Capito Supports Legislation to Close Terrorist Loophole, Strengthen American Intelligence Capabilities

Press Release

Capito Supports Legislation to Close Terrorist Loophole, Strengthen American Intelligence Capabilities

Capito: "Congress should act immediately on this legislation in order to close the terrorist loophole, strengthen our intelligence and better protect our country."

Seeking to close the "terrorist loophole" in the law that governs how our intelligence community gathers information from terrorists overseas, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito has cosponsored legislation to allow American intelligence agencies to listen to foreigners' phone calls in foreign countries without a warrant.

This narrowly crafted legislation (H.R. 3138) will modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to help our intelligence community prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland while protecting civil liberties of American citizens.

"Intelligence is vital to our ability to protect our homeland from terror attacks," Capito said. "This legislation is critical to ensuring our intelligence community is not hamstrung by a law written nearly thirty years ago to accommodate the technologies of the Cold War."

FISA was written in 1978 in an effort to protect Americans' civil liberties during our country's Cold War surveillance of Soviet spies.

The law requires our intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant before tapping a phone in the United States. However, due to modern technology, many phone calls placed internationally to another international location are now routed through the U.S. This means that American intelligence agencies would be forced to obtain a warrant to listen to a known terrorist in Afghanistan place a call to another terrorist in Pakistan.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell recently testified that this problem is weakening our intelligence gathering capabilities.

"We are actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting," McConnell said.

Capito said the outdated law meant to protect rights of Americans is actually protecting terrorists, and she says that should change.

"Our system should be protecting the rights of Americans, not those of overseas terrorists plotting to kill Americans," Capito said. "Congress should act immediately on this legislation in order to close the terrorist loophole, strengthen our intelligence capabilities and better protect our country."

Capito is an original cosponsor of the legislation, which was introduced last week. The bill's supporters are pushing for the legislation to be approved this week before Congress adjourns for the August district work period.

Source