US spy chief presses Congress to revise wiretap law
The US Director of National Intelligence urged Congress Tuesday to modernize a nearly 30-year-old law on electronic surveillance to better counter threats, including terrorism and economic spying from China and Russia.
Director Michael McConnell said the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has not kept up with developments in communications technology.
"In today's environment, the FISA legislation is not agile enough to handle the country's intelligence needs," McConnell told the Senate Intelligence Committee. The law needs to be modernized amid "significant threats from Al-Qaeda" and other extremists "aligned with it," he said.
"A significant number of states also conduct economic espionage," he added. "China and Russia's foreign intelligence services are among the most aggressive in collecting against sensitive and protected US systems, facilities, and development projects approaching Cold War levels."
A top Justice Department official told the Senate panel that FISA should be amended to redefine the term "electronic surveillance."
"We can and should amend FISA to restore its original focus on foreign intelligence activities that substantially implicate the privacy interests of individuals in the United States," said Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security.
"The best way to restore that focus is to redefine the term 'electronic surveillance' in a technology-neutral manner," he advised. "Rather than focusing, as FISA does today, on how a communication travels or where it is intercepted, we should define FISA's scope by reference to who is the subject of the surveillance."
But critics of President George W. Bush's administration worry that proposals to modify FISA would legalize a controversial domestic eavesdropping program.
"Is the administration's proposal necessary, or does it take a step further down a path that we will regret as a nation?" asked Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), according to the Associated Press.
"We look through the lens of the past to judge how much we can trust you," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). "The attorney general has thoroughly and utterly lost my confidence."
Rockefeller and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) both pressed for documents on the program. "There is simply no excuse for not providing to this committee all the legal opinions on the president's program," Rockefeller said.
In January, the administration backpedaled on a spying program allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without a warrant, on phone calls and emails between individuals in the United States and anyone abroad suspected of terrorism links.
Following months of heavy criticism from civil rights groups after the New York Times revealed the program in 2005, the administration put it under the supervision of the ultra-secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
With wire services.
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