There's so much information online on why and how FISA is bad, this is honestly hard to take as a serious question asked in good faith. But assuming that it is, start with the Wikipedia article for FISA and go from there; it has plenty food for thought, and links to more.

This the only relevant paragraph under the criticism section of the wiki page:

> The ACLU considers the FISA Act to be unconstitutional for several reasons including: the law was designed to mainly address terrorism threats, but in fact intercepts communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind; and that "the government can create huge databases that contain information about U.S. persons obtained without warrants and then search these databases at a later point."

As I understand, these databases are only created if the other party is foreign, is that not the case?

I asked in earnest but you made this about my intent instead of articulating your views. My conclusion so far is that the HN crowd is jumping on the bandwagon and can't take any critique of the popular sentiment.

I have much critique of the patriot act and other provisions but FISA itself has been around since 1978 apparently. I was merely trying to figure out what specifically were the opposing views because in general, foreign surveillance is not optional.

This is not just about FISA but about all the amendments that have been tacked onto it since then. The criticism of those amendments is covered in the corresponding section in the Wikipedia article.

All this stuff has been around for literally decades at this point, and at some point people just get tired rehashing the same old stuff to every new person coming in and asking, "what's wrong with that?".