FISA

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on "Oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday. The hearing will feature testimony from Brad Wiegmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, National Security Division; Michael Orlando, Deputy Assistant Director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, Counterterrorism Division; and Susan Morgan from the National Security Agency.

Welcome to part one of a two-part deep-dive series concerning FISA! In this episode, Professors Chesney and Vladeck begin with the history and context leading up to the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and then explain the central features of the statute and some of the key issues that arose during its first two decades. Part two (episode 97), which carries the story forward to the present, will post tomorrow!

Oh, hey, while we have your attention: Yes, there was another two-week extension in Doe v. Mattis.

The legislative debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has ended with passage of a six-year reauthorization that omitted many of the provisions privacy advocates had argued were necessary. But the legal and policy debate is likely to continue in the U.S. and in European courts.

We took different positions in the overall debate on Section 702. But we agree that there is an important step the U.S. government can take now to bolster transparency and accountability within the program without unduly burdening legitimate intelligence activities.

Lawfare carried comprehensive coverage of this year’s developments in the lead up to the Dec. 31, 2017 reauthorization deadline for Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (along with the other provisions of the law’s Title VII). The government bought itself a few more weeks in last week’s continuing resolution to extend government spending, when Congress and the White House pushed the deadline for reauthorization forward to Jan. 19 of next year.