The government learned from a detainee in Guantanamo that terrorist Osama Bin Laden was doing business from his hiding places via couriers.
The detainee supplied the code name and phone number of the courier, who turned out to be one of two brothers who lived with Bin Laden’s family and served as his personal bodyguards. Agents used electronic surveillance to track the courier’s location. That surveillance was approved and then Seal Team 6 paid a house call to Bin Laden.
Without the surveillance, the US might not have caught Bin Laden.
The FISA court may be the most powerful court that you have never heard of. 
Should “raw signals” be on government servers?
America learned an anguished lesson on September 11, 2001, when more than 4,000 innocents were lost whose only crime was going to work that day. What lesson? It’s not enough to find out after the fact who was responsible. We needed to prevent these horrors.
So George W. Bush’s government began to aggressively use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law passed in 1978, more than 20 years before 9/11. Last year President Obama gave the National Security Agency the ability to share so-called “raw signals” information with other government agencies, amid the opposition of the ACLU, which said warrantless searches of private citizens’ emails violated the Fourth Amendment.
The FISA court is unique among federal courts. It operates in secret, with only one side, the government, presenting evidence. Its 11 judges are selected personally by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Its job is to grant or deny electronic surveillance warrants against would-be terrorists and spies.
The FISA court is controversial, pushing the limits of the Fourth Amendment’s provision against unlawful searches.
When is wiretapping not wiretapping?
What’s the difference between electronic surveillance and wiretapping? President Trump claims he was referring to the first when he added scare quotes to “wiretapping” in his discredited tweet accusing Mr. Obama of having tapped Trump Tower. In other words, Mr. Trump’s spokesman said his accusation was not literally about wiretapping. Wiretapping is more specific; electronic surveillance includes a range of technologies.
The Fourth Amendment requires a specific suspicion be established for a government search. Rogue NSA agent Edward Snowden revealed the extent of mass electronic surveillance, forcing the government to defend its practices. Data is collected through our phones and televisions, maybe even household devices! We can debate Snowden’s actions another place, for now we grapple with the logic behind it.
FISA under fire
Terrorists embed themselves in our society and live normally for quite some time before they unleash their horror. So is blanket surveillance of everyone the price for battling global terrorism? Mr. Obama made a detailed 2014 speech announcing changes to FISA–including having metadata (phone records of who called who, but not what was said) not be held by the government itself and declassifying some FISA decisions.
Some stats on FISA court: between 2009 and 2015, 10,700 applications were made for surveillance and only one was turned down in its entirety.
Does the Constitution have within itself the power to ensure its own survival, or is it in danger, because of global terrorism, of becoming a suicide pact ? Here is another area in which the Constitution’s framers did not foresee the technology to come.
Why not give up your rights in the name of fighting terrorism?
People say since 9-11: “I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t care if the government searches me, my car or my computer. Nothing to hide means nothing to fear.” An honorable sentiment from a law-abiding citizen. But let us not forget that the Bill of Rights is the only thing citizens have for protection in the face of awesome government power. The federal government has infinite time and resources, including armies of police and soldiers, attorneys, crime lab scientists, satellites in space, aircraft carriers.
If government decides to accuse you of a crime, your life could easily be ruined –even if you’re innocent. The Bill of Rights is the only thing the citizenry has to balance that scale.
So again the History Dr must ask: How do we defeat the threat of terrorism without throwing away what makes our society worth protecting in the first place?
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