Fifteen Days to Debate FISA
Congress Passes Extension of Surveillance Law – washingtonpost.com
The House and Senate yesterday approved a 15-day extension of an expiring intelligence surveillance law and the White House backed off a threatened veto, allowing more time to resolve a dispute over the administration’s proposal to immunize telephone companies from lawsuits stemming from their cooperation with warrantless wiretaps.
The White House agreed not to veto the bill. That’s the good news. The bad news: At least a week’s time will be lost for debate and discussion, because members of Congress are taking a week off.
Keep the pressure on your representatives. There should be no immunity for telephone companies who complied with the wiretap requests. Not all of them did.
Keep these facts in mind:
- The warrantless wiretaps were requested BEFORE September 11, 2001.
- They were ineffective in preventing the attacks on 9/11/2001
- The Supreme Court has already ruled that the warrantless wiretap program violates the Fourth Amendment
A sacrifice of our Constitutional Rights is not any kind of guarantee of safety. The telephone companies should be accountable to their customers (particularly AT&T) for violating our privacy and exposing us to spying conducted by our own elected officials.
A reasonable FISA, yes, but not one that allows the truth of what was done during those five years to be inexorably lost and locked away as the result of an immunity grant. It is time for the Democratic-led Congress to stand up for the rights of the people, don’t you think?
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