Fisa (Noun)
Meaning
An act passed by Congress in 1978 to establish procedures for requesting judicial authorization for foreign intelligence surveillance and to create the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; intended to increase United States counterintelligence; separate from ordinary law enforcement surveillance.
Classification
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents.
Examples
- The court under FISA oversees and approves the government's requests for surveillance of foreign agents and their US-based contacts.
- FISA was established in response to concerns over government surveillance abuses in the 1960s and 1970s.
- In 2008, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act, expanding the government's authority to collect foreign intelligence information.
- Under FISA, the US government must obtain a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance on agents of foreign powers.
- Critics argue that FISA provisions have been secretly reinterpreted to justify mass surveillance of American citizens.