US President George W. Bush yesterday pushed Congress to modernize a law that governs how the US intelligence community monitors the communications of suspected terrorists.
"This law is badly out of date," Bush said during his weekly radio address.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) provides a legal foundation that allows the US intelligence community to collect information about terrorists' communications without violating civil liberties.
Bush said terrorists now use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate, recruit operatives and plan attacks -- tools that were not available when FISA passed nearly 30 years ago.
He underscored his call for modernizing the law by citing an intelligence estimate that found that al-Qaeda is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on US soil.
"Our intelligence community warns that under the current statute, we are missing a significant amount of foreign intelligence that we should be collecting to protect our country," Bush said. "Congress needs to act immediately to pass this bill, so that our national security professionals can close intelligence gaps and provide critical warning time for our country."
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 set up a court that meets in secret to review applications from the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies for warrants to wiretap or search the homes of people in the US in terrorist or espionage cases.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush authorized the NSA to spy on calls between people in the US and suspected terrorists abroad without FISA court warrants. The administration said it needed to act more quickly than the court could. It also said the president had the authority to order warrantless domestic spying.
After the program became known and was challenged in court, Bush put it under FISA court supervision this year.
In testimony in Congress, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell portrayed legislation supported by the administration as merely an adjustment to technological changes wrought by cell phones, e-mail and the Internet.
But Democrats say they do not want to rush to change the law, especially because civil liberties are at stake, and want to make sure any changes do not give the executive branch unfettered surveillance powers.
"To date, our review has uncovered numerous inefficiencies in the current FISA system," Democratic Representative Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement earlier in the week.
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