Congress passes FISA Amendments Act, creating Section 702 authority and granting telecoms retroactive immunity

President Bush signed the FISA Amendments Act on July 10, 2008, making permanent what the Protect America Act had temporarily authorized. Section 702 allowed the NSA to collect communications of foreign targets overseas without individual FISC warrants — but because communications travel through U.S. infrastructure, millions of Americans' communications were swept in as "incidental" collection. The law also granted retroactive immunity to AT&T, Verizon, and other telecoms for cooperating with Bush's illegal Stellar Wind program, eliminating dozens of pending lawsuits.