Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey spoke yesterday at the American Bar Association's National Security Law Breakfast, saying it's necessary in make permanent "the national security tools that we use for the war on terror -- and in particular, about the need to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA."
FISA, said Mukasey, was enacted in 1978 and it has fallen behind modern communication technologies. In addition, he said, obtaining court orders can lead to significant delays. Then, last August, he explained, Congress passed the Protect America Act of 2007.
"In simplified terms," said Mukasey, " this Act allows our intelligence professionals to surveil foreign intelligence targets located abroad without prior court approval. Also ... that legislation gave the FISA Court a significant role in those collections, authorizing the Court to review the procedures in place for deciding whether targets of surveillance under the authority are in fact overseas." However, he said, "The Protect America Act contains a 'sunset' provision and will expire on February 1, 2008 unless Congress acts."
Mukasey also said telecom companies who lawfully assisted intelligence agencies are the target of legal action and they should be given retroactive immunity from such litigation.
"In an age where we need to use every possible advantage to understand an enemy that may seek to exploit and hide within the vast expanses of the Internet, we simply cannot afford to discourage the private sector from helping us to detect and prevent the next terrorist attack.
"We had our Pearl Harbor on September 11th, 2001," concluded Mukasey. "We will need the level of cooperation from American industry that was seen in World War II, and we will need to tap into the technological ingenuity of the private sector if we are going to prevail. Our military, our intelligence agencies, and our law enforcement agencies are forces to be reckoned with, as they should be. But we cannot fight this fight alone. We have to be able to enlist and draw upon the lawful cooperation of the private sector."
