The FISA Amendment Act of 2008 actually allows some of the things we were doing under the president's authority only against al Qaeda, it allows them for all legitimate foreign intelligence purposes.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The point I wanted to make was, as we have moved forward on the war on terrorism, FISA has been increasingly effective in terms of results.
While Congress saw some need to loosen the standard in the initial days of a war, it wanted the president to comply with FISA in carrying out surveillance in the United States.
We cannot go up on a wire. We cannot do a search without a judge on the FISA Court approving it and determining that we have met the standard that has been set forth by Congress in order to utilize these techniques.
Public discussion of how we determine al Qaeda intentions, I just - I can't see how that can do anything but harm the security of the nation.
The NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America.
There's been intelligence that terrorists would look to programs such as the visa waiver program to exploit.
Since 2001, the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law, major legal barriers prevented intelligence, national defense, and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information.
I was a federal prosecutor when we exercised powers under the Patriot Act or under the FISA court.
We will use all lawful tools at our disposal, and that includes authorities under the renewed PATRIOT Act. We firmly believe that our intelligence gathering tools must enable us to collect the information we need to protect the American people.
I strongly support the call to greatly expand our human intelligence capability to penetrate al Qaeda and gather critical intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland.
No opposing quotes found.