Comey Memo Tops CDT ‘Most Wanted’ List
Congress should not amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until it subpoenas NSA warrantless wiretapping documents and related testimonies, Center of Democracy and Technology (CDT) policy director Jim Dempsey said Wednesday. It is “fundamentally premature” to amend FISA at this time, he said. CDT is “not satisfied with the level of disclosure the government has made,” said CDT Senior Counsel and Associate Director Gregory Nojeim: “It’s important they explain exactly what they've been doing.” Otherwise, it’s “hard to know if the statute ought to be changed and how,” he said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
CDT unveiled “most wanted” lists of seven documents and ten answers it wants subpoenaed. First is the “hospital bed” memorandum by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General James Comey allegedly explaining why the Justice Department deemed the NSA program unlawful, followed by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’ response memo. Nojeim noted two questions on the most-wanted answers list: whether the government has run any non-FISA-authorized, warrantless surveillance program in the U.S. since 9/11 besides one the President acknowledged in 2005; and whether existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) surveillance orders “name or identify an individual, as is required by the Fourth Amendment,” or are instead “programmatic in the sense that they authorize a general program of surveillance.” CDT posted the complete lists on its Web site.
The Senate Judiciary Committee votes Thursday on authorizing subpoenas. A vote for subpoenas would be a “critical first step,” Dempsey said. The administration’s proposed FISA legislation is more about expanding warrantless surveillance than modernization, Nojeim said: “Its central thrust is to write the [FISC] judges out of the process.” It alters electronic surveillance definitions to exclude communications that involve one person in the United States and the other abroad “if they are not targeting a particularly known person in the United States,” he said. A FISA rewrite should go in the “exact opposite direction,” Dempsey said. FISA protections should be tech-neutral to protect use of new communications technologies, he said.