# FISA Amendments Act **The 2008 law that turned the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping into statute and immunized the companies that had carried it out.** H.R. 6304 passed the House 293–129 on June 20, 2008 and the Senate 69–28 on July 9; [[George W. Bush]] signed it on July 10, 2008 (Public Law 110-261). It created Title VII of the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] — including [[FISA Section 702]] — and Title VIII, the retroactive-immunity provision. ## Background From late 2001 the [[NSA]] ran [[Stellar Wind]] on presidential authority alone, outside the [[FISA Court]]. After the *New York Times* exposed it in December 2005, dozens of lawsuits targeted the telecoms that had cooperated. The administration's answer was legislation: the temporary **Protect America Act** of August 2007, which lapsed in February 2008, and then the FISA Amendments Act. ## What it did - **Section 702** — programmatic collection on non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be abroad, approved through annual certifications rather than individual warrants. This became the legal basis for [[PRISM]] and [[Upstream Collection]]. - **Sections 703–704** — new requirements for court orders when targeting U.S. persons located abroad. - **Retroactive immunity (Title II of the Act, which added Title VIII to FISA)** — the Attorney General could certify that a company had received written assurances the program was authorized by the President and determined to be lawful, and courts were required to dismiss the suits. The pending cases against [[AT&T]], [[Verizon]] and others ended. - **A sunset of December 31, 2012** for Title VII, which put 702 on the renewal cycle it has been on ever since. ## The Obama vote Then-Senator [[Barack Obama]], who had pledged to oppose any bill containing telecom immunity, voted for the final bill while running for president. The vote is the vault's earliest clean example of the bipartisan surveillance consensus that later carried every 702 renewal (see [[NSA and the Telecommunications Industry]]). ## KB Significance **The bypass that works is the one Congress writes.** Stellar Wind violated FISA as written. Congress responded by rewriting FISA so the violation was no longer a violation, and by closing the courthouse to anyone who might have proved otherwise. The program's legal problem was solved; its accountability problem was abolished. ## Renewals | Year | Law | Term | |---|---|---| | 2012 | FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act | Five years, to end of 2017 | | 2018 | S. 139 | Six years, to end of 2023 | | 2024 | [[Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act]] | Two years, to April 2026 | | 2026 | Two stopgaps, then **lapse on June 12** | Certifications grandfathered to March 2027 | ## See Also - [[FISA Section 702]] · [[Stellar Wind]] · [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] · [[NSA and the Telecommunications Industry]] · [[War on Terror Intelligence Architecture]]