…is a critic of the administration’s legal defenses of the NSA program, which you might have noticed if you have checked out today’s excellent opinionduel.com. But he notes this in one of his postings:
In addition, FISA does not deal with any effort to track calls that begin against al Qaeda cells outside the United States, which then lead to the United States. FISA only deals with situations where the target of the surveillance is a U.S. person or where that surveillance is “acquired in the United States.” The debate over the legality of president’s action covers only those last two categories of cases, not everything done by the NSA.
So, if the administration is–and this is the impression I and I think other people around here get–targeting people outside the US and doing the surveillance outside the US, it is not in violation of FISA. Someone please tell the New York Review of Books.