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Spy Bill Destroys 4th Amendment

AFP
June 20, 2008

In a late-term triumph for US President George W. Bush, the US House of Representatives on Friday approved spy-powers legislation that has drawn heavy fire on civil liberties grounds.

Lawmakers voted 293-129 for a bill that may shield telecommunications firms facing massive lawsuits over their work with Bush’s secret, six-year, warrantless wiretapping program, begun after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The measure now goes to the Senate, where Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid has opposed granting retroactive immunity to companies that cooperated with a program thought to have skirted established surveillance laws.

During often bitter House floor debate, many Democrats broke with the measure, the fruit of months of talks among Senate and House leaders of both parties that ultimately gave in to key White House demands.

“It’s Christmas morning at the White House thanks to this vote,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a top official with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which has fiercely opposed the legislation.

Earlier, Bush had used a hastily announced public statement at the White House to press lawmakers to approve new funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and pushed hard for House passage of the intelligence bill.

“It’s vital that our intelligence community has the ability to learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning,” Bush said in the two-minute statement.

The spending bill would provide 162 billion dollars for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuelling both for months after Bush’s successor takes over in January, without attaching a withdrawal timetable sought by Iraq war opponents.

But the bitterest feuding was over the intelligence bill, which came amid a pitched political battle raging over Bush’s decision to secretly launch a warrantless wiretapping program believed to have skirted surveillance law.

Critics charge the secret program was illegal because it ran afoul of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)’s requirement of a court order to spy on US citizens inside the United States.

The White House says Bush, who brought the program under FISA oversight in January 2007, made proper use of wartime presidential powers under the US Constitution, and that the often-updated law was ill-suited to deal with modern telecommunications and the nature of the terrorist threat.

If passed, the new measure could short-circuit about 40 court challenges targeting major US telecommunications firms that cooperated with the program, which the US public learned about in a December 2005 New York Times article.

Feingold, Dodd planning filibuster of wiretap bill

Raw Story
June 24, 2008

In a last-ditch attempt to fix a surveillance bill critics say would essentially legalize President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) have promised to filibuster the bill as long as it offers telecommunications companies retroactive immunity.

“This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans,” the senators said in a joint statement Tuesday.

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