We know that the Bush administration authorized the NSA to spy domestically against federal law. It's an open question how useful this really was (and is). Seems like they were using some of the technology from the "it didn't actually die" Total Information Awareness data mining/spying program that Congress had supposedly killed funding for in 2003. The more interesting question is why if the administration felt the need to go around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court to get permission to wiretap people, why did it not just attempt to change the rules of the court in light of what could most likely be viewed as new and different technology?