The rapid growth in cellphone use in South Asia and the Middle East has spurred a battle in Congress over whether foreign communications of suspected terrorists can be intercepted by intelligence agencies without court order.
Washington, Aug.2 : The rapid growth in cellphone use in South Asia and the Middle East has spurred a battle in Congress over whether foreign communications of suspected terrorists can be intercepted by intelligence agencies without court order.
The spy agencies, backed by Republicans in Congress, are pressing to be allowed to tap phone calls between suspected terrorists abroad without approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, USA Today reports.
The time it takes to secure an order, and difficulties in meeting legal requirements, means that "our Intelligence Community everyday is missing a significant portion of what we should be getting," Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, was quoted as saying in a July 25 letter to the House Intelligence Committee.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat representing West Virginia, has argued that eliminating the FISA court review could "compromise the civil liberties of American citizens."
Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has offered a proposal that would require the court to review how the intelligence officials determine if a suspect is overseas.
The debate is driven by huge telecommunications growth in nations, especially Pakistan, where U.S. agents collect intelligence on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The number of cellphone users there grew from fewer than three million in 2003 to nearly 50 million this year, historian and South Asia specialist William Dalrymple says.
Passed in 1978, FISA created a special court to review the government's requests to eavesdrop on electronic communications of people in the USA who are suspected of working for a foreign power.
U.S. law does not require a FISA court order to eavesdrop on purely foreign conversations. But because many foreign calls are routed through U.S. service providers, intelligence agencies have been required to seek time-consuming and sometimes problematic orders before they listen in.
McConnell has also asked for the power to monitor phone calls between foreign terrorism suspects and any person in the USA without obtaining a court order.
Critics are of the view that the granting intelligence agents warrantless access to terror suspects' calls would let them also monitor without court supervision the calls of Americans who are not suspected of terrorism.
Democrat and Republican members of Congress say they hope to make a short-term fix to FISA warrant requirements by this weekend, when Congress is scheduled to begin a month-long recess.
ANI