> [T]he NSA doesn't need a warrant for foreign targets.

That is correct. IIRC, FISA made that the law of the land since like the 1970s. However, Congress felt the need to provide retroactive immunity to the telcos who assisted in the FISA-violating wiretaps that the NSA demanded of them around the turn of the century. See Title II on printed page 32 of this [0] for more information, and check out newspaper coverage about the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008" around July, 2008.

This grant of retroactive immunity was particularly outrageous because it mooted in-progress civil suits against those telcos, which is not something that's supposed to be done at scale... especially for civil liberties violations.

That's a really odd thing to do if no law was violated, don't you think?

[0] <https://web.archive.org/web/20101207052813/http://frwebgate....>, found via following the chain of [1] -> [2] (because THOMAS is down today) -> [3]

[1] the July 9th, 2008 entry here: <https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline>

[2] <https://web.archive.org/web/20101209001911/http://thomas.loc...>

[3] The PDF here of version 4 of the bill, because archive.org doesn't have the text version archived. <https://web.archive.org/web/20101207012221/http://thomas.loc...>