Brace for the Coming Debate over FISA

The collection of foreign intelligence outside the United States is crucial to protecting our national security and vital interests around the world. That collection is governed by a statute popularly known as Section 702. The provision was enacted in 2008 as an amendment to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It is thus at the center of our wrongheaded legal regime, which has transferred oversight of the executive’s core political function — protecting the nation from hostile alien regimes and their agents — to the judiciary, the branch of government least well-equipped, institutionally and practically, to perform that role.

As such, Section 702 is ill-conceived. But that doesn’t make it any less crucial. For Congress to fail to reauthorize the provision by allowing it to lapse at the end of this month, or to supplant Section 702 with something even more ill-conceived and unworkable, would be a potentially catastrophic blunder.

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

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The collection of foreign intelligence outside the United States is crucial to protecting our national security and vital interests around the world. That collection is governed by a statute popularly known as Section 702. The provision was enacted in 2008 as an amendment to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It is thus at the center of our wrongheaded legal regime, which has transferred oversight of the executive’s core political function — protecting the nation from hostile alien regimes and their agents — to the judiciary, the branch of government least well-equipped, institutionally and practically, to perform that role.

As such, Section 702 is ill-conceived. But that doesn’t make it any less crucial. For Congress to fail to reauthorize the provision by allowing it to lapse at the end of this month, or to supplant Section 702 with something even more ill-conceived and unworkable, would be a potentially catastrophic blunder.

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.