FISA Amendments Act of 2008
The well-known FISA Amendments Act of 2008, otherwise known as “telecom immunity,” passed congress yesterday. It essentially forgives large telecom providers for helping the government conduct warrantless spying activities.
I recently heard an interesting perspective on this act, that the new law was to allow the government to be able to legally gather a large amount of data representing “normal” telecom user activity. The government wants this data not so much to spy on innocent citizens, but to have a control data set so that it can detect “abnormal” user activity in part by comparing it to this control data set.
I’m somewhat skeptical of this justification but the argument does makes some technical sense.