29. ABA WEIGHS IN ON DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM
In February 2006 the ABA House of Delegates adopted as policy the unanimous recommendations of the Task Force on Domestic Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism, which was established to explore the difficult constitutional questions raised by unsupervised domestic electronic surveillance. The Task Force was a bipartisan panel of distinguished lawyers that included a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a former General Counsel of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Institute of Military Justice General Counsel, and others with deep knowledge of national security law.
The policy calls on the President to abide by the limitations imposed by the Constitution under our system of checks and balances. It also opposes any future electronic surveillance inside this country by any U.S. government agency for foreign intelligence purposes that does not comply with the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; urges the President to seek appropriate amendments or new legislation if he believes that FISA is inadequate to safeguard national security; and urges Congress to conduct a comprehensive investigation to determine the nature and extent of electronic surveillance of U.S. persons outside of the FISA process and to explore additional unresolved questions surrounding the program.
Legislation was introduced in the 109th Congress that tracks the ABA's recommendations. As the Congress debated a variety of legislative proposals regarding electronic surveillance, the ABA has advanced the principles endorsed in its policy on Capitol Hill.
The policy, and its background report, are available here on the ABA's Web site.
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