This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_019A_01C8E1D8.1AECEF20
Content-Type: text/plain;
format=flowed;
charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Senate commits to ****elding telecoms from suits
Jul 9 03:15 PM US/Eastern
By PAMELA HESS
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91QGU2G2&show_article=1
WA****NGTON (AP) - The Senate on Wednesday affirmed its intention to
protect from civil lawsuits telecom companies that helped the government
wiretap Americans without court authorization after the Sept. 11 attacks.
It turned back three amendments that were offered during final
debate
on a bill that overhauls the rules on secret government eavesdropping.
The votes suggest the surveillance bill will pass by an easy margin
later Wednesday, and signal an end to almost a year of wrangling between
the
House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, and Congress and the White
House over the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
The House approved the surveillance overhaul last month.
The long fight on Capitol Hill has centered on one question: whether
to ****eld from civil lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the
government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines after the 9/11
terrorist attacks, without the permission or knowledge of a secret court
created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The lawsuits allege that the White House and the companies violated
U.S. law by going around the FISA court to start the wiretaps. The court
was
created 30 years ago to prevent the government from abusing its
surveillance
powers for political purposes, as was done in the Vietnam War and
Watergate
eras. The court is meant to approve all wiretaps placed inside the U.S.
for
intelligence-gathering purposes. The law has been interpreted to include
international e-mail records stored on servers inside the U.S.
"This president broke the law," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.
The Bush administration brought the wiretapping back under the FISA
court's authority only after The New York Times revealed the existence of
the program. A handful of members of Congress knew about the program from
top secret briefings. Most members are still forbidden to know the details
of the classified program, and some object that they are being asked to
grant immunity to the telecoms without first knowing what they did.
The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized
companies like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., from wiretapping
lawsuits. About 40 such lawsuits have been filed. They are all pending
before a single federal district court.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., compared the senate vote on immunity to
buying a "pig in a poke."
Opponents to immunity argue that only in court will the full extent
of
the program be understood, and only a judge should decide whether the
program broke the law.
Just under a third of the Senate, including presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee Barack Obama, sup****ted an amendment proposed by Sen.
Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., that would have stripped immunity from the
bill.
It was defeated on a 32-66 vote. Presumptive Republican nominee John
McCain
did not vote.
Specter proposed an amendment to require a district court judge to
*****s the legality of warrantless wiretapping before granting immunity.
It
failed on a 37-61 vote.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., proposed that immunity be delayed until
after a yearlong government investigation into warrantless wiretapping is
completed. His amendment failed on a vote of 42-56.
The bill tries to address concerns about the warrantless wiretapping
program by requiring inspectors general inside the government to conduct a
yearlong investigation into the program.
The new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government
eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government
surveillance activities, and others loosen them compared with a law passed
30 years ago.
For example, it would require the government to get FISA court
approval before it eavesdrops on an American overseas. Currently, the
attorney general approves that category of electronic surveillance on his
own.
But the bill also would allow the government to obtain broad,
yearlong
intercept orders from the FISA court that target foreign groups and
people,
raising the prospect that communications with innocent Americans would be
swept up. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets,
and how the intercepted American communications are to be protected.
The original FISA law required the government to get wiretapping
warrants for each individual targeted from inside the United States, on
the
rationale that most communications inside the U.S. would involve Americans
whose civil liberties must be protected. But technology has changed.
Purely
foreign communications increasingly pass through U.S. wires and sit on
American computer servers, and the law required court orders be obtained
to
access those as well.
The bill would give the government a week to conduct a wiretap in an
emergency before it must apply for a court order. The original law only
allowed three days.
The bill restates that the FISA law is the only means by which
wiretapping for intelligence purposes can be conducted inside the United
States. This is meant to prevent a repeat of warrantless wiretapping by
future administrations.
The bill is very much a political compromise reached against a
deadline: Yearlong wiretapping orders authorized by Congress last year
will
begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go
back
to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders and potential delays to
continue those intercepts, something most of Congress did not want to see
happen, particularly in an election year.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
------=_NextPart_000_019A_01C8E1D8.1AECEF20
Content-Type: image/gif;
name="dot.gif"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Location: http://www.breitbart.com/images/common/dot.gif
R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
------=_NextPart_000_019A_01C8E1D8.1AECEF20--
|
