Demand Immediate Action to Fix Key Part of FISA
Washington, DC – Congresswoman Heather Wilson, Ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, joined by a united Republican leadership, today introduced legislation to allow American agencies to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant.
Original cosponsors of Wilson’s bill include Rep. John Boehner, House Republican Leader; Rep. Roy Blunt, Republican Whip; Rep. James Sensenbrenner; Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and every Republican member of the Intelligence Committee.
Lawmakers said there is an urgent need to immediately update the FISA law so that intelligence agencies can prevent terrorist attacks. The narrowly crafted legislation focuses on just one aspect of the outdated FISA law and would not impact the civil liberties of Americans in any way. Despite the continued necessity to completely overhaul the 1978 law, this problem is too important for any delay.
“As the technology our enemies use to plan and coordinate their attacks evolves, we have a duty to ensure our intelligence services have the basic tools they need to monitor their communications, disrupt their activities, and bring these agents of extremism to justice,” Blunt said. “The bill authored by Congresswoman Wilson takes an important step in meeting that responsibility - updating the current law so that communications between foreign suspects are monitored the same regardless of the means by which they are communicating.”
“Terrorists are using the FISA law to shield their activities, while Congress continues to let the Intelligence Community be hamstrung by a 1978 law written for rotary telephones and the Cold War,” said Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “America is counting on our intelligence agencies to best the terrorist’s speed and agility in plotting. This bill is a quick fix for a specific problem in FISA and will greatly improve our ability to do just that.
“Al-Qaeda is not going to take August off—we need to pass this bill before Congress recesses.”
“When FISA was enacted in 1978, domestic communications and international communications were fundamentally different from one another,” said Sensenbrenner. “It is critical that we update FISA to reflect modern technology and the changing nature of the terrorist threat. In order for the US to meet and defeat this 21st-century threat, Congress must provide our nation's law enforcement intelligence communities with 21st-century tools.”
“Intelligence is the first line of defense in the war on terror,” Wilson said. “We cannot continue to cover the eyes and ears of our intelligence agencies while our enemies use the communications systems we built to plot to kill us.”
On May 1, 2007, in unclassified session in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Admiral Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence urged the Congress to modernize this law. He stated, “We are actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting.”
On July 20, 2007, the Attorney General wrote to the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and stated, ‘(M)erely adding resources without amending FISA will not resolve the problem. FISA currently requires the Intelligence Community and the Department of Justice to expend critical time and effort to provide privacy protections to foreign targets overseas – including terrorist targets – who are not entitled to them.’
The leadership of both parties and members of the House Intelligence Committee know that the FISA law is not working. Congress must fix the law.
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