“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court is no longer serving its constitutional function of providing a check on the executive branch’s ability to obtain Americans’ private communications. Dramatic shifts in technology and law have changed the role of the FISA Court since its creation in 1978 — from reviewing government applications to collect communications in specific cases, to issuing blanket approvals of sweeping data collection programs affecting millions of Americans. Under today’s foreign intelligence surveillance system, the government’s ability to collect information about ordinary Americans’ lives has increased exponentially while judicial oversight has been reduced to near-nothingness. This report concludes that the role of today’s FISA Court no longer comports with constitutional requirements, including the strictures of Article III and the Fourth Amendment. The report lays out several steps Congress should take to help restore the FISA Court’s legitimacy.”

Foreward By James Robertson, former U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia from 1994 to 2010: “The Brennan Center report makes an enormous contribution to our understanding of that mission creep. It explains clearly the history and development of FISA from its enactment following the Church Committee’s exposure of uncontrolled domestic spying by the FBI, through the Patriot Act amendments in the turbulent wake of the 9/11 attacks, to its present form. It explains, with a simplicity and clarity accessible to the layman but supported by a level of detail and citation of authority that will satisfy students of the subject, why in its present form FISA is disturbing to civil libertarians and to constitutional scholars. And it distills its argument into plain, powerful recommendations for FISA’s amendment. It is time, and past time, for Congress to give serious attention to the FISA problems that are so clearly documented here, and to act. The Brennan Center’s recommendations are not the only ones that have been put forth, but they are not doctrinaire, my-way-or-the-highway demands. They invite discussion, debate, and even (Heaven forfend) compromise. They need to be carefully considered.”