Senate bows to Bush and approves surveillance bill

Thursday 10th July, 07:10 AM JST

WASHINGTON —

Bowing to President George W Bush’s demands, the Senate sent the White House a bill Wednesday overhauling bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shielding telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president’s warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon.

Opponents assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens’ rights of privacy from government intrusion. But Bush said the legislation protects those rights as well as Americans’ security.

“This bill will help our intelligence professionals learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they’re saying and what they’re planing,” he said in a brief White House appearance after the Senate vote.

The long fight on Capitol Hill centered on one main question: whether to protect from civil lawsuits any telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines without the permission or knowledge of a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized companies such as AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc from wiretapping lawsuits. About 40 such lawsuits have been filed, and all are pending before a single U.S. District court.

Numerous lawmakers had spoken out strongly against the no-warrants eavesdropping on Americans, but the Senate voted its approval after rejecting amendments that would have watered down, delayed or stripped away the immunity provision.

The lawsuits center on allegations that the White House circumvented U.S. law by going around the FISA court, which 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 email records stored on servers inside the U.S.

“This president broke the law,” declared 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 secret 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 effort, and some objected that they were being asked to grant immunity to the telecoms without first knowing what they did.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen Arlen Specter compared the Senate vote to buying a “pig in a poke.”

But Sen Christopher Bond, R-Mo, one of the bill’s most vocal champions, said, “This is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our terror-fighters.”

Just under a third of the Senate, including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, supported an amendment that would have stripped immunity from the bill. They were defeated on a 66-32 vote. Republican rival John McCain did not attend the vote.

Obama ended up voting for the final bill, as did Specter. Feingold voted no.

The bill tries to address concerns about the legality of warrantless wiretapping by requiring inspectors general inside the government to conduct a yearlong investigation into the program.

The measure effectively dismisses about 40 lawsuits that have been bundled together. But at least three other lawsuits against government officials will go forward.

In one of those cases last week, a judge decided that surveillance laws trumped the government’s claim that state secrets were imperiled by the lawsuit. However, the judge said the plaintiff could not use classified government documents it had accidentally received to prove it was subjected to illegal eavesdropping. It must instead use unclassified information to show it was wiretapped without court approval. FISA makes provisions for the use of secret evidence once a case is accepted.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California civil rights organization, intends to challenge the constitutionality of the immunity provision.

Beyond immunity, the new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government surveillance activities, but others would 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 electronic surveillance on his own.

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 in. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets and how the intercepted American communications would 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 has required court orders to 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 said 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, brought about by a deadline: Wiretapping orders authorized 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. That is something most of Congress did not want to see happen, particularly in an election year.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is party to some of the lawsuits that will now be dismissed, said the bill was “a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy.”

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Latest 15 of 28 Total Comments Show All

skipthesong at 03:46 PM JST - 10th July

Does anyone have any data relative to other countries who basically do this but could careless if it against the people's desires?
RedMeatKoolAid at 04:39 PM JST - 10th July

Dem majority bows to Bush? But isn't Bush a lame duck? I'm sure that is what I have been reading for the last 2 years or so.
proxy at 05:01 PM JST - 10th July

Unbelievable! No wonder the approval rating for these clown is about 10%.
apecNetworks at 05:49 PM JST - 10th July

Though I harp on this somewhat, it may be irrelevant today as it was during the Red Scare:

US Bill of Rights

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Since it occurred before, they really should quit teaching it in public schools and/or to amend it to allow unwarranted searches and seizures.**
seaghyn at 06:42 PM JST - 10th July

well, I don't condone this really, but think about it. Eves-dropping happens all the time. Kids do it to their parents, and friends overhear friends conversations. So you say screw obama or screw bush, i'm gonna vanquish america. whether they hear it or not, you still have the freedom to say it. again, talking about the patriots as they play their sport. say you don't like the way so-and-so played, and bob overhears you at the bar. big deal. now if they start to barge into your homes with search warrents when you say screw america, then they're taking away the freedom to express or say what you think. that's where you need to be worrying about. while terrorism is huge, i'm certain the real reason for this bill deals with wanting to catch or overhear secrets on organizations, crime deals, what you and your wife did last night.....the list goes on ^_^. I say give 'em something to hear, if they're willing to spend our tax dollars and listen =)
RedMeatKoolAid at 09:26 PM JST - 10th July

"Obama ended up voting for the final bill..."

Obama is looking downright McSame.

He's pro-gun, he's pro-FISA, he's opposed to an immediate pullout from Iraq...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtm66Z3lebc
Sarge at 10:09 PM JST - 10th July

tkoind - "The only terrorists we really need to be deeply fearful of are the ones rendering our constitution obsolete with their Patriot Act ad Monitoring policies"

The thousands of people who lost their loved ones in the 9/11 attacks and in battles against terrorists around the world would disagree with you.
proxy at 10:32 PM JST - 10th July

Sarge, the new surveillance bill has nothing to do with stopping terrorists, its about killing the 40 lawsuits filed against the phone companies for breaking the law. As you well know, there was more than enough information to have stopped 911; the problem was not with data gathering but with data correlation. And the old FISA court system was working fine. The problem was that the law was broken, smashed, and to avoid getting sued into bankruptcy the phone companies used their cash and lobby power to pass this bill.
sageb1 at 12:27 AM JST - 11th July

actually the ping times changed, and some relays changed their port exposure to the Internet. there is more and more less and less 'presence' of certain relays as they become hardened against port attacks by not showing up on pings.

often a traceroute only show relays that respond, and in toughened intranets the path stops at the secured firewall.

and this has accelerated after 911.

IMHO the reason why servers are being toughened like that is not really to be immune from cyberterrorists, but to not show up on Big Brother's radar.

it's assumed that they exchange more encrypted traffic via the secured relay.

Big Brother can only analyze the plaintext traffic.
SuperLib at 03:11 AM JST - 11th July

I have just one question. Who is protecting us from our own government and their assault of out constitutional liberties?

Gosh, if only there were some kind of court which could review the actions of the government to decide if they're constitutional or not... Eh, oh well. Until we do finally develop some kind of oversight on the Executive Branch I guess we'll just have to live in a constant state of fear.
adaydream at 03:14 AM JST - 11th July

The government will continue to do what they want to do. This surveillance bill actually means very little.

If they really wanted to protect us with this surveillance stuff, the bush administration would have warned people of the high possibility that terrorist were planning to use planes as weapons. But the george bush administration kept their mouths shut.

This bill is to protect their asses and the telecommunications companies for past practices that were illegal when done. < :-)
DanManjt at 04:24 AM JST - 11th July

"I am confident that history will not judge this Senate kindly if it endorses this tragic retreat from the principles that have governed government conduct in this sensitive area for 30 years"

You tell 'em, Russ.
michael8wp at 07:12 AM JST - 11th July

Each branch of the US government is supposed watch the other two branches to ensure that all action is constitutional. The problem is, there are people in all three branches who share the same interests.
skipthesong at 10:34 AM JST - 11th July

No, the problem is that people aren't watching the government enough. Instead they have people following them like rock stars.
smithinjapan at 12:40 PM JST - 12th July

So Bush's ONLY 'accomplishment' in his entire term in office was to pass a bill to spy on his own citizens. Mission accomplished, and way to go!