{"id":14897,"date":"2008-03-14T15:10:18","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T19:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14897.html"},"modified":"2008-03-14T15:10:18","modified_gmt":"2008-03-14T19:10:18","slug":"house-passes-surveillance-bill-sans-telecom-immunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/house-passes-surveillance-bill-sans-telecom-immunity\/","title":{"rendered":"House passes surveillance bill — sans telecom immunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I don’t imagine the White House is going to be pleased<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A deeply divided House approved its latest version of terrorist surveillance legislation today, rebuffing President Bush’s demand for a bill that would grant telecommunications firms retroactive immunity for cooperation in past warrantless wiretapping and deepening the impasse on a fundamental national security issue.<\/p>\n

Congress then defiantly left Washington for a two-week spring break.<\/p>\n

The legislation, approved 213-197, would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expand the powers of intelligence agencies and keep pace with ever-changing communications technologies.<\/p>\n

But it challenges the Bush administration on a number of fronts, by restoring the power of the federal courts to approve wiretapping warrants, authorizing federal inspectors general to investigate the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance efforts, and establishing a bipartisan commission to examine the activities of intelligence agencies in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, of course, the legislation passed without<\/i> retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program. As the WaPo explained, “Instead of granting them immunity, as the Senate has, the House measure would send the issue to a secure federal court and grant the telecommunications companies the right to argue their case before a judge with information the administration has deemed to be state secrets.”<\/p>\n

This was all very encouraging — and a welcome example of congressional Democrats standing up to Bush on a matter of national security, Republican demagoguery notwithstanding.
\n
\nWhat happens now? Paul Kiel offers<\/a> a lay of the land.<\/p>\n

As for what’s next, it’s over to the Senate where it’s sure to undergo some modifications. In a statement earlier this week, Senate intelligence committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said that “considerable work remains” on reconciling the House’s latest version and the Senate version. Rockefeller said he’s willing to adopt a number of the House’s provisions, including a much shorter sunset (2 years) on the law, but notably omitted the topic of immunity. Rockefeller supports blanket immunity for the telecoms.<\/p>\n

The Senate is certainly a different place. Today, 12 House Dems voted against a bill that does not contain retroactive immunity (and some of those were from liberals like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). Last month in the Senate, 18 Dems voted against an attempt to strip retroactive immunity from the Senate bill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re interested, here’s the roll call<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Speaker’s<\/a> happy; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid<\/a> is happy; the ACLU’s<\/a> happy; and EFF<\/a> is happy. This is so much better than the outcome I expected as recently as a few weeks ago, it’s hard to measure.<\/p>\n

Not a bad day on Capitol Hill; kudos all around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I don’t imagine the White House is going to be pleased. A deeply divided House approved its latest version of terrorist surveillance legislation today, rebuffing President Bush’s demand for a bill that would grant telecommunications firms retroactive immunity for cooperation in past warrantless wiretapping and deepening the impasse on a fundamental national security issue. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}