WA****NGTON (CNN) -- A bipartisan deal that clears the way for a
sweeping overhaul of domestic wiretapping laws will let
telecommunications companies escape lawsuits over the Bush
administration's warrantless surveillance program, congressional
leaders announced Thursday.
A new bipartisan deal in Congress could allow telecom companies to
escape wiretap lawsuits.
The measure could be brought to the floor of the House of
Representatives as early as Friday.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said the bill is "not
perfect" but "strikes a sound balance" between intelligence-gathering
and court oversight.
Democrats have managed to kill previous efforts in Congress to revise
the Watergate-era law governing domestic spying.
Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said the bill would prevent administration officials from
conducting any new warrantless surveillance.
However, the plan drew immediate criticism from the American Civil
Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which said it
would effectively gut court oversight of domestic spying.
Caroline Fredrickson, the head of the ACLU's Wa****ngton legislative
office, said the bill "allows for mass and untargeted surveillance of
Americans' communications."
"The court review is mere window dressing," she said in a statement
condemning the deal. "All the court would look at is the procedures
for the yearlong dragnet and not at the who, what and why of the
spying."
Companies that cooperated with the post-September 11 surveillance
program now face federal lawsuits over their participation. Critics
say the program was illegal, and Republicans have pushed strongly for
protecting those companies.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence
Committee, said the intelligence community depends on "the backing of
patriotic private companies."
"Those businesses that cooperate are putting their shareholders and
employees at stake, and they deserve our sup****t, not
multibillion-dollar lawsuits," Hoekstra said. "This bill recognizes
that and provides an avenue for the liability question to be
answered."
The new proposal would protect telephone and Internet providers from
those lawsuits if a court finds that the government told the companies
that the president had authorized the surveillance and it was
"determined to be lawful."
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Gee THANKS congressional "liberals" ... thanks for siding with
the Gestapo types you spent so much time condemning, for helping
them to gut the constitution all nice and legal-like :-(
I think any pretense about "liberal" pols actually having the
slightest interest in anybodies "liberty" was just dropped like
a ton of lead bricks. It's just Totaliarian-Wannabes-Type-1 and
Totalitarian-Wannabes-Type-2 up there on the hill.
Hey, now that you've helped the Gestapo folks shred parts of
the constitution THEY found inconvenient, maybe they'll help
you shred parts YOU find inconvenient. What will be left ?
Probably not even the "We The People" part ... replaced with
"We The Power Elite" .....
Dontcha just love Big Brother ? Such a sweet guy. Always has
our best interests at heart. Minds our language, wipes our
*****, makes sure we don't run with sissors. The best !
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