Legal restrictions hampering U.S. intelligence, spy chief complains
Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has expressed frustration at legal constraints on electronic eavesdropping that he said were hampering U.S. intelligence from monitoring global dangers.
“The last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence, which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on,” McConnell told the El Paso Times, in explaining why the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act needed to be updated to reflect changing communications technology and the need to rapidly focus on foreign communications.
McConnell, a former National Security Agency director, fought against FISA revisions that increased the need to get court approval for foreign spying.
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“My argument was that the intelligence community should not be restricted when we are conducting foreign surveillance against a foreigner in a foreign country, just by dint of the fact that it happened to touch a wire. We haven't done that in wireless for years,” he said.
McConnell said it takes 200 man hours to conduct surveillance on a single telephone that may be in Urdu, Farsi or Arabic, making going to a FISA court very difficult.
McConnell also said that public debate over electronic spying is forcing the terrorists to use other means to communicate and the result is that Americans will die.
