Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald phoned Obama advisor Greg Craig regarding his claim in yesterday's NYT that "[Obama] concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire":
Craig paused for awhile and then said that he meant that the "warrants under FISA would expire in August," and Obama supported the FISA "compromise" to prevent that from happening. When I asked Craig if he was referring to the surveillance orders authorized by the Protect America Act that allow the Government to spy with no individual warrants (which have a one-year duration and do expire in August), Craig said that this is what he meant, and that Obama wanted to avoid having those surveillance orders expire.
So, contrary to what Obama has been saying, he is NOT concerned about the expiraion of FISA, which has no expiration date. Rather, his sense of urgency is about the impending expiration of the UNCONSTITUTIONAL year-long surveillance programs authorized under the Protect American Act (PAA) during its six-month lifetime, which start to expire on August 5, 2008 and will all have expired by February 17, 2009. And that is why Obama uses the word "urgent" every time he talks about H.R. 6304 (The FISA Amendments Act of 2008), which is designed to cut holes in FISA big enough to drive a truck through:
* H.R. 6304 permits the government to conduct mass, untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States, without any individualized review, and without any finding of wrongdoing.
* H.R. 6304 permits only minimal court oversight. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what or where will actually be tapped.
* H.R. 6304 contains a general ban on reverse targeting. However, it lacks stronger language that was contained in prior House bills that included clear statutory directives about when the government should return to the FISA court and obtain an individualized order if it wants to continue listening to a US person's communications.
* H.R.6304 contains an "exigent" circumstance loophole that thwarts the prior judicial review requirement. The bill permits the government to start a spying program and wait to go to court for up to 7 days every time "intelligence important to the national security of the US may be lost or not timely acquired." By definition, court applications take time and will delay the collection of information. It is highly unlikely there is a situation where this exception doesn't swallow the rule.
* H.R. 6304 further trivializes court review by explicitly permitting the government to continue surveillance programs even if the application is denied by the court. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever it gathered in the meantime.
[...]
Source: ACLU.