FISA: It’s the emails

It is now official: the fight over FISA extensions is not about phone conversations — it’s about internet data.

At a Monday breakfast sponsored by the American Bar Association, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein remarked that the fight over the eavesdropping bill actually centers on US interception of email.

“In response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA’s current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday. “The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because “essentially you don’t know where the recipient is going to be” and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.”

This admission mutes the laughable nonsense put forth in the right-wing attack ads and by the Bush administration: that the argument is centered over listening to foreign based phone conversations of suspected ‘terrorists.’ As discussed here repetitiously, FISA extensions — the ‘Protect America Act’ — provide legal underpinnings to NSA intercepts of internet data, including emails. PAA is a subset of FISA.

When PAA expired last month, many suggested that its absence seriously degrades the ability of US intelligence to collect data. FISA itself has not lapsed though, meaning that NSA intercepts of phone conversations have not been affected from a legal perspective. THREAT LEVEL makes this sage observation:

DNI [Director of National Intelligence] Michael McConnell, the serial exaggerator who claims to be a non-political straight shooter, himself kept saying the NSA lost 70 percent of its capabilities after the [expiration.]

If that’s the case, that means that 70 percent of what the NSA does is collect emails inside United States telecom infrastructure and service providers.

Game. Set. Match.

See Also:

+ Senate set to OK data mining, telecom immunity

+ Sen Russ Feingold: FISA [PAA] in 30 seconds

[...] WSJ brings NSA data-mining to page 1 + FISA: It’s the emails + Whistle-blower describes NSA back door to telecom’s cell phone data + Senate Set to OK Data [...]