Bush Forced to Return to Law on Domestic Spying

President Bush has decided to return to the law and not reauthorize the domestic spying program. All domestic spying will now be done with approval from the FISA court. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had this to say...

"Any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," Gonzales said.

Gonzales said a judge on the secret FISA court recently approved a government proposal allowing it to target communications into and out of the United States when probable cause exists that one person is a member of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization.

Bush knew the program is illegal and knows he will be punished if it continues. A court had already declared the domestic spying program unconstitutional and Feingold had already submitted a censure resolution in the Senate about the program. Bush realized his rubber stamp Republican Congress is gone and that Sen. Russ Feingold, Sen. Patrick Leahy, and others in the Senate were going to be investigating the program.

Glenn Greenwald, author of How Would a Patriot Act, is a constitutional lawyer and blogger. Greenwald has written a lot about the domestic spying program and says...

Having read around the blogosphere and elsewhere, what emerges is that there is no way to discern exactly what this new framework is between the administration and the FISA court because the only evidence describing it is Gonzales' letter, which is quite vague in a number of respects about exactly what has happened.

But ultimately, there are only two options -- (1) the administration is now complying fully and exclusively with FISA when eavesdropping, in which case all of its prior claims that it could not do so and still fight against The Terrorists are false, or (2) the administration has changed its eavesdropping program some, but it is still not fully complying with FISA, in which case nothing of significance has changed (at least on the lawbreaking issues) because the administration is still violating the law.

If Bush has only tweaked the domestic spying program, at least we have strong Congressional watchdogs looking closely at this program.

Sen. Feingold issued this statement regarding the domestic spying program...

For more than five years, the President has conducted an illegal program, including more than a year during which he publicly asserted that this violation of the law was absolutely essential to protecting the public from terrorists. I am pleased that the President has been forced to return to the law and that this program has been terminated. I continue to have many questions about what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has decided and intend to scrutinize carefully how the Court has interpreted the FISA statute. In addition, while I welcome the decision to stop conducting surveillance without judicial approval, the President now needs to respond fully to legitimate congressional questions about the complete history of this now-terminated illegal program.

Sen. Leahy added...

We must engage in all surveillance necessary to prevent acts of terrorism, but we can and should do so in ways that protect the basic rights of all Americans including the right to privacy. The issue has never been whether to monitor suspected terrorists but doing it legally and with proper checks and balances to prevent abuses.

Providing efficient but meaningful court review is a major step toward addressing those concerns.

I continue to urge the President to fully inform Congress and the American people about the contours of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order authorizing this surveillance program, and of the program itself. Only with meaningful oversight can we ensure the balance necessary to achieve security with liberty.