Spinning new FISA law
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — The government’s ability to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects overseas allowed the United States to obtain information that helped lead to the arrests last week of three Islamic militants accused of planning bomb attacks in Germany, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told senators on Monday.
But another government official said Mr. McConnell might have misspoken. Mr. McConnell said the information had been obtained under a newly updated and highly contentious wiretapping law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But the official, who has been briefed on the eavesdropping laws and the information given to the Germans, said that those intercepts were recovered last year under the old law. The official asked for anonymity because the information is classified.
The previous law required officials to seek warrants to monitor at least some phone calls and e-mail messages between foreign locations when they were collected from fiber-optic cable in the United States; the new law waived that requirement.
This distinction is important because Mr. McConnell’s remarks, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, were an important part of the Bush administration’s intensifying effort to make permanent the new law, which is scheduled to expire in about five months. Democrats in Congress have said that they want to write more safeguards for civil liberties into the law before renewing it.
German officials have said that American intercepts of e-mail messages and telephone calls between Germany and Pakistan and Turkey tipped them off to the plot last year.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — The government’s ability to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects overseas allowed the United States to obtain information that helped lead to the arrests last week of three Islamic militants accused of planning bomb attacks in Germany, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told senators on Monday.
But another government official said Mr. McConnell might have misspoken. Mr. McConnell said the information had been obtained under a newly updated and highly contentious wiretapping law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But the official, who has been briefed on the eavesdropping laws and the information given to the Germans, said that those intercepts were recovered last year under the old law. The official asked for anonymity because the information is classified.
The previous law required officials to seek warrants to monitor at least some phone calls and e-mail messages between foreign locations when they were collected from fiber-optic cable in the United States; the new law waived that requirement.
This distinction is important because Mr. McConnell’s remarks, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, were an important part of the Bush administration’s intensifying effort to make permanent the new law, which is scheduled to expire in about five months. Democrats in Congress have said that they want to write more safeguards for civil liberties into the law before renewing it.
German officials have said that American intercepts of e-mail messages and telephone calls between Germany and Pakistan and Turkey tipped them off to the plot last year.
(Continued here.)
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