WASHINGTON ( CNN ) -- President Bush signed a controversial bill Sunday that temporarily revises federal electronic surveillance laws . `` This law gives our intelligence professionals this greater flexibility while closing a dangerous gap in our intelligence-gathering activities that threatened to weaken our defenses , '' Bush said in a written statement issued by the White House . The new law gives the attorney general or the director of national intelligence the authority to approve surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas . The bill went through Congress over the weekend after heavy pressure from the Bush administration , which demanded that lawmakers remain in session until it passed . Congress responded by approving the revisions for six months . The measure updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act , which governs electronic surveillance in intelligence cases . Watch how the House was pressured to pass the bill » . `` Over the past three decades , this law has not kept pace with revolutionary changes in technology , '' Bush said . `` As a result , our intelligence professionals have told us that they are missing significant intelligence information that they need to protect the country . '' Bush sought changes to FISA after a classified ruling by a court set up under the law to hear wiretap requests . That ruling concluded that FISA required a warrant for eavesdropping on communications between people overseas because so many phone calls and e-mails are sent through U.S. switching centers , U.S. officials said . The administration initially proposed to give the authority only to the attorney general , but agreed to add the director of national intelligence after Democrats objected to putting more power into the hands of embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales . Top Democratic and Republican senators have accused Gonzales of giving misleading testimony to Congress about a U.S. no-warrant eavesdropping program , the existence of which Bush acknowledged in 2005 . Critics say the program -- which included the monitoring of communications into and out of the United States by people suspected of having links to the al Qaeda terrorist network -- violated FISA . FISA was passed in 1978 after Watergate-era abuses by intelligence and law enforcement agencies that were wiretapping within the country . Early this year , the Bush administration agreed to submit the program to the FISA court . Bush insists the program protects the civil liberties of Americans . But Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union objected to provisions in the GOP-backed bill that grant the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the authority to approve all wiretaps -- even if one party is in the United States -- with minimal court oversight . Bush said Congress will need to pass a more comprehensive reform bill when it reconvenes in September after its August recess . Congress will be called to address what Bush called `` meaningful liability protection '' for those who took part in the eavesdropping program . The ACLU says the administration 's proposals would effectively `` gut '' FISA . And Rep. Rahm Emanuel , the third most powerful Democrat in the House , said lawmakers `` are not going to leave Alberto Gonzales as the gatekeeper on American civil liberties . '' `` That 's the fundamental problem , and we 're going to fix it when we come back , '' Emanuel told reporters Sunday . `` We had to do it . We did what we needed to do . The Democrats are united in fixing this flawed law . '' E-mail to a friend .
New law gives AG right to OK surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas . The director of national intelligence will also have this authority . Comment: Critics say the new law makes it possible to abuse Americans ' civil liberties .