Democrats are ready to cave on Telecom Immunity in the FISA bill

Democrats are ready to cave on Telecom Immunity in the FISA bill

rawstory.com

The House and Senate have spent the last few months crafting permanent FISA updates that would close loopholes in the 1978 law that President Bush says limits US intelligence agencies' ability to spy on suspected terrorists. The Senate is expected to begin debate on dueling FISA updates Friday and into next week, although it remains unclear whether the Senate will pass a bill before recessing just before Christmas.

There is some common ground between Bush and the Democratic congress...

(visit the link for the full news article)

i dont believe in wire tapping by any means. it is wrong for the government to spy on its own people. we might be getting closer to a society in which the first amendment does not always apply if illegal (maybe soon, legal) wiretapping is used.

rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is a symptom of a larger problem: the Democrats cave on everything. Just look at the budget this week. And they're spending time blaming each other instead of trying to do something. The people who should feel the most slighted by this are the people who voted for them: because they have been lied to outright.

Neither the republicans or the democrats actually work for the American people anymore.

Senator John Rockefeller(a democrat) introduced the FISA Amendments Act in Congress during October.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2007 allows the warrantless wiretapping of of "persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States", allows the Attorney General to authorize physical searches, before applying for a warrant, gives immunity to electronic communication service providers that assist or comply with government spying, or complied between September 11, 2001 and January 17, 2007, and removes the state government's ability to investigate a company's compliance with warrantless spying.

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that debate on the legislation underpinning the government's warrantless wiretapping program will begin Monday.

Speaking in the Senate, Reid said he would bring forward a version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that had been approved by the Intelligence Committee.

Crucially, this bill includes immunity for phone companies that are alleged to have participated in the wiretapping program.

money.cnn.com...

I'm pleased to announce that:

Washington, DC – The Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives stared down the White House today (2/14/2008) and decided to stick with their version of revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The House voted to adjourn without letting the phone companies off the hook for breaking the law by helping the government spy on Americas. The House is leaving town and allowing the unconstitutional Protect America Act to expire this weekend.

Source | ACLU | House Stands Up to Threats from the White House on Domestic Surveillance

Unfortunately that doesn't mean the unlawful spying will stop immediately:

Fredrickson said that although the Protect America Act is set to expire this weekend, it doesn’t mean the new mass, untargeted surveillance programs authorized under that act will expire. Certain provisions of the Protect America Act will live beyond the law’s expiration date, including:

· Orders under the Protect America Act can last for up to a year. Orders issued in the past six months will continue through their internal expiration date. So, for example, if the attorney general and director of national intelligence issue year-long orders on 2/15/08, they will run uninhibited until 2/15/09. (See PAA Section 6: Authorizations in Effect - Authorizations for the acquisition of foreign intelligence information pursuant to the amendments made by this Act, and directives issued pursuant to such authorizations, shall remain in effect until their expiration.)

· Orders are not specific to individuals and can pick up new targets in the future. Although the orders are secret, we know the authority granted to the executive branch allowed them to create whole programs of surveillance that are not confined to any specific individual or facility – in fact, that breadth is precisely what the PAA is about. So, as programs continue, it stands to reason agents can pick up new suspects, phone lines, email accounts, etc., without the need to return to court.

Source | ACLU | House Stands Up to Threats from the White House on Domestic Surveillance

So, Neo-Fascists take heart, you still have up to a year to trample our Constitutional liberties.

reply to post by drflux



This just goes to show that democrats uniformly don't care about us just as much as republicans. Neither side has the best interests of the public in mind. If they cave on this, they will just be doing what they have been since they took over legislative majority, handing the country over to Bush on a silver platter. Then they say that it's the next president that has to clean it all up. Well I got news for 'em, we clean it up. WE consistently clean up after government failures. It is US who get kidnapped oversees, blown up, and spied on. It is our brothers and sisters and kids that fight these wars for them, and yet consistently we allow them to take control out of our hands. To allow secret agencies to spy on us, to create a thought crime framework, to create social divisions, and to demonize dissent. It will allow them to equip electronic devices to monitor digital traffic, so they can read your e-mails, bank records, personal information of all kinds. And that is WITHOUT a warrant. Without any due process at all. Adding to the PATRIOT Act the ability to jail you for indeterminate amounts of time without charge, and subject to military style tribunal, whether you're a citizen, or like me legal non citizen, or an illegal immigrant. No distinction is clearly drawn. But we let them do it. Now we have to clean it up. Or be subject to never having privacy again.

reply to post by goosdawg


Yep, thanks goose! I was just about to say that article in OP is from December last year, and there have been updates.