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Originally Posted by Tully Mars
It seems if you were POTUS and you had the majority of the congress as members of your own party it wouldn't be that difficult to update an "outdated" law.
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The sad irony of this entire illegal action was that, after the passage of the Patriot Act in 2002 which included some FISA updates, the Bush crowd said additional FISA updates were unnecessary.
Republican Senator DeWine proposed legislation to update FISA later in 2002 to give the administration greater flexibility in requesting FISA warrants...changing the "probably cause" standard to "reasonable suspicion"
The administration praised the FISA update that was included in the 2002 Patriot Act as "giving them the tools they needed" and said DeWine's bill was "unnecessary" and possibly unconstitutional:
The reforms in those measures (the PATRIOT Act) have affected every single application made by the Department for electronic surveillance or physical search of suspected terrorists and have enabled the government to become quicker, more flexible, and more focused in going "up" on those suspected terrorists in the United States.
The Department of Justice has been studying Sen. DeWine's proposed legislation. Because the proposed change raises both significant legal and practical issues, the Administration at this time is not prepared to support it.
While all of this was occuring, they were already acting unconstitutionally by their actions outside of FISA.
The sordid details here.