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The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) indisputably requires that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. But the administration made a pointed decision to disregard that long-standing requirement and eavesdropped on Americans’ private communications without any judicial checks.
FISA clearly requires judicial oversight of all electronic surveillance of Americans living in the U.S., including anti-terrorism investigations. Allowing the government to continue to monitor the private phone calls and emails of ordinary Americans without so much as a warrant sets a disturbing precedent for administrations to come.
We have no way of knowing if personal records of individuals not even suspected of wrongdoing are being swept into extensive federal databases for government use at will. Such a grim possibility is certainly not what our forefathers intended when they guaranteed all Americans freedom from unreasonable search and seizures.
Congress Must Intervene
While there has been significant public outcry, and there is agreement among political watchers that this program is an albatross around the president’s neck, he has continued to bully Congress into avoiding the only appropriate course of action – a full and open, bipartisan investigation into the entirety of the program. Congress must conduct that thorough investigation today.
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