What exactly is Fisa?

On Friday, a two-year reauthorization was passed by the House in the United States of a surveillance law called as Section 702. What exactly does the Section talk about?

Section 702

Section 702 permits the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners across the borders. The law applies on domestic soil and sans a warrant when such people are actually interacting with the Americans.

As per the law, the National Security Agency is entitled to order email services such as Google to turn over copies of all the messages in the accounts of any network operators such as AT&T to furnish the phone call copies, internet communications, or texts from or to a foreign target.

Section 702 plays an important role in collecting foreign intelligence and counterterrorism data, as per the national security officials.

The reason behind the establishment of Section 702

It was US President George W. Bush who ordered a Stellarwind, a warrantless wiretapping program code. It infringed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) generally needed the permission of a judge for the national security surveillance acts on the domestic soil.

The key reason behind the establishment of this reason was that when the FISA was enacted by the Congress, the makers of the law depended upon the geography to need warrants for the purpose of domestic wiretapping, while the overseas spying was unrestricted.

However, advancements in technology such as fiber optic lines and the internet lines made the messages of foreigners available on domestic networks, the networks where the warrant rule of FISA actually applied.

The Stellarwind was actually based on a controversial executive power assertion. Later, Congress legalized a type of the program by drawing a few exceptions to the warrant rule in FISA.

Section 702, however, is frowned upon by many. The Section enables the government to gather the messages of the Americans sans an order from the court, and that is what makes it controversial. The law does not allow Section 702 to target the Americans in case a foreign target interacts with an American, the government however incidentally gathers the messages of the Americans from and to its target.