Bush makes it easier to tracking terror e-mails

Washington DC (Map, News) - The recently-updated U.S. law that regulated the government’s interception of communication during the war on terror was so outdated that officials needed a warrant to view overseas e-mail of terror suspects when they used an account provided by an American company.

A U.S. intelligence officer told The Examiner on Monday about the red tape terrorist hunters have encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq. The officer said it has hindered the hunt for terrorists and their hostages by delaying access to pertinent e-mails.

That snag now is eliminated by a temporary law signed Sunday by President Bush. It allows the National Security Agency and other intelligence units to intercept communications that cross through the U.S. from overseas. The director of national intelligence and the attorney general must certify to the courts that the surveillance target is “reasonably believed” to be outside the U.S.

The NSA already enjoys great leeway to intercept foreign communications without a warrant, but not the e-mails and phone calls of U.S. residents.

The officer said that because the users of American e-mail addresses are treated as U.S. residents, the government has had to seek warrants from the secret U.S. court that administers the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The officer asked not to be identified because of the subject’s sensitive nature.

The FISA court has ruled that messages routed through the U.S., such as e-mails in an American account, are subject to FISA, meaning the government needed a warrant to read or listen to the communication.

The court decision is a prime reason Bush pressed Congress before its August recess to update the 29-year-old FISA law, which was written before advent of the Internet, e-mails and cell phones.

The intelligence officer told of cases in Iraq in which terrorists suspected of links to hostage-takers were located on the Internet sending e-mails. But because they used an American provider, the e-mails were not intercepted until the NSA filled out paperwork to convince the Justice Department to seek a FISA warrant.

The officer said that in one case it took two days to win permission to intercept e-mails that proved valuable.

During the debate in Congress last week, some lawmakers noted the need to fix the law so overseas telephone calls routed through the U.S. might be intercepted. What was not discussed publicly was the problem of American-provided e-mail accounts used by terrorists around the world.

“Remember the law extended not just to the individual, but where the information on them is housed,” said the officer. “If they have a Yahoo e-mail account and it is stored on a server in the U.S., they are treated like a U.S. resident even if they are a known Iraqi.”

rscarborough@dcexaminer.com

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