Senate endorses retroactive FISA immunity for warrantless wiretapping
The Democratic-controlled Senate handed President Bush a major political victory on Wednesday by voting to derail lawsuits against telecommunications companies that unlawfully opened their networks to the National Security Agency.
Senators voted 69 to 28 for the bill, which would rewrite federal wiretap laws by granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies as long as the government claims the request was "lawful" and authorized by the president.
Wednesday's vote followed a last-minute effort by liberal and libertarian activists to convince enough Democrats to kill or modify the bill. DailyKos called the bill "a pardon to Bush"; some activists created a Wiki to hone their message; a Salon columnist dubbed the bill a "coverup of surveillance crimes."
Many of those efforts were aimed at Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, who told us half a year ago that he would definitely not support retroactive immunity. That was then. Now he does--and he voted for the final bill on Wednesday.
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted against it. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, wasn't present for the vote but has repeatedly stressed his support for the measure (including in our voters' guide published earlier this year).
Earlier, by a 32-66 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have removed the portion of the legislation offering retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that engaged in illegal activities. The U.S. House of Representatives already approved the underlying legislation last month.
Opponents of the bill said it would allow Bush to cover up illegal warrantless wiretapping. "If Congress short-circuits these lawsuits, we will have lost a prime opportunity to finally achieve accountability for these years of law-breaking," said Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "That's why the administration has been fighting so hard for this immunity."
It's not yet clear what this means for the lawsuits against telecommunications companies, including one that the Electronic Frontier Foundation brought against AT&T that is currently before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Under Sec. 802 of the Senate bill, which amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, no lawsuit may proceed against any "electronic communication service provider" if either one of two conditions is met.
The first is that the company provided assistance "in connection with an intelligence activity" authorized by the president between September 11, 2001 and January 17, 2007, when the wiretap program was altered to include more judicial oversight. The second condition involves a company that received a "written request" from the U.S. Justice Department saying the activity was lawful and authorized by the president. (AT&T has suggested once, and twice, that such a paper trail exists.)
Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff attorney, says his group will continue to pursue its lawsuit. "We'll be challenging the constitutionality of this law," he said. "We think it unconstitutionally violates separation of powers and due process... We are going to be challenging this immunity as unconstitutional."
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
Obama no more. He won't be president. I will double down on this and make sure Ron Paul is the next president.
Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you!
"Let us look at things this way. When the US Constitution was enacted there were not folks around who would not think twice in flying planes into buildings occupied by working citizens form 80 countries around the world. Times change; and, so should the laws of a country in order to protect the lives of its citizens. Duh!"
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Please tell me you're kidding. Are you trying to insinuate that terrorism is a new 21st century concept, or are you pointing out the fact that there were no planes in 1776? This is bad, wrong and plainly unconstitutional and I too am pissed that Obama voted for it. I'm concerned because it passed to begin with, despite being obviously unconstitutional (point out where in the Constitution you can enact retroactive immunity for breaking Constitutional laws like this). You have apparently been blinded by the smokescreen of BS spread about like butter from our traitorous fuhrer bushit, ready to pick up where the nazi's left off. Do you realize that?
I expect that future-historians will assert that the United States of America truly CEASED to exist as a legitimate-entity on July-09-2008.
Since, the Government of the United States no longer functions under the Law, the Will of the People, or, the U.S. Constitution... It simply no longer has any legitimate claim to any authority over the American People, what-so-ever.
Which, of course, doesnt immediately mean much in the face of constant video-surveillance, preemptive Police check-points, national BIOMETRIC IDs, torturing suspects, being able to declare Americans to be "enemy combatants" (that automatically lose all of their human, and legal, rights), and now... completely warrantless spying on Americans... not to mention, the fairly-obvious, coming, economic-collapse (due to corruption, greed, and incompetence).
Id point-out that the next inevitable step will be a series of fundamental societal-failures and increasingly-violent, government, reprisals against citizens (most likely followed by an all-out Civil-War)... but "HR1955" (an other recent Federal-law) actually makes pointing-out that (historically-inevitable) reality, a FEDERAL-CRIME (something which you can only, apparently, get away with, if you are a major corporate-interest, AND, are helping Federal-TRAITORS violate the United States Constitution).
Of course, I DO expect this will be appealed (all the way to the Supreme Court). And, since retroactively legalizing such criminal-actions is, itself, a direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution... this WILL, eventually, be overturned... But... How devastating are the intervening years going to be..?
First, the President was NOT, originally, put in office by the voters (Or, did you forget that he was, actually, snuck into the Whitehouse, through the back-door, after some of the worst election-irregularities in American-history. And, that, he was actually installed as President by a series of Judiciary-decisions that overrode the actual "...will of the voters"). Furthermore, the second time around also demonstrated clear, and provable, election-manipulation.
Second, both the Senate, and the Congress WERE actually put in place (BY the voters), specifically, to put a halt to exactly this type of corruption. However, the actual result... was the complete-betrayal (of the American People) and complete-contrition (with the very criminals that had effectively seized control of the U.S. government)... once the "elections" were over.
Third, MOST Americans firmly have come to accept (very rightly, based upon the facts) that the political-process is, at best a joke. At worst, it has become an absolute SHAM.
So... silly platitudes about elections, voting, and democracy, being the answer... are an absolutely ridiculous-rejoinder in the face of the frighteningly-real political-problems, and fraud, tearing America apart (such as a government that is now operating ENTIRELY outside of the Law, and any external control, what-so-ever)... which IS, the very issue at hand.
So... Id say... its hardly, "...funny".
- by jamalystic July 10, 2008 7:37 AM PDT
- What do you expect from a congress that has got the lowest approval rating in history? The so call war on terror is almost stripping us of all our civil liberties and it could only get worst no matter the party in power: Warrantless Surveillance: The Worst Is Yet to Come(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=494&doc_id=143396&F_src=flftwo)
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