FISA just passed the House

[Falkenhayn]

+http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25279676/

House passes new surveillance law
Compromise bill easily approved; shields telecoms from related lawsuits
The Associated Press
updated 1:37 p.m. ET, Fri., June. 20, 2008

WASHINGTON - The House Friday easily approved a compromise bill setting new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from the government's terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping on phone and computer lines in this country.

The bill, which was passed on a 293-129 vote, does more than just protect the telecoms. The update to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an attempt to balance privacy rights with the government's responsibility to protect the country against attack, taking into account changes in telecommunications technologies.

"This bill, though imperfect, protects both," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and a former member of the intelligence committee.

President Bush praised the bill Friday. "It will help our intelligence professionals learn enemies' plans for new attacks," he said in a statement before television cameras a few hours before the vote.

The House's passage of the FISA Amendment bill marks the beginning of the end to a monthslong standoff between Democrats and Republicans about the rules for government wiretapping inside the United States. The Senate was expected to pass the bill with a large margin, perhaps as soon as next week, before Congress takes a break during the week of the Fourth of July.

The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after the Sept. 11 attacks without permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the special panel established for that purpose under the 1978 law. Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against the telecommunications companies by groups and individuals who think the Bush administration illegally monitored their phone calls or e-mails.

The White House had threatened to veto any surveillance bill that did not also shield the companies.

The compromise bill directs a federal district court to review certifications from the attorney general saying the telecommunications companies received presidential orders telling them wiretaps were needed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. If the paperwork were deemed in order, the judge would dismiss the lawsuit.

It would also require the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

Critics of the bill say dismissal is a foregone conclusion.

"These provisions turn the judiciary into the administration's rubber stamp," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. She opposes the bill.

Opponents of immunity believe civil lawsuits are the only way the full extent of the wiretapping program will ever be revealed.

Key senators voiced strong opposition to the compromise, although they're unlikely to have the votes to either defeat or filibuster the bill. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned the immunity deal. He said that nothing in the new bill would prevent the government from once again wiretapping domestic phone and computer lines without court permission.

Specter said the problem is constitutional: The White House may still assert that the president's Article II powers as commander in chief supersede statutes that would limit him actions.

"Only the courts can decide that issue and this proposal dodges it," Specter said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California disputed that, saying FISA would from now on be the authority for the government to conduct electronic surveillance.

"There is no inherent authority of the president to do whatever he wants. This is a democracy, not a monarchy," she said.

Some civil liberties and privacy groups are also opposing the bill. They object not only to the immunity provision but to what they consider the weakening of the FISA court's oversight of government eavesdropping. For example, the government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if "important intelligence" would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it. But if the court objects to how the government is carrying out the wiretap, it could be weeks before those methods are changed or stopped.

"What we have here is the opportunity for the government to commit mass untargeted surveillance," said Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

Opponents also contend the privacy of Americans who communicate with people overseas is not adequately protected. The bill would allow the government to tap the foreigner's calls without court approval, and critics contend that innocent American conversations can be swept up in that.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment bill also would:
# Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.
# Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop on an American's calls or e-mails without court approval.
# Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.
# Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.
# Prohibit the government from invoking war powers or other authorities to supersede surveillance rules in the future.

[Alyrium Denryle]

YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! You have control of both fucking houses of congress, act like it! Why the fuck do you fold to wonderchimp, when you know god damn well that he will abuse any power you give him and flout any restrictions you place on him!?

This is not a fucking compromise. This is exactly what Bush wanted. Once again, congress folds.

[Surlethe]

Has the soon-to-be-legal wiretapping caught any terrorists? Averted any threat to the US? God knows it wouldn't have helped stop 9/11.

[Gandalf]

Could the Dems still be pandering to the right wing fear vote that helped Bush keep power?

Has the soon-to-be-legal wiretapping caught any terrorists? Averted any threat to the US? God knows it wouldn't have helped stop 9/11.

That's such a pre 11/9 mindset. There haven't been any attacks since then, so the wiretapping that's been going on must have been successful. Therefore, we must legalise these acts at once!

[The Original Nex]

Leahy, Feingold and Reid are against this bill. I doubt it will pass the Senate in the form it's in...but we shall see...this is a grand opportunity for Obama to take a principled stand in the Senate debates on the bill.

[Qwerty 42]

Leahy, Feingold and Reid are against this bill. I doubt it will pass the Senate in the form it's in...but we shall see...this is a grand opportunity for Obama to take a principled stand in the Senate debates on the bill.

Feingold could practically have a tape-recorder that just says "no," that's how likely it is that he concedes the issue. He's always been one of the more principled Senators.

[Xenophobe3691]

Isn't this ex-post-facto shit blatantly unconstitutional anyhow?!?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Isn't this ex-post-facto shit blatantly unconstitutional anyhow?!?

yes. But the constitution has not stopped anyone in our government lately

[The Duchess of Zeon]

YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! You have control of both fucking houses of congress, act like it! Why the fuck do you fold to wonderchimp, when you know god damn well that he will abuse any power you give him and flout any restrictions you place on him!?

This is not a fucking compromise. This is exactly what Bush wanted. Once again, congress folds.

The obvious answer is that it's what Congress wants, too. More power. They could no more not vote for it after their little grandstanding game than they would vote themselves a pay raise if it was still legal for them to do so, or they'd vote for the building's artwork maintenance budget to go to importing keggers filled with the most expensive brandy in the world for their cocktail parties.

[Vaporous]

And the cowards fold again.

[phongn]

Isn't this ex-post-facto shit blatantly unconstitutional anyhow?!?

Ex-post-facto usually refers to things working the other way around - that is, someone doing something legal and then being arrested at some future point when it became illegal. AFAICT, there's nothing restricting Congress from doing this.

[MKSheppard]

YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!

*plays cheery upbeat theme*

Somewhere in a parallel universe...

We've left Iraq, ended wiretapping, and released those poor misunderstood gitmo prisoners; thanks to the Democrat-led congress under the leadership of Pelosi and Reid!

[Elfdart]

I love the way the media whores describe this as a "compromise". Oh really? What did the Republitards give up in exchange for immunity for illegal wiretapping? Not a god damned thing. By this standard, when parents back in the old days used to make their kids bring them the switch or belt they used to whip them, it was a "compromise". And the mountain men in Deliverance "compromised" with Ned Beatty.

Some compromise when one side gets everything they wanted -and then some- while the other is left squealing like pigs with welts on their asses.

[NomAnor15]

Leahy, Feingold and Reid are against this bill. I doubt it will pass the Senate in the form it's in...but we shall see...this is a grand opportunity for Obama to take a principled stand in the Senate debates on the bill.

Feingold could practically have a tape-recorder that just says "no," that's how likely it is that he concedes the issue. He's always been one of the more principled Senators.

Seems to me that Feingold is one of the few Senators who have any principles anymore (I may be exaggerating a little, but not much).

[Medic]

I thought the obvious answer was that Democrats covet lobbyist money from the huge telecom giants just as much as Replublicans.

After all, Democrats are just as much a part of the military-industrial complex as Republicans -- least those with contracts that give constituents in their home-states jobs. I mean in spite of the developmental problems of the F-22 in the 90's it had (and I forget who I'm quoting but it isn't my words) "infinite [political] momentum" partly because it was sub-contracted to almost every state in the nation.

In as much as there was severe opposition to the F-22 program was mainly exhibited by the likes of Dick Gephart (democrat, somewhere in the south) who had in his state a major factory line that spit out F-15's. Guess what HE thought the nation should do with a very expensive replacement to the F-15?

scrub the program and build more F-15's of course

[Elfdart]

Good thing this sorry bunch wasn't in Congress during Watergate. Nixon's thugs would have been awarded amnesty, too.

A commenter over at Avedon Carol's website made a good point:

What's scary about the "compromise" is not just what it says specifically about the telecoms, but the precedence it sets. Suppose Bush authorizes Blackwater to go into someone's house, beat the crap out of them, and generally trash the place, it's perfectly OK because the President authorizes it and the JD says it's legal.

Remember, we're all supposed to follow orders from the government from now on -even if they are illegal. No, especially if they're illegal.

[LMSx]

So much shit from the Bush Administration would not have gone down if we'd had an aggressive minority party. If the ACLU and EFF lawsuits go through I have a hunch we'll discover that minority Democrat leaders never raised a fuss about the whole program.

Ergo, quash the lawsuits. Problem solved. And collect millions of votes in November, because would any person sane enough to realize what's happened also choose to protest vote with the Republicans? Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi find cover by whimpering about those mean evil Blue Dogs and how they were going to do something, Barack Obama finds cover by making a half-assed effort to strip immunity in the Senate, and we'll still cheer them on in January when they win more seats.

[Vympel]

And where's Obama in all this? Nowhere. Useless fucker.

Greenwald says it best, like usual:

It's either that he "chickened out" or -- as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders -- Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he'll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives -- and I don't know (or much care) what they are -- Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush's executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of "Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights." Note that the very first line of Obama's statement warns us that we face what he calls "grave threats," and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good.

[Gil Hamilton]

I imagine that Obama isn't involved in this as of yet because he's a member of the Senate, not the House. I don't believe this bill has hit the Senate yet.

[Vympel]

I imagine that Obama isn't involved in this as of yet because he's a member of the Senate, not the House. I don't believe this bill has hit the Senate yet.

He's endorsed the so-called "compromise". Worse, irrespective of his membership, he's pretty much the de facto leader of the party. He's not spoken up at all save to endorse it. Hopefully this shakes some of the Obama cultists out of their idolizing stupor and realize that he too is a calculating political operator and not the Messiah.

[Questor]

I imagine that Obama isn't involved in this as of yet because he's a member of the Senate, not the House. I don't believe this bill has hit the Senate yet.

He's endorsed the so-called "compromise". Worse, irrespective of his membership, he's pretty much the de facto leader of the party. He's not spoken up at all save to endorse it. Hopefully this shakes some of the Obama cultists out of their idolizing stupor and realize that he too is a calculating political operator and not the Messiah.

Of course he's a calculating political operator, who says he's not? And who says that that is necessarily a bad thing?

As long as he manages to be calculating in a way and for more causes I agree with, I'll support him. But he's on probation at this point.

[Vympel]

As long as he manages to be calculating in a way and for more causes I agree with, I'll support him. But he's on probation at this point.

This wiretapping thing is fundamentally un-American. It throws the whole concept of "probable cause" and "search and seizure" right out the window. Heck, the whole reason FISA was brought into existence in the 1970s was because of the vast illegality and excesses of the Nixon (and previous) administration, who had put illegal wiretaps on all sorts of people.

Seriously, if Obama isn't going to stand up for that, then fuck him.

[Qwerty 42]

if it weren't for the fact that McCain is also supporting this, it may have an impact on my vote. Lesser of two evils, and all that.

[Yogi]

He's endorsed the so-called "compromise". Worse, irrespective of his membership, he's pretty much the de facto leader of the party. He's not spoken up at all save to endorse it. Hopefully this shakes some of the Obama cultists out of their idolizing stupor and realize that he too is a calculating political operator and not the Messiah.

But . . but . . . but . . . Obama means CHAAAAAAAANGE!!!



In the interest of fairness, he says he'll try top striop out the telecom immunity part. Let's see who actually believes that.

[Glocksman]

One theory I read and that personally I'm beginning to believe is that the immunity provision isn't there to protect the Telecoms, but to protect the leaders in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

It's perfectly plausible that GWB notified the Democratic leadership of what he was doing at one point and they chose to remain silent.
If that is proven to be true, at best it's politically damaging to Pelosi, Reid, etc. and at worst it makes them accomplices.

By killing off these suits, they prevent any information coming out during the discovery process and thus protecting themselves.