The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),also called the FISA Court,is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil.
Project SHAMROCK was the sister project to Project MINARET,an espionage exercise started in August 1945. Project MINARET involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data that entered or exited the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor,the National Security Agency (NSA),were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming,outgoing,and transiting telegrams via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. NSA did the operational interception,and,if there was information that would be of interest to other intelligence agencies,the material was passed to them. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI,CIA,Secret Service,Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD),and the Department of Defense. No court authorized the operation and there were no warrants.
NSA warrantless surveillance —also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" —was the surveillance of persons within the United States,including U.S. citizens,during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001,the NSA was authorized to monitor,without obtaining a FISA warrant,phone calls,Internet activities,text messages and other forms of communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S.,even if the other end of the communication lays within the U.S.
American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency,493 F.3d 644,is a case decided July 6,2007,in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to bring the suit against the National Security Agency (NSA),because they could not present evidence that they were the targets of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (TSP).
The Gang of Eight is a colloquial term for a set of eight leaders within the United States Congress who are briefed on classified intelligence matters by the executive branch. Specifically,the Gang of Eight includes the leaders of each of the two parties from both the Senate and House of Representatives,and the chairs and ranking minority members of both the Senate Committee and House Committee for intelligence as set forth by 50 U.S.C. § 3093(c)(2).
James Andrew Baker is a former American government official at the Department of Justice who served as general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and later served as deputy general counsel at Twitter,Inc. before being fired by Elon Musk in December 2022.
The Terrorist Surveillance Program was an electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in the wake of the September 11,2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program,which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism. The NSA,a signals intelligence agency,implemented the program to intercept al Qaeda communications overseas where at least one party is not a U.S. person. In 2005,The New York Times disclosed that technical glitches resulted in some of the intercepts including communications which were "purely domestic" in nature,igniting the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Later works,such as James Bamford's The Shadow Factory,described how the nature of the domestic surveillance was much,much more widespread than initially disclosed. In a 2011 New Yorker article,former NSA employee Bill Binney said that his colleagues told him that the NSA had begun storing billing and phone records from "everyone in the country."
The United States Department of Justice National Security Division (NSD) handles national security functions of the department. Created by the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization,the division consolidated all of the department's national security and intelligence functions into a single division. The division is headed by the Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
Hepting v. AT&T,439 F.Supp.2d 974,was a class action lawsuit argued before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California,filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of customers of the telecommunications company AT&T. The plaintiffs alleged that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring the personal communications of American citizens,including AT&T customers,whose communications were routed through AT&T's network.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is an independent agency within the executive branch of the United States government,established by Congress in 2004 to advise the President and other senior executive branch officials to ensure that concerns with respect to privacy and civil liberties in the United States are appropriately considered in the development and implementation of all laws,regulations,and executive branch policies related to terrorism.
Warrantless searches are searches and seizures conducted without court-issued search warrants.
The Protect America Act of 2007 (PAA),,is a controversial amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on August 5,2007. It removed the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign intelligence targets "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 reauthorized many provisions of the Protect America Act in Title VII of FISA.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008,also called the FAA and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008,is an Act of Congress that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It has been used as the legal basis for surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013,including PRISM.
Thomas Tamm is a public defender in Washington County,Maryland. He formerly worked as an attorney in the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) Office of Intelligence Policy and Review during 2004 when senior Justice officials responded to the warrantless NSA surveillance concerning eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. He was an anonymous whistleblower to The New York Times,making the initial disclosures which led to reporters winning Pulitzer Prizes in 2006. Although Maryland agreed to drop ethics charges against him in 2009 relating to those disclosures,and the USDOJ announced it had dropped its investigation in 2011,the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel announced in January 2016 that it had brought disciplinary charges against Tamm relating to those events. Despite some controversy with respect to politicization of that office and similar charges being brought to silence attorney whistleblowers especially beginning in 2014,Tamm in March 2016 agreed to public censure by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in order to allow him to proceed with his life and career.
"Stellar Wind" was the code name of a warrantless surveillance program begun under the George W. Bush administration's President's Surveillance Program (PSP). The National Security Agency (NSA) program was approved by President Bush shortly after the September 11,2001 attacks and was revealed by Thomas Tamm to The New York Times in 2004. Stellar Wind was a prelude to new legal structures that allowed President Bush and President Barack Obama to reproduce each of those programs and expand their reach.
James Robertson was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1994 until his retirement in June 2010. Robertson also served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 2002 until December 2005,when he resigned from that court in protest against warrantless wiretapping.
EPIC v. Department of Justice is a 2014 case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia between the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) where EPIC seeks court action to enforce their Freedom of Information Act request for documents that the Department of Justice has withheld pertaining to George W. Bush's authorization of NSA warrantless surveillance.
The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the President of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the War on Terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND.
Clapper v. Amnesty International USA,568 U.S. 398 (2013),was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that Amnesty International USA and others lacked standing to challenge 50 U.S.C. § 1881a of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as amended by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008.
