More deplorable shite: The ever so patriotically named Protect America Act [View all]

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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 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.[1] The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 reauthorized many provisions of the Protect America Act in Title VII of FISA.[2]

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Domestic wiretapping

The bill allowed the monitoring of all electronic communications of "Americans communicating with foreigners who are the targets of a U.S. terrorism investigation" without a court's order or oversight, so long as it is not targeted at one particular person "reasonably believed to be" inside the country.[1][10][11]
Foreign wiretapping

The Act removed the requirement for a FISA warrant for any communication which was foreign-related, even if the communication involved a U.S. location on the receiving or sending end of communication; all foreign-foreign communications were removed from warrant requirements, as well.[10]

Experts claimed that this deceptively opened the door to domestic spying, given that many domestic U.S. communications passed via non-US locations, by virtue of old telephony network configurations.
Data monitoring

In the bill, the monitoring of data related to Americans communicating with persons (U.S citizens and non-citizens) outside the United States who are the targets of a U.S. government intelligence information gathering efforts was addressed. The Protect America Act differed from the FISA in that no discussion of actions or character judgment of the target was required for application of the statute (i.e. to receive a FISA surveillance warrant, a FISC foreign agent definition was required). This data could be monitored only if intelligence officials acted in the context of intelligence information gathering.
Foreign Agent Declaration Not Required

No mention of foreign agent status is made in the Protect America Act of 2007. Under prior FISA rules, persons targeted for surveillance must have been declared as foreign agents before a FISA warrant would be accorded by the FISC court.

'Quasi-anti-terrorism law' for all-forms of intelligence collection

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act