FISA FISC Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court privacy

FISA Court: NSA Violated Fourth Amendment and the FISA

A newly released opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when it acquired tens of thousands of wholly-domestic Internet communications. According to the opinion of the former Presiding Judge of the FISA Court, the NSA acquired more than 250 Million Internet communications per year. Roughly 9% of these communications are obtained via "upstream collection" and more than 50,000 each year contain domestic communications. The FISC found that NSA's targeting and minimization procedures were not reasonable under the Fourth Amendment given the large number of wholly domestic communications obtained. The FISC also found that NSA's minimization procedures violated the FISA, and required that the agency adopt additional protections to ensure privacy. For more information, see EPIC: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

August 22, 2013| Share: