This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, February 1st, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Bush and his agents are beating the drum for broader authority to conduct surveillance without judicial oversight.

They want a renewed Protect America Act.

But the scenarios of American counter-terrorism operating without these expanded powers?

Just how realistic are they?

Tim Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, says the rush to expand federal authority

in this arena is considerably overblown. This week Attorney General McCasey testified before Congress,

quote, the clock is ticking on critical national security authorities, the Protect America Act, which gave the government new authorities to conduct surveillance of foreign intelligence targets overseas will soon sunset.

I urge you to pass legislation ensuring that our

intelligence community retains the tools it needs to protect the country. It must be

legislation that enables our intelligence professionals to surveil targets overseas without

individual court orders and it must provide retroactive liability protection

for companies who are believed to have helped our country in the wake of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan bill is not perfect, but it is a fundamentally

sound proposal that would put critical surveillance authorities on a long-term

institutional footing and would help ensure that we continue to obtain

assistance from third parties that is vital to our national security efforts. I hope Congress will

act quickly to pass the legislation. Our nation needs to modernize our national

security surveillance laws. First of all, what is the Protect America Act and why is Mukasey pushing so hard to make sure

that its provisions do not sunset?

Well, the Protect America Act is legislation that Congress passed last August in kind of a big

...