A judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court issued orders authorizing the Government to target for collection international communications into or out of the United States where there is probable cause to believe that one of the communicants is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization.

This is an interesting development. The scope of this wording is much more narrow than the "seven degrees of Kevin Bacon" way that the program was initially framed by NSA spokespersons, and its not clear if any of that is carefully calculated or just bad wording. It will probably put an end to the court cases. The Administration is basically conceeding that they have to obey FISA, or at least that they are going to for now. One wonders if the whole debate wasn't an election year ploy that failed miserably. There are still a lot of very good reasons to worry that the administration is going too far in terms of who it is watching and whether the oversight now afforded is meaningful. However, this means we aren't going to see Congress pass another law which unwinds civil liberties in this country, and thats positive. On the whole I'd say this is a civil liberties win. The civil libertarians aren't trying to stop the surveillance program. They are concerned about the system of checks and balances. It appears they are not being undermined. One hopes the FISA court isn't as much of a kangaroo as many people suspect.