"In other words, it wasn't designed in the White House; it was designed where you expect it to be designed, in the N.S.A." Mr. Bush took issue with a questioner who asked why he felt the need to circumvent the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court warrants for wiretaps.

In June 2011, Wyden announced his "Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act" in partnership with Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the program appears to violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Generally, Mr. Gonzales stuck to the same ludicrous arguments the administration has continually offered for sidestepping the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expressly forbids warrantless spying on people in the United States.

The Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act required the government to get a warrant from a special court to conduct wiretapping for national security reasons.

She said Mr. Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he ordered the National Security Agency to spy without a warrant on international phone calls and e-mail by Americans and foreign residents of the United States.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance.

At the Justice Department, officials said that the F.B.I. managers did not aggressively present the case for a warrant as a top counterintelligence priority and were unwilling to deploy the large number of agents that would have been required to conduct the full-time surveillance that might have produced evidence to justify a warrant under the Surveillance Act.

I should like a written reply from the Council and the Commission to my questions regarding the High-Level Contact Group on Data Protection and the US Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act.

The bill would have effect for 12 months, allowing Parliament time to progress the Search and Surveillance Act.