The judge also discounted the argument that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force granted the president the power to violate the surveillance act.

He said that the surveillance act "was written in 1978" and that now "it's a different world."

Mr. Specter said Sunday that he was still considering the question of whether a president might possess special powers under wartime that would have allowed Mr. Bush to circumvent the surveillance act.

Even after the overhaul of the surveillance act, the N.S.A.'s combination of secrecy, power and size continued to produce intrigue.

Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the eavesdropping violates the surveillance act, which when it was passed in 1978 created a special intelligence court to oversee domestic wiretapping.

This would appear contrary to the provisions of the surveillance act.

The administration's proposal would also provide legal immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency's surveillance program without warrants before it was brought under the surveillance act in January.

In an effort to control counterintelligence activities in the United States during the cold war, the surveillance act established a special court, known as the FISA court, with authority to issue wiretapping warrants.

The procedures under the surveillance act are streamlined, but nevertheless involve a number of bureaucratic steps.

More to the point, the surveillance act was designed for the intricate "spy versus spy" world of the cold war, where move and countermove could be counted in days and hours, rather than minutes and seconds.