News Blog

The U.S. Congress may soon vote on a new "compromise" spy law that would still likely derail pending suits against AT&T and other companies accused of opening their networks to the government in violation of wiretap law.

Democratic leaders, facing intense election year pressure from Republicans and more conservative "Blue Dog" members of their own party, had said they hoped to reach an agreement on a contentious rewrite of a 1978 electronic-surveillance law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, before their Memorial Day recess.

That self-imposed deadline passed without action. The major sticking point has been whether to grant so-called retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies facing lawsuits over allegations that they illegally assisted the National Security Agency, violating their customers' privacy.

The latest proposal, which Republicans are touting as a "compromise," would shift that debate behind closed doors, allowing a secret court to dismiss lawsuits related to the president's warrantless-wiretapping program--that is, during the period after the Sept. 11 attacks and before then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales agreed to submit the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program to the same secret court for review.

In order to dismiss the suits, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose 11 judges are appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court's chief justice, would be required only to consider whether the attorney general's "certification" requesting surveillance assistance from a communications company was terrorism-related and legally authorized by the president. That's according to a draft proposal and summary provided by Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.)'s office and discussed at a press conference last week.

"It's clear that they're giving (the provisions) nice titles, and Bond is suggesting that he's made a lot of concessions, but ultimately, the way the provisions work out is, the administration gets what it wants," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington office, said in a phone interview. "The immunity provision is garbage."

Critics--including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which have filed legal challenges against the surveillance activities--say that would amount to a rubber stamp of sorts on any past warrantless eavesdropping.

Aides to Democratic leaders told CNET News.com that their bosses are reviewing the proposal and haven't yet taken a position on it. But civil-liberties groups say they fear that, thanks to political pressure, they will ultimately accept much what they call a "sham" compromise.

The White House and Republicans, of course, have preferred all along to give more blanket "retroactive" immunity to telephone companies. Earlier this year, they appeared poised to get their way, when the U.S. Senate voted to approve a bill (PDF) that likely would have wiped out scores of pending legal challenges against the likes of AT&T and Verizon Communications.

But the House of Representatives ultimately objected to that approach and refused to call up that bill for a vote, opting instead to narrowly approve a version (PDF) lacking so-called "retroactive immunity" for phone and Internet companies accused of wrongdoing.

The "compromise" this time around appears to involve a couple of things: Outside parties challenging the government's warrantless surveillance would be allowed to submit briefs to the secret court. There would also be an arguably lower legal standard than in the already-approved Senate bill for when court would be allowed to review the attorney general's "certifications," though civil-liberties groups said it's unclear exactly how that will work in reality.

Under the revised proposal, the secret court would also have the option of sending a legal challenge back to a regular federal court, if it--and a subsequent secret appeals court--determines the case against a phone company should not be dismissed.

There's no guarantee, however, that such a move, if it even occurred, would not result in the federal court simply throwing out the case itself. After all, appeals courts have already dismissed similar suits on the grounds that state secrets would be revealed.

And throughout it all, a good amount of secrecy would be required under the revised bill. For instance, the secret court would be prohibited from disclosing how or why it reached a particular conclusion about whether to dismiss a case, if the attorney general declared that such revelations would harm "national security."

What remains unclear is what happens next. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he now hopes to call up a compromise bill for a vote sometime before Congress departs for its August recess. Hoyer has also said "differences" remain to be worked out among their versions, but it wasn't immediately clear what those differences are, as a Hoyer representative didn't immediately respond to requests for elaboration.

Democrats, meanwhile, insisted again that intelligence agents aren't hamstrung by the lack of legal changes so far.

"Our intelligence community has the tools it needs to keep America safe, and we are absolutely committed to ensuring that this remains the case," Hoyer said. "The Director of National Intelligence has not informed us of any degradation in intelligence collection, and we continue to call on him to inform Congress if this changes."

Republican politicians in the U.S. House of Representatives failed last month to persuade Democratic leaders to back a spy law rewrite that would immunize telecommunications companies that cooperated with allegedly illegal government spying. Now they're trying to force the issue.

On Wednesday, a number of Republican leaders, including Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.), began circulating what's known as a "discharge" petition, which they characterized as a "rare step." If they obtain 218 signatures from their colleagues, they say the Democratic leadership will be forced to schedule a vote on a version of the bill passed by the U.S. Senate in February that would likely wipe out pending lawsuits against AT&T and other phone companies accused of illegal cooperation with the National Security Agency.

"More than 66 days have passed since House Democrats allowed a key piece of terrorist surveillance legislation to expire--not because they had concerns with the bill, but because they were seemingly more concerned that not enough trial lawyers would be able to file enough expensive and frivolous lawsuits against U.S. telecom firms," Republican whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in a statement.

Blunt was referring to the House's decision to let a temporary expansion of the spy law known as the Protect America Act, which Congress passed hurriedly last summer, lapse. The House did, however, go on to narrowly approve a rewrite of electronic surveillance law last month that lacked controversial legal protections for telecommunications companies that cooperated with allegedly illegal government spying.

Since then, the proposed revamp of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) hasn't gone anywhere, and the political back-and-forth has died down somewhat. Meanwhile, President Bush has threatened repeatedly to veto any measure without so-called "retroactive immunity" for phone companies. In the past, Republicans have argued that if the House Democrats called up their preferred bill, it would easily pass.

A spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) dismissed the Republicans' petition as a "purely political move" and urged members not to sign it.

"Discussions on FISA are ongoing, and we hope to reach a compromise before Memorial Day," she told CNET News.com.

At a wide-ranging House hearing on Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller again urged passage of a bill that includes immunity for phone companies, arguing that "uncertainty" among the carriers "affects our ability to get info as fast and as quickly as we would want." He admitted, however, that he was not aware of any wiretap requests being denied because of Congress' inaction.

After convening its first "secret" session in 25 years, the U.S. House of Representatives is preparing anew to vote Friday on a contentious rewrite of electronic surveillance law.

Democratic leaders had originally thought they might get to a vote on the bill late Thursday, but a last-minute request from Republican leaders for a closed session of the House delayed those plans. Congress is scheduled to go into a two-week recess after its Friday vote.

In a closed session--only six of which have been held since 1825--only those politicians who swear to an oath of secrecy are allowed onto the House floor. In this case, Republican whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) called for the extraordinary step in order to let a broader swath of politicians hear classified intelligence information he asserted was key to deciding which way to vote. (Normally, only certain members of the intelligence committee are privy to such information.)

The bill they're preparing to consider, an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), is opposed by the Bush administration, Republicans, and some conservative Democrats in large part because it would not grant retroactive immunity to telephone companies sued on allegations of unlawfully opening their networks to the National Security Agency. Democrats contend there's no evidence, classified or otherwise, that such legal protections are necessary.

After the session ended around midnight, both sides appeared as galvanized in their positions as ever.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he heard nothing new that would dissuade him from urging the House to support the bill that Democrats have drafted. Blunt, for his part, said the "constructive session" offered "powerful reasons" why the House should instead support a U.S. Senate version, favored by President Bush, which does supply retroactive immunity.

An hour of debate was scheduled to begin late Friday morning, with votes expected to wrap up during the early afternoon. Even if the Democrats succeed in getting their bill passed, however, the legislation would have to be reconciled with the Senate's version. President Bush has promised to veto anything lacking retroactive immunity.

Before Congress departs for its spring recess at week's end, the U.S. House of Representatives is trying to squeeze in a vote on what's shaping up as one of the most contentious bills this year.

That proposal, of course, is a Democratic bill that would make a number of changes to electronic surveillance law--but, much to the Bush administration's chagrin, would not grant retroactive immunity to telephone companies embroiled in some 40 lawsuits accusing them of unlawfully opening their networks to National Security Agency spies. In that regard, it's starkly different from the U.S. Senate version of the bill, which the White House supports.

For all of you following the debate at home, here's a copy of the 120-page text (PDF).

The House could consider it later on Thursday (right now, they're in the throes of federal budget debate) or on Friday. (If all else fails, the House is scheduled to be back in town on March 31.) The House Rules Committee has provided for an hour of debate, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and no new amendments will be permitted.

Beyond the much-publicized lack of retroactive immunity, the new House bill and the approved Senate bill actually share some of the same language. For example, they both require an individualized court order for wiretapping conversations of Americans who are believed to be outside the country but represent foreign powers or terrorist groups.

But the House bill would also:

• Force the attorney general and intelligence officials to get the secret FISA court to sign off on its eavesdropping procedures before wiretaps begin. The Senate bill would allow them to wait up to five days after surveillance has begun before submitting those plans. (In emergency situations, the House bill allows the government a seven-day cushion before submitting those plans.)

•: Call for extra reviews of the president's warrantless wiretapping program. The inspectors general of the Justice Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency would have to report on how the once-secret, once-warrantless program operated. The bill would also create a "Commission on Warrantless Electronic Surveillance Activities," composed of nine congressionally appointed members, to conduct its own examination.

• Require courts hearing lawsuits alleging unlawful spying to consider all information, even if it has been alleged to expose "state secrets." The bill says courts "shall" review such briefings and arguments--taking any necessary steps to protect classified information--to determine whether telecommunications companies complied lawfully with eavesdropping requests.

Whether it'll become law is far from certain. President Bush on Thursday warned again that the bill is "unwise" and would surely get his veto.

Update at 2:44 p.m. PDT: There's a new twist in the FISA schedule. Upon request from Republican Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has agreed to convene a rare "secret" session, in which politicians meet behind closed doors on the House floor to debate the bill. (Republican leaders apparently requested the procedural move because they believe there are elements of the proposal that shouldn't be discussed in public.) A Hoyer aide said the hour-long session will likely begin around 8:30 p.m. EDT. As of press time, no final decision had been made on whether the bill vote will occur after the Thursday night meeting or on Friday.

Classified documents and testimony about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program show that it's not necessary to grant retroactive immunity to telephone companies accused of unlawfully opening their networks to government spies, key congressional Democrats said on Wednesday.

In a five-page statement (PDF), U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and 18 Democrats on that panel contended the Bush administration has "not established a valid and credible case justifying the extraordinary action of Congress enacting blanket retroactive immunity."

Skepticism about the Bush administration's once-secret eavesdropping program is nothing new for the Democrats who signed onto the statement. The key difference here is that they say their latest conclusions are based on a series of classified reports and briefings to which many of them only recently had access.

"Our review of classified documents has reinforced serious concerns about the potential illegality of the administration's actions in authorizing and carrying out its warrantless surveillance program," they wrote.

The report's release comes on the eve of expected debate on a new Democratic spy law revamp, co-sponsored by Conyers, that does not grant retroactive immunity. The House has been facing intense pressure from the Bush administration to enact, without changes, a Senate bill that does offer such immunity and greatly expands the executive branch's power to sign off on surveillance of persons "reasonably believed to be outside the United States" without a warrant.

The House Democrats' latest report reveals several reasons that they have concluded retroactive immunity is not appropriate.

One is that telecommunications carriers approached by the government took "variable actions" in response. It's not exactly clear what that means, as the report's authors said they weren't at liberty to unveil classified details, but apparently the companies engaged in "a variety of actions at various times with differing justifications."

The Democrats also found there was no "one simple, straightforward legal rule" that the carriers and the administration followed in the midst of the wiretapping requests. Analysis about whether the various legal justifications jibe with federal law--and whether consumer privacy violations raised by pending lawsuits did, in fact, occur--are best settled by courts, not members of Congress, they wrote.

Furthermore, the Democrats said they hadn't seen any evidence that the carriers' reputations or financial viability would endure damage if the lawsuits were allowed to proceed. In fact, carriers might be "best served" if allowed a chance at clearing their names in court, they added.

The new Democratic bill proposes setting up a procedure in which a judge could review otherwise classified evidence that might help telephone companies prove they deserve to be let off the hook for alleged missteps. That proposal is designed to address one of the major potential roadblocks in the some 40 suits pending related to the government's warrantless wiretapping regime: the Bush administration's stance that "state secrets" could be exposed if such evidence is used.

Given the Bush administration's unwavering stance on retroactive immunity so far, it seems unlikely that a new report based on information culled from the executive branch will produce an immediate turnaround. Republican leaders and the White House have already proclaimed it "dead on arrival," and intelligence officials have said it doesn't give them the tools they need. Still, it may help the Democrats to apply political pressure and drum up enough votes to pass an immunity-free bill, even if a veto threat looms.

Congressional Democrats on Tuesday dug in on their refusal to pass a revamped surveillance law that could wipe out some 40 lawsuits accusing telephone companies of illegal cooperation with government spies.

According to summary documents provided by U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office, Democratic leaders are preparing to debate yet another new bill that would not offer so-called "retroactive immunity" to companies that allegedly opened up their networks to the National Security Agency without a court order. At least in theory, that means cases like the one the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed against AT&T should be able to proceed.

In addition, the new proposal would allow the judge presiding over such cases to review otherwise classified evidence about the extent of government wiretapping. The Bush administration has argued such documents cannot be used in litigation because "state secrets" may be revealed.

The new bill's full text was not made available at press time, but it is expected to go to a floor vote as early as Thursday. Its passage, however, is hardly a sure thing, as it's already drawing attacks from Republican politicians and the president.

It's the latest chapter in an ongoing tussle over "modernizing" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA for short, which governs eavesdropping of foreign-related communications when U.S. persons are involved in the conversations. There's agreement among both political parties that certain legal changes are needed to make it easier for intelligence agents to snoop on foreign communications without a warrant. But there's sharp disagreement over how much power to give the attorney general in authorizing surveillance without court approval--and whether to shield corporations who may have helped the Feds to conduct allegedly law-breaking surveillance.

The new House bill would also do things like require an individualized warrant for targeting Americans abroad and establish a "National Commission on Warrantless Surveillance" to investigate and report on the administration's wiretapping activities, according to the summary documents.

And it does grant some degree of immunity to companies that respond to lawful requests from the government for aid, as federal wiretap law always has. Companies who provide "lawful assistance" would be shielded from lawsuits going forward, assuming the bill is passed, according to the majority leader's summary documents.

The new House proposal is not nearly as expansive as a White House-supported bill passed by a U.S. Senate majority last month. The new House version arrives after that chamber refused to take up the Senate version, vowing instead to draft a "compromise."

The battle has been mostly, but not entirely, split along party lines--some more conservative Democrats have promised to reject a bill that does not contain retroactive immunity. Both President Bush's press secretary and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, proclaimed the latest measure "dead on arrival" and accused the Democratic leaders of playing politics.

In a joint statement, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said they were "concerned that the proposal would not provide the intelligence community the critical tools needed to protect the country."

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sylvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the Democratic committee chairman leading the FISA rewrite process, retorted: "The American people expect government officials to wrestle with these difficult issues and reach common sense solutions that protect Americans from terrorism and preserve our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the president's advisers seem more inclined to issue 'my way or the highway' press releases concerning a bill the Administration hasn't even read."

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.V.), who has been leading the Senate's FISA rewrite, said on Tuesday that "considerable work" is still needed on the House bill but voiced confidence that the two chambers could work out a deal.

The FISA fight is all about the e-mails, according to public comments made on Tuesday by a Department of Justice official.

For months, the debate has centered around immunity for telecom companies including AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. The primary focus has been on the warrantless wiretapping of the phone calls made by millions of Americans. In comments made at a public meeting on Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein made clear that the FISA fight is not about foreign-to-foreign calls, but actually about Internet data. The Washington Post reports:

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

What this means, of course, is that while the public outcry has been focused on AT&T, it should have included a few other firms, including perhaps Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.

If the NSA is interested in getting email messages, it can do so in one of two ways. First, it can tap the Internet backbone, through which almost all communications flow. Second, it can go directly to the major email providers.

The Backbone Providers

According to the relevant Wikipedia page, the Internet backbone (commonly understood to mean the collection of Tier 1 internet Service Providers) is made up of: AOL Transit Data Network, AT&T, Global Crossing, Verizon Business (formerly UUNET), NTT Communications, Qwest, SAVVIS, and Sprint.

From numerous press reports, we already know that AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are involved in the shady NSA wiretapping program. Furthermore, we also know that Qwest refused to participate as the government would not provide a FISA warrant.

That leaves AOL, Global Crossing, NTT Communications, and SAVVIS as other potential participants in any NSA effort to sniff email communications.

The Email Providers

With www.alqaeda.com, www.alqaeda.net and www.alqaeda.org owned by domain squatters, where should a would-be terrorist go for email? Microsoft's Hotmail of course.

In all seriousness, no terrorist worth his or her salt would advertise themselves by using a domain name related to their cause, and so it is far more likely that they would want to blend into the crowd of the hundreds of millions of other users the major free email providers -- Yahoo, Microsoft Hotmail, and Google Mail.

The Protect America Act of 2007 permitted intelligence agencies to force Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to hand over a copy of every email passing through their systems which lists one non-US recipient. While the law expired in February, any orders initiated under the act can continue until August of this year.

It is unclear what the major email providers could have been forced to do before the Protect America Act. However, if email communications are the most important issue in the telecom immunity debate, we should certainly be looking carefully at these and other email providers. As other bloggers have previously discussed, the proposed legislation would provide immunity for all companies that assisted the administration in its illegal spying, not just AT&T and the other 2 telcos.

Public Comment and Denial

I made an effort to get a comment from a few of the major free email provider. However, I didn't bother with the backbone providers -- as I assumed I'd get the same "we respect privacy and will respond to lawful requests" line that is common in the industry.

Microsoft's PR people were nice enough to let me know that the company has over 300 million active email accounts. When asked how many of those accounts the company had turned over to US intelligence agencies, the company declined to comment.

Google was a bit more verbose. Its spokeperson told me that: "As our privacy policy states, we comply with law enforcement requests made with proper service. We do not discuss specific law enforcement requests and generally do not share aggregate information about them. There are also some legal restrictions on what information we can share about law enforcement requests.

As Wired's Ryan Singel has often noted, Google could easily tell us how many divorce lawyers, copyright holders and law enforcement agencies are probing people's search histories and emails. The company chooses not to, primarily because doing so would shed light on how much information the company has, and how often it is forced to share it with third parties.

One thing is clear: With the proposed immunity bill looking like it will pass this week, members of the media and the privacy community should pay close attention to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the major operators of the Internet backbone. The immunity provisions will just as equally apply to them -- and up until now, they've received almost no scrutiny at all.

WASHINGTON--As Congress debates whether to wipe out lawsuits accusing telephone companies of allegedly illegal wiretaps, the Bush administration has argued such cooperation is key to keeping Americans safe from terrorists.

Robert Mueller

(Credit: FBI )

FBI Director Robert Mueller continued that push on Wednesday, but he wouldn't go so far as to say those "private partners" would stop installing requested wiretaps unless certain legal protection is granted.

To some extent, Mueller is stating the obvious: Federal law requires telephone and Internet companies to comply with lawful wiretap court orders or lawful certifications from the attorney general, with stiff penalties for noncompliance. But Mueller said in various ways that he was concerned that lack of retroactive liability protection would harm the government's "relationships" with telephone companies -- which seems to leave in doubt whether all of the administration's requests were legal.

The seemingly reluctant admission came during pointed questioning by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Specter, the committee's ranking member, has proposed an amendment--which has so far been unsuccessful--to a controversial spy law update that would allow lawsuits alleging illegal spying by telephone companies to continue, except with government lawyers substituted in the companies' place.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said he disagreed with that approach, arguing it would provide a "disincentive" for communications companies to team up with federal terrorism investigations.

Then the following exchange ensued:

Specter: A disincentive, OK, but do you think they would stop?
Mueller: I think it is a disincentive...
Specter: But do you think they would stop?
Mueller: I think it would hamper our relationships, yes.... I do think it would hinder our relationships.
Specter: Disincentive, hamper, hinder, but I don't hear you say it would stop....
Mueller: I'm not going to say it's going to stop, but I do believe delay is detrimental to the safety of the country. Delay and lack of clarity, lack of simplicity guiding our relationships inhibits our ability to get the information we need on a daily basis.

The Senate has already passed a bill that would provide so-called retroactive immunity to telephone companies that have been the subject of lawsuits filed between the September 11 attacks and a January 2007 date when the attorney general submitted a once-secret National Security Agency surveillance program for court review. The bill would also provide such immunity going forward and wipe out state-level investigations of possible improprieties.

The House of Representatives refused to take up that bill before a temporary spy law expansion expired February 16 but is reportedly working on a compromise that it originally hoped to bring to a vote this week. At issue is broader modernization of a 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which requires government agents to obtain a court order before gathering intelligence information from conversations that may include U.S. persons.

Later on Wednesday, however, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said a bill won't be on the floor Thursday as predicted, according to a transcript of a briefing for reporters. He said further decisions about how to proceed won't likely be made until late this week or early next week.

"We have said all along, and we continue to believe, that the existing FISA statute authorizes the intelligence community to seek such authority as it needs to act to intercept such communications as it believes are relevant and gives to the telecommunications company the appropriate protections that it needs, so that we believe that the existing law will allow the administration to accomplish what it needs to do," Hoyer said. "However, we do believe that the existing law ought to be modernized, and we are working on that."

Mueller urged passage of the Senate bill with the immunity provisions. By way of defending that suggestion, he said he's not aware of any instance when telecommunications companies have "acted irresponsibly" and that, furthermore, "they are most knowledgeable about the information kept in their databases and how to utilize the software they have developed themselves in order to be responsive."

"We need the active participation of telecommunications carriers more than we have in the past because of the advent of various means of communicating, whether it be cell phones or e-mails, in addition to the advent of regular telephones," the FBI director went on.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the Judiciary Committee's chairman, argued that the only time that federal authorities have found wiretaps cut off was owed to their own negligence. He said he was "astonished" by a Justice Department report issued earlier this year that revealed that telephone companies had shut off bureau-initiated wiretaps--including at least one related to suspected terrorists--because the agency had failed to pay $66,000 in bills.

"This is yet another example of the kind of incompetence that plagued the administration's actions in the aftermath of Katrina," Leahy said. "It is unacceptable."

Mueller said the bureau has since put in place "mechanisms to make sure all the bills are paid on time" and downplayed the effect of the wiretap lapses, which he said occurred in only two instances and lasted just a few days. The effect on those investigations, he said, was "minimal at best."

An ongoing political tussle over a controversial expansion of electronic surveillance law may be put to rest sometime this week.

Under pressure from the Bush administration, the U.S. House of Representatives may hold an up-or-down vote on whether to shield companies like AT&T and Verizon from lawsuits alleging illegal cooperation with government spy agencies.

The debate, of course, surrounds attempts to "modernize" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which requires a warrant when foreign intelligence is being collected and at least one end of the communications is located in the United States.

There's general agreement among Democrats and Republicans that some updates are needed to keep the law consistent with changes in communications technologies. For instance, right now, some argue that it's technically necessary under FISA to get a warrant to spy on communications between foreigners--a requirement that wasn't intended by FISA's authors--just because the wires connecting their conversation happen to pass through the United States.

That leaves disagreement on two main fronts: how much power to give the attorney general and the president in signing off on surveillance without a court warrant, and whether to grant telephone companies legal immunity. The latter piece is by far the most contentious at this point.

But in recent days, Democratic leaders, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), have talked of plans to bring a "compromise" bill to a floor vote this week.

Numerous Democratic aides contacted by CNET News.com declined to elaborate on what exactly that middle ground would look like, saying no decisions have been made yet. But according to a recent Los Angeles Times report, there's talk of splitting off the immunity provisions from a broader revamp of electronic eavesdropping law.

That would create a standalone bill out of an arguably less controversial portion of an already-passed Senate bill, which would, among other things, expand the attorney general's powers to sign off on wiretaps by allowing him to avoid getting court approval up to a year. If that section passed in the House, then the Bush administration would arguably have a tougher time contending that its political foes don't care about updating surveillance law.

But if the Democratic leaders also call up the immunity provision for a separate vote, it could be good news for proponents of so-called "retroactive" immunity and bad news for civil liberties groups. That's because President Bush and other Republican leaders have maintained that there's enough of a margin to pass that proposal and send it to the president.

"Our position is that there is a strong bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives for passing the bipartisan FISA bill that has already passed the Senate by 68 votes," Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Republican leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), told News.com Monday. "The question is when the House Democratic leadership is going to stop standing in the way of the will of the House."

During the Senate vote, 19 Democrats joined 48 Republicans and an independent to give blanket legal immunity to all telephone and Internet companies that may have collaborated with Bush administration wiretapping programs between September 11, 2001, and a January 2007 date on which the attorney general submitted a once-secret NSA program for court review. (It would also immunize telephone companies going forward and wipe out investigations by state utility commissions into any allegedly illegal practices.)

On the House side, while the majority of Democrats have showed inclinations toward rejecting the Senate bill because of opposition to the immunity section, there's a contingent of about 20 more conservative Democrats who support it.

The whole process may seem counterproductive if, in the end, both parts succeed. But that second, separate vote would seemingly allow House Democrats who oppose that proposal to make a political statement: They could look back and say they had taken a stand against wiping out lawsuits against telephone companies, even if their efforts were ultimately fruitless.

Meanwhile, calling out the House Democrats for their sluggishness in passing the Senate bill has become a near-daily pastime for President Bush. Here's a snippet from a speech he delivered to a meeting of state attorneys general in Washington on Monday:

These lawsuits are really unfair, if you think about it. If any of the companies believed to have helped us--I'm just going to tell you, they were told it was legal by the government. And they were told it was necessary by the government. And here they are getting sued.

So far, Democrats have been dismissing such charges as "fear-mongering," arguing that FISA already gives intelligence agents ample authority to eavesdrop on would-be terrorists. And even the Bush administration has acknowledged that its so-called "private partners" are continuing to cooperate in surveillance investigations under existing court orders, although they've voiced "misgivings" about continuing to do so if legislative "uncertainty" remains.

With that backdrop, it seems a little curious that Democrats have been playing up the number of meetings and discussions they're having and their efforts to pass a universally accepted FISA bill once and for all. But that nevertheless is the way things appear to be unfolding.

"We think probably within the next week we'll hopefully bring it to a vote," Intelligence Committee Chairman Reyes told CNN on Sunday evening.