Opinion ID: 619929
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Fourth Amendment and the Primary Purpose Requirement for FISA Searches

Text: Defendants do not ignore all of this history. Instead, they focus on the Patriot Act's revision of what is now 50 U.S.C. § 1804(a)(6)(B) to require a national security officer to certify that a significant purpose, rather than the purpose which courts had interpreted to mean the primary purposeof the surveillance the officer seeks to conduct under FISA is to obtain foreign intelligence information. They urge that the Patriot Act amendment violates the Fourth Amendment by bringing the standard below this primary purpose threshold. In fact, however, the pre-FISA and pre-Patriot Act amendment foreign intelligence cases do not control this case. Those cases do not establish the primary purpose requirement as a sine qua non of FISA's constitutionality, and, even if they did, we would hold that application of the reasonableness test set forth above counsels a different result. The notion of a primary purpose requirement arises in pre-FISA foreign intelligence surveillance cases. Defendants, understandably, focus on United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593, 605-06 (3d Cir. 1974) (en banc), in which our Court held that the executive branch need not secure prior judicial authorization for foreign intelligence surveillance, but commented in dicta that, [s]ince the primary purpose of these searches is to secure foreign intelligence information, a judge, when reviewing a particular search [after the fact] must, above all, be assured that this was in fact its primary purpose and that the accumulation of evidence of criminal activity was incidental. That comment has little bearing here, however, because it arose out facts specific to Butenko, not out of a reasoned analysis of what minimum standards would satisfy the Fourth Amendment. [8] See id. at 606. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has come closer to suggesting a link between a primary purpose requirement and the constitutionality of foreign intelligence surveillance. In United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 629 F.2d 908 (4th Cir.1980), it explicitly balanced government and private interests under a series of different standards and concluded that the executive should be excused from securing a warrant only when the surveillance is conducted `primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons. Id. at 915. But Truong also does not control our analysis. It involved the scope of presidential authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance. Abu-Jihaad, 630 F.3d at 121. Here, we consider the constitutionality of a program approved by Congress that requires an executive officer to apply to the judicial branch for a warrant-like order. These features distinguish our case from Truong in important ways: Whatever purpose limits might be placed on the president's authority to conduct warrantless surveillance to ensure that the exception does not extend beyond the constitutional ground for its recognition, it does not follow that the Fourth Amendment demands the same limitation when, as under FISA, the powers of all three branches of governmentin short, the whole of federal authorityare invoked in determining when warrants may reasonably be sought and issued for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information. Id. FISA cases before the Patriot Act amendments often incorporated a primary purpose standard without much discussion or analysis, typically by assuming, or even asserting outright, that it was a statutory requirement. See, e.g., Johnson, 952 F.2d at 572 (affirming district court determination that FISA surveillance was lawful in part because it is clear that the primary purpose of the government's FISA applications was to obtain foreign intelligence information, not to collect evidence for any criminal prosecution of appellants); Pelton, 835 F.2d at 1075 (rejecting defendant's argument that FISA surveillance was conducted primarily for the purpose of his criminal prosecution, and not primarily `for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information' as required by 50 U.S.C. § 1802(b)); [9] Duggan, 743 F.2d at 77 (The requirement that foreign intelligence information be the primary objective of the surveillance is plain not only from the language of § 1802(b) but also from the requirements in § 1804 as to what the application must contain.). Those cases did not expressly link the primary purpose standard to an analysis of whether FISA satisfies the Fourth Amendment or consider whether FISA would be constitutional if it incorporated a lower standard instead, which is the question we face now. Cf. Sealed Case, 310 F.3d at 727 (concluding that there was not much need for courts reviewing pre-Patriot Act amendment FISA cases to focus on the constitutional significance of the primary purpose test). In all events, we do not believe that the Fourth Amendment compels a primary purpose test. The dispositive issue is whether the significant purpose test is reasonable. Because we conclude that it is for the reasons set forth below, surveillance based on that standard satisfies the Fourth Amendment.