E P I C A l e r t Congress passed the "Protect America Act of
2007," making significant changes to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA was enacted in 1978 to regulate
intelligence gathering following revelations of abusive uses of
covert intelligence powers. The 1978 law created a secret FISA
court to oversee this intelligence gathering. The new law
removes some surveillance from the limited FISA court review,
allows the government to create more surveillance programs with
limited review, and immunizes from lawsuits telecommunications
companies who participate in these programs. These powers are
temporary, as the new law expires in 6 months. The law does not
focus on "terrorists," but on communications when one of the
parties is outside of the United States. The law amends the
legal definition of "electronic surveillance," as monitored by
the FISA court, "Electronic surveillance" no longer encompasses
surveillance of people reasonably believed to be outside of the
United States. The law all