It really scares me that the only issues able to find bipartisan support in congress seem to be the bills that benefit nobody. The republicans and democrats can never agree when there is good to be done, but when they get the chance to fuck over the average citizen they're full of cooperation.
It's hard to support a rational argument that FISA mechanisms benefit "nobody". FISA's supporters in DHS and DOJ and DOD will point lawmakers to a litany of cases where FISA-backed surveillance saved lives. The issue is whether the cost of that surveillance is worth the increased safety.
FISA isn't even about increased surveillance. If the DHS thinks they need more surveillance to do their job, i trust them on that. FISA is about a lack of oversight and due process on the surveillance. In the litany of cases where FISA-backed surveillance saves lives, that same surveillance could have been performed with proper oversight and regulation, rather than what basically amounts to the whim of an investigator. The absence of regulation in this instance benefits nobody (except those who would abuse it).
I don't understand how FISA doesn't constitute oversight over foreign surveillance, unless you're of the opinion that spies should be required to get warrants to spy on foreigners.
These arguments always seem to point out how FISA is nothing like a criminal court, as if that was a dispositive argument. FISA isn't supposed to be like a criminal court. The purpose of FISA is to ensure that our foreign intelligence services don't spy on our own citizens, and not much else.
