Senate to Consider Spy Bill With Telecom Amnesty

The nation's telecoms are just one vote away from being free from lawsuits accusing them of helping the government spy on Americans without warrants, as the Senate is scheduled this week to vote on a bill that frees the nation's largest telecoms from suits accusing them of helping the government spy on Americans illegally.

President Bush is also set for a summer gift, as the bill also widely expands the government's ability to conduct blanket surveillance from inside the United States and implicitly blesses his five-year, secret end-run around the nation's surveillance law.

House lawmakers passed the same, Administration-approved spying bill by an overwhelming margin Friday, with just a few hours of debate less than a day after House and Senate negotiators released the results of their backroom restructuring of federal wiretapping law.

Democratic senators Russell Feingold (Wisconsin) and Christopher Dodd (Connecticut) -- the Senate's most stalwart opponents of retroactive immunity and expanded wiretapping powers -- hinted today at a possible filibuster -- a tactic that did work in December when Dodd managed to convince the Senate leadership to pull the bill. Regardless, the duo said they will push for an amendment to strip telecom amnesty from the bill. However, a similar amendment and a second threatened filibuster failed in February, when the Senate passed a measure that granted amnesty and largely legalized the President's secret warrantless wiretapping programs.

This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called 'compromise' legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.

Their efforts got lonelier after the de facto Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama backed off his promise to filibuster any bill that frees the nation's largest telecoms from privacy lawsuits brought by their customers.

Obama now says he supports the bill's expansion of government spying powers, but would vote to strip immunity from the bill, an amendment that is almost certain to fail.

A few days after passage, David Kris -- a former Bush Administration lawyer who is perhaps the foremost authority on wiretapping law who doesn't work for the government -- published his initial analysis of the bill in a series of posts at the law blog Balkinization. If you are interested in the hows and whys of expanded spying power and what that means for the future of the nation's telecom infrastructure, part one and part two are necessary and not difficult reading.

Marty Lederman, also blogging at Balkinization, asks why the administration is in such a hurry to get this passed into law, given its already wide spying powers. He concludes:

The NSA wishes to be able to engage in what he calls "vacuum-cleaner" surveillance of U.S. facilities in circumstances where (i) there is no way of knowing in advance which calls are wholly international and (ii) there is no way of knowing in advance which of the targets of such vacuum-cleaner surveillance are foreign powers or their agents. The new law apparently will allow this sort of vacuum-cleaner surveillance by authorizing any and all surveillance "targeting . . . persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information." Under this new standard, there's no need that the surveillance have any connection to al Qaeda, or terrorism, or even to national security. The only substantial requirements are that someone overseas be a "target" and that one "significant purpose" of the surveillance be to acquire "foreign intelligence information," which is very broadly defined to include most anything that occurs overseas and in which the federal government might have an interest ...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), ironed out the compromise, just months after House Dems took an unexpected stand against expanding spying powers and giving retroactive amnesty to the telecoms. But Hoyer's fear of attack ads in the fall labeling Democrats as soft on terror led him to give the administration more than it could have imagined.

See Also:

• House Grants Telecom Amnesty, Expands Spying Powers
• Obama Supports Telecom Amnesty Bill
• Wiretap Ruling Dies Slow Death As Congress Moves Towards Telecom ...
• Dodd Filibuster Threat Wins; Spying Bill Postponed to Next Year ...
• House Democrats Stand Up To Bush, Refuse to Rubber Stamp Domestic ...