New-but-not-improved FISA bill moves in the Senate

October 19, 2007

Yesterday morning, the WaPo noted that Senate Dems had reached a deal with the White House on a revised domestic-surveillance bill, which gives Bush what he wanted most: retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies who cooperated in secret with the NSA to violate customers’ privacy rights, apparently in violation of the law.

Last night, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 13 to 2 to approve the legislation. Only Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) opposed the measure.

A U.S. Senate committee approved a bipartisan bill to tighten rules on government eavesdropping on terrorism suspects, but a Democratic presidential candidate said on Thursday he would try to block it.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 13-2 for the measure, which Chairman John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said strengthened national security and protected civil liberties.

“It ensures that the unchecked wiretapping policies of the administration are a thing of the past,” Rockefeller told reporters.

I realize that Rockefeller has a vested interest in touting the bill — he met with DNI Michael McConnell privately to give the administration practically everything it wanted — but the closer one looks at the legislation, the less there is to like.

Telecom amnesty isn’t the only problem. For example, the Senate bill empowers the Attorney General, not the FISA Court, to determine who complied with the warrantless surveillance program.

The Senate bill would direct civil courts to dismiss lawsuits against telecommunications companies if the attorney general certifies that the company rendered assistance between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 17, 2007, in response to a written request authorized by the president, to help detect or prevent an attack on the United States.

Suits also would be dismissed if the attorney general certifies that a company named in the case provided no assistance to the government. The public record would not reflect which certification was given to the court.

As Spencer Ackerman noted, “So you’ll you’ll never know, if the Senate bill becomes law, if your phone company gave any communications material when the National Security Agency came calling without a warrant.”

And what of Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) vow to put a hold on the bill? CQ reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will bring the measure to the floor for a debate in mid-November.

Before then, the measure will head to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the bill will probably have at least a slightly tougher time. In the Intelligence Committee the top Dem (Rockefeller) and the top Republican (Bond) largely agreed on the major provisions, and both support telecom immunity. In the Judiciary Committee, the top Dem (Leahy) and the top Republican (Specter) largely agree on the major provisions in the other direction, including opposition to telecom immunity.

Stay tuned.

Behold the one-party system.

All hail the Corporate Republicrats.

  • This bill sucks. It is WORSE than what exists because it tries to pull the wool over people’s eyes and let them think things are better when they aren’t.

    Jay Rockefeller is like every other member of that family going back to John D. Rockefeller: willing to sell out the country in a heartbeat, for a damn dime. They’ve been scum for 150 years and nothing changes – it’s in their DNA.

  • RacerX, I’ve always referred to our one party as the Corpicrats and the Corpicans, as we are living in a Corpocracy.

  • I’ve said it before: We need to demand new Democratic leadership in Congress, since Pelosi and Reid can’t or won’t get anything done on any issue. They seem to forget they are in the majority. I loved how they were trying to spin the failure to override the S-CHIP veto on the Senate not having 60 votes, when the Senate passed the bill with a veto proof majority and it was the House that fell down on the job. It’s ridiculous. Between the way the Democrats are running Congress and unless they stop the disaster that would be Hillary Clinton as nominee next year, 2008 is starting to look less like a slam dunk and more like a case that, if they win, it will be in spite of themselves.

  • Not that it hasn’t been said a billion times over the past few years, but if the telcos did nothing illegal, whyt do they need immunity?

    And if they DID something illegal, why do they DESERVE immunity?

    If the Dems in Congress think this isn’t worth pursuing, they deserve none of our support, politically OR financially when it comes time to find new candidates.

  • The first thing we need is public financing of elections, so we can put people into office who represent us and not corporate America.

    There are too many of the current crop who cannot see the forest for the trees – they keep wanting to fix things that aren’t broken and by shifting the emphasis to fixing things, have taken the focus off where it needs to be: preserving and protecting the Constitution, which I seem to remember is part of the oath these clowns take.

    There was never anything wrong with the FISA law – but if passed, this bill will not only not make this country any safer from forces that wish to do us harm, but will open gaping holes in the already-eroded foundation of the democracy, making us more vulnerable to collapse from within.

    That Democrats are aiding and abetting in that effort out of some crazy, misguided belief that not to do so means they are weak, just tells me how far afield they have strayed from what is right and what is important.

    And how badly they are betraying the people’s trust.

  • Ironically, the Democrats will get a little credit from the American people for this latest cave-in, for having accomplished something.

    Americans don’t care about this spying business. They just don’t. If you haven’t done anything wrong, then what have you to fear?

    I don’t think many people believe that the feds are listening in on their phone calls. Only the bad guys are being spied on. And if that’s what’s needed to protect them, they’re all for it.

    I have to be honest here. I’m as anti-Bush, and as vocal about it as anyone, and I don’t think the feds even know I exist, or if they do, that they care. And if I’m not concerned, personally, then very few Americans are either. And that’s the bottom line.

    Does all this torture and spying stuff affect me personally? No. And that’s the bottom line for the American people. They don’t care about the principles involved if it doesn’t affect them.

  • Well, hark, all I can say is that it looks like you fall into the category of, “I’m not doing anything wrong, so what do I care.”

    The problem with that attitude is that it ignores the chilling truth that none of us any longer have any real ability to be heard, to defend our innocence, if an arbitrary decision is made that we have done something wrong. If some agent decides that you are the “hark” that is a threat to the country, you can sit and rot in a prison somewhere for years until the day comes when they realize they have the wrong “hark” or that you didn’t do what you were accused of doing. And God knows what they can do to you in the meantime.

    Is it likely to happen? I don’t know you, so I can’t say with certainty, but I’m doubting it. But the slimness of the likelihood is no reason to give up and allow these people to do whatever they want.

  • i agree with anne-reforming the entire electoral process to take out the big bucks and the mega-millions that go to the media, by the way-is the prerequisite to any improvement in the quality and quantity of decent candidates. Nothing else will really change without basic fairness at this level

  • How can Reid bring the matter to the floor if Dodd has a hold on the bill? If this were the republicans with the hold the bill would never see the light of day. I signed Dodd’s petition and even donated money to his campaign as a way of saying thank you for standing up against Rockefeller and others to prevent this miscarriage of justice where congress is settling the present court trials for the judge by interfering with this amnesty bill in spite of the fact that a federal judge has found them guilty of breaking the law turning over records that had nothing to do with terrorism…just opening all records and telling the government “take whatever you want”. If they get away with this then we have forever sacrificed our rights to privacy.
    This is how fascism sneaks up on us…one issue at a time…are we becoming the “good Germans” who couldn’t see what was happening until it was all put together at the end?

  • Jane Hamsher at FDL has a post which indicates Sen. Intel. Comm. Chairman Rockefeller received almost $25,000 from Verizon in 2007 and that Sen. Maj. Leader Reid almost $22,000 from AT & T as well as owning from $15,000 to $50,000 in telecom stocks. I think this is a major scandal brewing for the Democrats as well as the Republicans in Congress. I would like all donations from all telecom companies who would be affected by the grant of immunity to all senators and representatives be made public.

  • Re: naschkatze @ #12

    What do you want? Transparency in government?

    What do you think this is? A Constitutional Republic?

  • I’m not sure I wouldn’t be willing to let the telco’s off the hook in exchange for, say,
    dropping their opposition to net neutrality. Frankly, watching them all spend the next several years enmeshed in civil suits would do little to satisfy my thirst for revenge on the domestic spying thing. If I we’re going punish someone I’d much prefer seeing some of the people in government who were doing the requesting do some hard time in prison. It’s also pretty important to try and bring some order back to Dodge City ASAP and for that to happen I think the the law seriously does need to be modernized. You have to be willing to give a little to get something done sometimes. This may well be one of those times.

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