Protect America Act of 2007

Protect America Act of 2007

Long title	An Act to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to provide additional procedures for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence information and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	PAA
Enacted by	the 110th United States Congress
Effective	August 5, 2007
Citations
Public law	110-55
Statutes at Large	121 Stat. 552
Codification
Acts amended	Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Titles amended	50 U.S.C.: War and National Defense
U.S.C. sections amended	50 U.S.C. ch. 36 § 1801 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 1927 by Mitch McConnell (R–KY) on August 1, 2007 Committee consideration by Senate Judiciary Passed the Senate on August 3, 2007 (60–28 Roll call vote 309, via Senate.gov) Passed the House on August 4, 2007 (227–183 Roll call vote 836, via Clerk.House.gov) Signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 5, 2007
Major amendments
FISA Amendments Act of 2008

The Protect America Act of 2007 (PAA), (Pub.L. 110–55, 121 Stat. 552, enacted by S. 1927), is a controversial amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on August 5, 2007. It removed the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign intelligence targets "reasonably believed" to be outside of the United States. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 reauthorized many provisions of the Protect America Act in Title VII of FISA.

In December 2005, the New York Times published an article that described a surveillance program of warrantless domestic wiretapping ordered by the Bush administration and carried out by the National Security Agency in cooperation with major telecommunications companies since 2002 (a subsequent Bloomberg article suggested that this may have already begun by June 2000). Many critics have asserted that the Administration's warrant-free surveillance program is a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution against warrantless search, and, a criminal violation of FISA.

The Bush administration maintained that the warrant requirements of FISA were implicitly superseded by the subsequent passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, and that the President's inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to conduct foreign surveillance trumped the FISA statute. However, the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld placed the legitimacy of this argument into question.

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