The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday considers whether to allow a challenge to a federal law that provides for large-scale electronic surveillance of international phone calls and emails. The case is not a direct test of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Rather, it is a test of whether the law can even be challenged in court at all.
How FISA Came To Be
Congress first passed the law in 1978 to prevent the kind of warrantless surveillance of Americans that had been uncovered by congressional investigators. Known by the acronym FISA, it required the government to obtain a warrant from a special intelligence court when conducting electronic surveillance of individuals abroad — surveillance that could pick up communications to and from people in the United States.
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