Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
argument when it ruled that the Fourth Amendment forbids warrantless wiretapping,
even in cases of national security [19].
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) provides for judicial and con-
gressional oversight of the government's covert surveillance of foreign governments and
their agents. The law allows the president to authorize electronic surveillance of foreign
nationals for up to one year without a court order, as long as there is little chance that the
surveillance will reveal the contents of communications with any US citizens. If commu-
nications with US citizens are to be monitored, the government must get a court order
from the FISA Court.
FISA was amended by the Protect America Act of 2007. This act allows the US gov-
ernment to wiretap communications beginning or ending in a foreign country without
oversight by the FISA Court.
In June 2013, the British newspaper the
Guardian
disclosed it had received a top se-
cret document outlining how the National Security Agency had obtained direct access
to the servers at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and other Internet giants [34]. (The docu-
ment was provided by Edward Snowden, a former employee of NSA contractor Booz
Allen Hamilton.) The secret program, called PRISM, enables the NSA to access stored
information such as email messages and monitor live communications such as Skype
and PalTalk conversations without first obtaining search warrants, when the NSA has a
reasonable suspicion that the person being investigated is a foreigner outside the United
States. According to the secret document, the NSA gained access to the servers of Mi-
crosoft in 2007; Yahoo in 2008; Google and Facebook in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype
and AOL in 2011; and Apple in 2012.
All the companies that responded to a request for information by the
Guardian
denied any knowledge of the PRISM program. The Obama administration provided the
following statement: “The
Guardian
and
Washington Post
articles refer to collection of
communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within
the United States” [34].
Congress updated the wiretapping law in 1986 with the passage of the Electronic Com-
munications Privacy Act (ECPA). The ECPA allows police to attach two kinds of surveil-
lance devices to a suspect's phone line. If the suspect makes a phone call, a
pen register
displays the number being dialed. If the suspect gets a phone call, a
trap-and-trace device
displays the caller's phone number. While a court order is needed to approve the installa-
tion of pen registers and trap-and-trace devices, prosecutors do not need to demonstrate
probable cause, and the approval is virtually automatic.
The ECPA also allows police to conduct
roving wiretaps
—wiretaps that move from
phone to phone—if they can demonstrate the suspect is attempting to avoid surveillance
by using many different phones [19].
