Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: Overview & Modifications.

The current legislative and oversight activity with respect to electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has drawn national attention to several overarching issues. This report briefly outlines three such issues and touches upon some of the perspectives reflected in the ongoing debate. These issues include the following: (1) the inherent and often dynamic tension between national security and civil liberties, particularly rights of privacy and free speech; (2) the need for the intelligence community to be able to efficiently and effectively collect foreign intelligence information from the communications of foreign persons located outside the United States in a changing, fast-paced, and technologically sophisticated international environment or from United States persons abroad, and the differing approaches suggested to meet this need; and (3) limitations of liability for those electronic communication service providers who furnish aid to the Federal Government in its foreign intelligence collection. Two constitutional provisions, in particular, are implicated in this debate -- the Fourth and First Amendments. The 110th Congress has been very active in developing and considering measures to amend FISA to address these issues. This report briefly examines these issues and sets them in context.

This book is an overview of The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was passed in 1978 and provides a statutory framework for the use of electronic surveillance in the context of foreign intelligence gathering. Congress sought to strike a delicate balance between national security interests and personal privacy rights. Subsequent legislation expanded federal laws dealing with foreign intelligence gathering to address physical searches, pen registers and trap and trace devices and access to certain business records. The Patriot Act of 2001 made significant changes to some of these provisions. In addressing international terrorism or espionage, the same factual situation may be the focus of both criminal investigations and foreign intelligence collection efforts. Some of these changes in FISA under these public laws are intended, in part, to facilitate information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence elements. In its Final Report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement "has opened up new opportunities for co-operative action within the FBI".