Intelligence officials open to opposition before surveillance court

Obama administration officials said that they are willing to consider changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court that would allow an attorney to advocate on behalf of privacy rights.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Deputy Attorney Gen. James Cole said that creating an adversarial process at the FISA court should be "part of the debate." "There's obviously issues we'll have to work through as to clearances and classifications and who would be there and what their role would be," he said. "But those are the kinds of discussions we do need to have." Currently, FISA court judges review only the arguments from the government in favor of surveillance programs.