Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - Essay Example

During the Bush administration, there was a conflicting legal issue with regards to the latest intelligence collection practices and the F.I.S.A. guidelines. To correct the gap between the legal issue on electronic surveillance and the actual practice of warrantless domestic wiretapping of phones, tracking of messages from the Internet, the president went out of his way to persuade the Congress to support the need to amend the original guidelines on F.I.S.A. (PBS, 2007). Based on the conversation between Bill Moyers with Fritz Schwarz and Charles Fried, it is clear that Bush was actually manipulating the Congress so that the president can do whatever he decided to do.

Even though something is not legal, Bush was using his authoritative power to control the people around Congress without the knowledge of the local citizens. Regardless of whether or not Bush’s strategy to control terrorism has been effective in serving its purpose, I think that the Bush administration went too far in reforming the domestic intelligence collection.