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The WSJ editorial frames the issue thusly:
The debate concerns an effort to revise the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to bless spying without a court order on terrorist communications that originate overseas but move through U.S. switching networks.
This sounds to me like the familiar scenario "Terrorist 1 in a foreign country calls Terrorist 2 also in a foreign country, but the NSA can't intercept that call without a warrant because the signal is routed through a network in the US, thus requiring FISA review." Is that really what the debate is about?
Because, I don't have a problem with that kind of warrantless surveillance, since neither person is a US citizen or a person in the US. I don't know any rational person who thinks otherwise.
I thought this was about communications between a person abroad and a person in the US. Yeah, that's gotta go through FISA, even if "Osama's calling." Am I missing something here?
