FISA isn't even about increased surveillance. If the DHS thinks they need more surveillance to do their job, i trust them on that. FISA is about a lack of oversight and due process on the surveillance. In the litany of cases where FISA-backed surveillance saves lives, that same surveillance could have been performed with proper oversight and regulation, rather than what basically amounts to the whim of an investigator. The absence of regulation in this instance benefits nobody (except those who would abuse it).
I don't understand how FISA doesn't constitute oversight over foreign surveillance, unless you're of the opinion that spies should be required to get warrants to spy on foreigners.
These arguments always seem to point out how FISA is nothing like a criminal court, as if that was a dispositive argument. FISA isn't supposed to be like a criminal court. The purpose of FISA is to ensure that our foreign intelligence services don't spy on our own citizens, and not much else.
