> "Congress in the FAA (building on the Protect America Act of 2007) specifically authorized programmatic warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance in a manner almost guaranteed to sweep up a substantial volume of communications involving U.S. persons..."
If we take it as true that governments in general in the U.S. are not so much as allowed to incidentally pick up communications then it seems like things such as municipal-run ISPs would have to be illegal by definition.
Additionally, it's not the job of FISA (or its Review Court) to overturn Supreme Court precedent, and such precedent has long held that foreign-targeted communications can be intercepted unilaterally under conditions laid out by law (even if such comms are part of a larger conversation also involving U.S. persons).
We can argue that this kind of result makes no sense in light of the Internet, and that therefore the FISA Court construct is inadequate in that regard (since you can't exactly easily appeal this stuff to the Supreme Court since it won't work its way through the normal court systems). But that doesn't mean the FISA Court of Review decision was incorrect either, or that Congress doesn't have the Constitutional ability to pass stuff such as PAA 2007.
The courts and law need to catch up to the Internet, sure, but at the same time that's a very tough nut to crack in general since anything regulating any part of the Internet is going to touch many different competing interests all at once.
If we take it as true that governments in general in the U.S. are not so much as allowed to incidentally pick up communications then it seems like things such as municipal-run ISPs would have to be illegal by definition.
Additionally, it's not the job of FISA (or its Review Court) to overturn Supreme Court precedent, and such precedent has long held that foreign-targeted communications can be intercepted unilaterally under conditions laid out by law (even if such comms are part of a larger conversation also involving U.S. persons).
We can argue that this kind of result makes no sense in light of the Internet, and that therefore the FISA Court construct is inadequate in that regard (since you can't exactly easily appeal this stuff to the Supreme Court since it won't work its way through the normal court systems). But that doesn't mean the FISA Court of Review decision was incorrect either, or that Congress doesn't have the Constitutional ability to pass stuff such as PAA 2007.
The courts and law need to catch up to the Internet, sure, but at the same time that's a very tough nut to crack in general since anything regulating any part of the Internet is going to touch many different competing interests all at once.