Specter on FISA

When the Senate returned to Washington after the Fourth of July recess we took up the issue of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a very important piece of legislation which gives law enforcement powers to fight terrorism.  This has been a controversial matter because it involves balancing the need for law enforcement to have effective tools on one hand with the constitutional rights and civil rights of citizens to privacy on the other hand.  There is no doubt that we are under a continuing threat of terrorism and law enforcement has to have very extensive powers. 

It was my view that we could have given the law enforcement those powers and still protected civil rights by an amendment which I had offered to provide for substituting the government in the place of the telephone companies.  No doubt the telephone companies were good citizens, but I was very reluctant to see the judicial determination ended on deciding whether or not what was done was constitutional. Had the government been substituted for the telephone companies those 40 cases in federal court could have gone forward and we could have retained the surveillance program necessary to fight terrorism.  As an alternative I offered an amendment which would have provided for judicial review to test the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  Neither of my amendments was passed and not withstanding that in the final analysis, I supported the act because of the continuing threat of terrorism. 

Very frequently in the legislative process a person in my position is faced with two alternatives, neither of which I really liked.  I had reservations about the legislation because of the civil and constitutional rights issue but, at the same time, I knew how important the program was to fight terrorism.   On balance I voted in favor of the act.  In part, I did so because we have provisions for the Inspectors General and the various intelligence agencies to go over the program, to monitor it, and to report back to Congress if there are violations of constitutional rights so that if and when necessary the Congress can take corrective action.