
This amendment, which was part of the Senate Judiciary Committee
version of the FISA bill, gives the FISA Court discretion
to impose restrictions on the use of information about Americans
that is acquired through procedures later determined to be
illegal by the FISA court. This enforcement mechanism is needed
because the government can implement its procedures before
it has to submit them to the FISA Court for review to determine
whether they are reasonably designed to target people overseas
rather in the United States.
Prohibiting "Reverse
Targeting"
Senator Feingold successfully offered this amendment in the
Judiciary Committee to add a meaningful prohibition on “reverse
targeting,” a practice by which the government gets around
FISA’s court order requirement by wiretapping an individual
overseas when it is really interested in a person in the U.S.
with whom that supposed foreign target is communicating. The
Director of National Intelligence has agreed that “reverse
targeting” is unconstitutional. Senator Feingold’s amendment
requires the government to obtain a court order whenever a
significant purpose of the surveillance is to acquire the
communications of an American.
Prohibiting "Bulk Collection"
Senator Feingold successfully offered this amendment in the
Senate Judiciary Committee to prohibit "bulk collection"
-- the collection of all international communications into
and out of the U.S to a whole continent or even the entire
world. Such collection without a foreign intelligence purpose
would be constitutionally suspect and would go well beyond
what the government has says it needs to protect the American
people. Yet, the Director of National Intelligence testified
at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the Protect America
Act – which was enacted last year -- permits "bulk collection."
The amendment makes clear that bulk collection is not authorized
by requiring the government to certify that it is collecting
the communications of foreign targets from whom it expects
to obtain foreign intelligence information.
Giving Congress Access to FISA Court Materials
This amendment assists Congress in
its legislative and oversight functions by requiring that
Congress be provided timely access to FISA court pleadings
related to significant interpretations of law, which may be
necessary to understand the court’s rulings, as well as past
FISA court orders containing such interpretations. The amendment
was part of the bill reported by the Judiciary Committee and
is based on language approved on a bipartisan basis by the
Intelligence Committee when Senator Feingold offered it as
an amendment to the intelligence authorization bill.
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