Political Quotes

“In April of 2007, the Director of National Intelligence, or the DNI, submitted a request to update FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, law to Congress. The draft legislation that he sent to Congress was not a political or partisan piece of legislation, it was absolutely essential because technology has changed and the old FISA law was prohibiting our agencies from having the ability to go up on a foreign target without getting an order of the FISA Court, which totally gridlocked that court. But what he sent up was the result of a year of negotiations and coordination among civil servants in the Department of Justice and our intelligence agencies that will actually have to implement the system the legislation will cover. Soon after that, there was a court order issued that resulted in these significant gaps. That ruling brought important parts of the system we use to monitor terrorists overseas to a halt. It created dangerous gaps in our ability to collect. The need to pass a permanent legislative fix for FISA suddenly became much more urgent.”