Eavesdropping Reforms Empower Spy Chief

President Bush, at podium, makes comments after meeting with the Counterterrorism Team, Friday, Aug. 3, 2007, at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. Behind the president, from left are, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney, Admiral Mike McConnell, director National Intelligence, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) (Ron Edmonds - AP)

_ Domestic conversations between two Americans. The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure requires that the government get approval from a court before eavesdropping on these exchanges.

_ Communications between an American and a foreigner, a more complex, gray area. If the American is the target of the investigation, then a court must approve the surveillance, the White House says. However, if the foreigner is the target, no court approval is necessary under the new law. Instead, Gonzales and McConnell will decide together whether to go ahead with the work.

It's this area _ when an American is talking to a foreign suspect _ where the Bush administration has acquired powers it didn't have before.

Under government regulations, agencies are supposed to minimize the collection, retention, and dissemination of any information about a U.S. citizen. Often that means names are blacked out, unless the identity is crucial to understanding the conversation.

Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies, which advocates for civil liberties, said the new law will potentially allow the government to intercept millions of Americans' calls and e-mails without warrants _ as long as the NSA and other authorities have a foreign suspect in their sights.

"This power that they have obtained is a dramatic expansion," she said.

The Bush administration also fixed an odd quirk of the surveillance law that it said had emerged with the rapid technological growth of the past two decades: The government had to get legal approval to listen in on foreign suspects who are located overseas but whose conversations cross into the extensive U.S. communications network, as millions of international calls and e-mails do each day.

While the law is in effect, that legal approval will no longer be required, officials acknowledged.

The power may last longer than some people expect, Graves noted, thanks to a little-noticed provision of the bill. While the law expires in February unless Congress acts to extend it, any surveillance orders that are in place when it sunsets can last up to a full year, she said.

Without a repeal, lawmakers "weren't just giving them the power for six months. They were giving it to them for the rest of the administration," Graves said.