FISA Court to Oversee Domestic Spying; Transcript of DOJ Phone Briefing

The Washington Post is reporting that the Bush administration has agreed to allow the FISA Court to oversee eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mails to and from the United States. The FISA-approved surveillance would replace the Terrorist Surveillance Program at the National Security Agency (NSA), authorized by President George Bush in 2002 to create wiretaps without court-issued warrants.

According to InfoWorld, the FISA court will approve wiretap requests for 90 days at a time. The court also will have authority to review individual wiretap requests, but the DOJ has declined to provide specific information about how the FISA program will work. For example, officials would not say whether the administration will be required to seek a warrant for each person it wants to monitor or whether the FISA court has issued a broader set of orders to cover multiple War on Terror cases.

TPMmuckraker has posted the transcript of yesterday's phone briefing between two senior DOJ officials and reporters about the president's wiretapping program ... probably the most detail information available right now.

UPDATE: Here's the text of the Bush Administration Letter Announcing Intention to Comply With FISA (provided by Talking Points Memo). [JH]