What was the balance that the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was trying to strike?

NPR: Surveillance and the Law

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) sets forth procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence information.

FORBES: The Sheep Stop Here: Another Church Committee or Full Review of Privacy Laws Needed?

The core piece of controversial legislation is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which became law in 1978.

ENGADGET: Editorial: We, the digitally naked

The surveillance court, made up of 11 judges from across the nation, was created in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

CNN: Spy court to get secret briefing -- about secrets

In a report, he highlights how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act (FISAAA) allows US authorities to spy on cloud data.

BBC: Experts warn on wire-tapping of the cloud

They will ask why it was necessary in these 30 cases to bypass the special court set up to issue surveillance warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

NPR: Justifications More Troubling Than Spying Itself

In 1978, after Congressional investigations of the CIA, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up a secret, special court inside the Justice Department to issue warrants for this kind of spying.

CNN: Limits to power

And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires tonight.

NPR: Week in Review: Superdelegates, Clemens Testimony

It's called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. It established a special secret court to approve national security warrants, and in the years since that court has approved 19, 000 of them and rejected just five.

NPR: Gonzalez: U.S. Surveillance Legal

This is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

NPR: Congress Delays Recess in Legislative Push

And that is: if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the statute in question, as applied to the specific facts and circumstances of the NSA program, unconstitutionally -and these are the Supreme Court's words - impairs the ability of the president to protect our nation against attack, then that part of the statute itself is unconstitutional.

NPR: Invoking the State Secrets Privilege

Last week FBI Assistant Director John Miller said that most of the 2, 176 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act search warrants approved in 2006 were used against terror suspects inside the US. Three days later, the FBI announced the arrest of the members of an American and Caribbean terror cell that was plotting to bomb JFK International Airport.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Echoes of 1919

Preventing roving wiretaps: The Patriot Act allows federal officials, pursuant to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court authority, to track the telecommunications of suspected terrorists, despite their efforts to defeat such monitoring by changing phones or service providers.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: 50 Patriot Act supporters warn against Act's lapse