Reauthorizations of expiring provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) have been an annual occurrence in Congress since 2009. Prior to 2012, the legislative debate and reauthorizations largely dealt with three amendments to FISA that are commonly linked to the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act). Most recently, in 2011, these three provisions were extended until June 1, 2015. For a more detailed discussion of these three provisions, see CRS Report R40138, Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Extended Until June 1, 2015 , by [author name scrubbed]. In contrast, the reauthorization debated and passed in 2012 deals with Title VII of FISA, as added by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Title VII is only tangentially related to the subjects of the previous years' debates in that it amends the same statute. Therefore, the legislative activity in prior years should be conceptually separated from the current debate and legislation that would address the expiration of Title VII of FISA at the end of this year. This report describes the changes that were made by the FISA Amendments Act within the context of the government's authority to conduct surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. On December 30, 2012, President Obama signed H.R. 5949 , the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012, which extends Title VII of FISA until December 31, 2017. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) provides a statutory framework by which government agencies may, when gathering foreign intelligence information, obtain authorization to conduct wiretapping or physical searches, utilize pen registers and trap and trace devices, or access specified business records and other tangible things. Authorization for such activities is typically obtained via a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a specialized court created by FISA to act as a neutral judicial decision maker in the context of activities authorized by the statute. Title VII, added by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, provides additional procedures for the acquisition of foreign intelligence information regarding persons who are believed to be outside of the United States. These provisions affect both U.S. persons as well as other non-U.S. persons. Specifically, the FISA Amendments Act added a new procedure for targeting non-U.S. persons abroad without individualized court orders; a new requirement to obtain an individualized court order when targeting U.S. persons abroad; and new procedures that can be used to obtain court orders authorizing the targeting of U.S. persons abroad for electronic surveillance, the acquisition of stored communications, and other means of acquiring foreign intelligence information. FISA is just one of several federal laws that govern the use of electronic surveillance for legitimate investigative purposes. The principal others are the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Executive Order 12333, and the Fourth Amendment. Each of these, and the manner in which they may overlap or interact with FISA, will be discussed briefly before turning to the provisions added by the FISA Amendments Act. ECPA provides three sets of general prohibitions accompanied by judicially supervised exceptions to facilitate law enforcement investigations. The prohibitions address (1) the interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications (wiretapping); (2) access to the content of stored electronic communications and to communications transaction records; and (3) the use of trap and trace devices and pen registers (essentially in-and-out secret "caller id" devices). In some circumstances, the use of surveillance activities for foreign intelligence purposes might fall within the scope of the activities prohibited by ECPA. There are two exceptions to ECPA's general prohibitions that address this situation. First, if the activity in question falls within the definition of electronic surveillance under FISA, then it may be conducted if the government complies with FISA's procedures. For example, the interception of a domestic telephone call is the type of activity that would generally be prohibited by ECPA. It would also qualify as electronic surveillance under FISA. Therefore, if the government obtained a court order from the FISC authorizing the interception of that call, it would be a lawful surveillance activity notwithstanding the general prohibition against wiretapping found in ECPA. Second, if the activity in question is not electronic surveillance, as that term is defined in FISA, but involves the acquisition of foreign intelligence information from international or foreign communications, then it is not subject to ECPA. For example, the interception of an international telephone call would not be considered electronic surveillance for purposes of FISA if the target were the person on the non-domestic end of the conversation and the acquisition would not occur on United States soil. So long as the purpose of that acquisition was to acquire foreign intelligence information, then it would not be subject to the general prohibitions in ECPA. Although both exceptions result in the non-application of ECPA, they differ in one important aspect that is particularly relevant to understanding the changes wrought by Title VII of FISA. Both ECPA and FISA provide that the two statutes constitute the exclusive means of conducting electronic surveillance, as defined in FISA. As a result, using the procedures under FISA is compulsory for those activities that qualify as electronic surveillance but cannot be accomplished by, and are exempt from, ECPA. In contrast, prior to the FISA Amendments Act, FISA's procedures were generally never needed for wiretapping activities that did not qualify as electronic surveillance, and which were also exempt from ECPA because they involved international or foreign communications. However, as discussed below, the recently added Section 704 of FISA does make FISA's procedures compulsory when the target of such surveillance is a United States person. Those activities that remain beyond the scope of either ECPA or FISA are governed by Executive Order 12333 and the Fourth Amendment, discussed in the next two sections. Section 2.5 of Executive Order 12333, as amended, delegates to the Attorney General the power to approve the use of any technique for intelligence purposes within the United States or against a U.S. person abroad. If a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes, the executive order requires the Attorney General to determine in each case that there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. The authority delegated by Executive Order 12333 must be exercised in accordance with FISA, but also extends to activities beyond FISA's reach. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." In domestic criminal law investigations, it generally requires law enforcement officers to obtain a court-issued warrant before conducting a search. When the warrant requirement does not apply, government activity is generally subject to a "reasonableness" test under the Fourth Amendment. The extent to which the warrant requirement applies to the government's collection of foreign intelligence is unclear. In a 1972 case, the Supreme Court invalidated warrantless electronic surveillance of domestic organizations on Fourth Amendment grounds, despite the government's assertion of a national security rationale. However, it indicated that its conclusion might be different in a future case involving the electronic surveillance of foreign powers or their agents, within or outside the United States. In a 2002 case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review upheld FISA, as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act, against a Fourth Amendment challenge. The court assumed, without deciding the question, that FISA court orders do not constitute warrants for purposes of the Fourth Amendment analysis. Relying on a general reasonableness analysis, it nonetheless upheld such orders, emphasizing both the privacy protections in the statutory framework and the governmental interest in preventing national security threats. In late 2005, the New York Times reported that the federal government had "monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in the United States without warrants." Subsequently, President George W. Bush acknowledged that, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he had authorized the National Security Agency to conduct a Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) to "intercept international communications into and out of the United States" by "persons linked to al Qaeda or related terrorist organizations" based upon his asserted "constitutional authority to conduct warrantless wartime electronic surveillance of the enemy." Now discontinued, the TSP appears to have been active from shortly after September 11, 2001, to January of 2007. After the TSP activities were concluded in 2007, Congress enacted the Protect America Act (PAA), which established a mechanism for the acquisition, via a joint certification by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Attorney General (AG), but without an individualized court order, of foreign intelligence information concerning a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States. This temporary authority ultimately expired after approximately six months, on February 16, 2008. Several months later, the Congress enacted the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which created separate procedures for targeting non-U.S. persons and U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States under a new Title VII of FISA. Section 702 provides procedures for targeting non-U.S. persons and is discussed in more detail below. Like its predecessor in the PAA, Section 702 permits the AG and the DNI to jointly authorize targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States, but is limited to targeting non-U.S. persons. Once authorized, such acquisitions may last for periods of up to one year. Under subsection 702(b) of FISA, such an acquisition is also subject to several limitations.