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Senate Passes Telecom Immunity Bill
Posted by
timothy
on Wednesday July 09, @04:30PM
from the always-been-at-war-with-oceania dept.
from the always-been-at-war-with-oceania dept.
zehnra writes "The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act, broadly expanding the president's warrantless surveillance authority and unconstitutionally granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program. The House of Representatives passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly." The New York Times has a story, as does the Associated Press (carried here by Yahoo!). Reader Guppy points out the roll call for the vote.
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FISA Bill Vote Today, With Telco Immunity 465 comments
Bimo_Dude writes "Today (June 20), Steny Hoyer is bringing to the House floor the latest FISA bill (PDF), which includes retroactive immunity for the telcos. The bill also is very weak on judicial review, allowing the telcos to use a letter from the president as a 'get out of liability free' card. Here are comments from the EFF. Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, describes the effect of the immunity clause this way: 'So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words — the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists — and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.'"
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Senate Delays Telecom Immunity Vote Until After July Recess 148 comments
ivantheshifty writes with news of a delayed vote (failed filibuster attempt aside) on the updated FISA bill which has been discussed here recently, in particular because it would grant telecom companies immunity (under certain conditions) from suits for wiretapping conducted at government request. According to the Associated Press story carried by the Washington Post, "Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and more than a dozen other senators who oppose telecom immunity threw up procedural delays that threatened to force the Senate into a midnight or weekend session. The prospect of further delays was enough to cause Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to postpone the vote until after the weeklong July 4 vacation."
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News: Telecom Immunity Flip-Floppers Got More Telecom Money 277 comments
ya really notes a nice analysis by Maplight.org indicating that those Democratic representatives who changed their vote on telecom immunity between March and June received on average 40% more in contributions from telecom interests than those Democrats who held firm. Maplight asks, "Why did these ninety-four House members have a change of heart? Their constituents deserve answers." Across both parties, representatives who voted for immunity in June had received almost twice as much telecom money as those who voted against. Wired's coverage includes a quote from Larry Lessig, who is on the Maplight board: "Money corrupts the process of reasoning. [Lawmakers] get a sixth sense of how what they do might affect how they raise money."
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ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging FISA 539 comments
Wired's Threat Level blog reports that the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit contesting the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Recently passed by both the House and Senate, FISA was signed into law on Thursday by President Bush. The ACLU has fought aspects of FISA in the past. The new complaint (PDF) alleges the following:
"The law challenged here supplies none of the safeguards that the Constitution demands. It permits the government to monitor the communications of U.S. Citizens and residents without identifying the people to be surveilled; without specifying the facilities, places, premises, or property to be monitored; without observing meaningful limitations on the retention, analysis, and dissemination of acquired information; without obtaining individualized warrants based on criminal or foreign intelligence probable cause; and, indeed, without even making prior administrative determinations that the targets of surveillance are foreign agents or connected in any way, however tenuously, to terrorism."
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Whew, your telcos are safe. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure you're all feeling a little bit better now right ?
Um, right ?
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Remember in November. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Remember in November. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Remember in November. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a while I thought Obama may have been worth voting for, but now its clear that he is just a Pol and not enough better than McCain to be worth voting for. I'm going to be limiting my choice to the Libertarian or Green candidates for President this fall.
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Re:Remember in November. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's axiomatic that any person who does what is necessary to become a viable Presidential candidate will not be worth voting for.
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Some days... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking its time we start looking at the French Revolution for advice.
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Re:Some days... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking its time we start looking at the French Revolution for advice.
Just remember, it ended with a Napoleon that was every bit as authoritarian as the old kings.
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MOTHER FUCKING TRAITORS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:MOTHER FUCKING TRAITORS (Score:5, Informative)
I was somewhat surprised to see my normally idiotic senators vote the correct way for once.
However, I'm disappointed that Obama voted yes. He'll be getting some angry email from me.
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Re:MOTHER FUCKING TRAITORS (Score:5, Funny)
I wrote my senators. Fat lot of good that shit does.
You probably forgot to put a few $100 bills in the envelopes.
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We had one. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you remember 2006? When the largest upheaval in Congressional history happened, giving a clear mandate to our lawmakers to end the war? Somehow that didn't happen. Somehow the legislative groundwork got laid for another war in the meantime.
My congresscritters happened to be on the right side of this. If yours were not, I strongly suggest calling their offices and informing them that (if they're Democrats) your donations next election cycle will be going to their challenger in the primary. And then, of course, following through on that.
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Damnit (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't know Obama was supporting this (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I didn't know Obama was supporting this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I didn't know Obama was supporting this (Score:5, Funny)
McCain abstained, which I guess makes him a "moderate" on the issue of screwing us over at every opportunity.
Tired of choosing the lesser of two evils? Vote Cthulhu in '08! No more years!
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Re:I didn't know Obama was supporting this (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I didn't know Obama was supporting this (Score:5, Informative)
And here's Greenwald's trashing [blogspot.com] of that explanation.
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More On Immunity (Score:5, Insightful)
From CNN [cnn.com]
In short: They aren't outright granted immunity, but instead a hearing will be held where they will undoubtedly be granted immunity. Bloody Democrats, they never have a spine when they need one.
PS: Hello to whatever TLA is currently monitoring this
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"Obama (D-IL), Yea" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:"Obama (D-IL), Yea" (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, "Change, for the worse"
That is still change.
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Deplorable (Score:5, Interesting)
Deplorable
Why didn't Obama try to stop this? He could have spoken out and got the rest of the dems behind him. Instead he voted in favor of it. This is what his campaign said in October:
"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."
And on Dec 17:
Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same.
Oh sure, he voted for the amendments which attempted to remove or limit the immunity, but everyone already knew those would fail.
This is from his most recent statement last week:
The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise.
Another nail in the coffin for our constitution. This is a sad day. And to think that most of the senate voted on this WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHAT THEY WERE GIVING THE TELCOMS IMMUNITY FOR!!!.
This stinks of a grand-scale coverup. There is still the possibility of suing the government, and perhaps striking this bill as unconsitutional. Let's hope we get to the bottom of this and put some people in jail.
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Time for the Supreme Court to step in (Score:5, Insightful)
The Supreme Court needs to step in and strike this down. Someone needs to bring a lawsuit and get it sent up to the Supreme Court.
When FISA courts can grant RETROACTIVE warrants, why does the Bush administration insist on not getting a warrant?
Because they were doing far more than just looking for terrorists.
A true sad day in the US.
Glad I voted for Ron Paul. I'll be using him as a write in come November.
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Ex Post Facto (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't this fly in the face of article 1 section 9 [wikipedia.org] of the constitution? In paragraph 3 is states, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." That seems rather straightforward to me and since this decriminalizes something after the fact it sounds like an Ex Post Facto law to me.
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The actual impact (Score:5, Interesting)
In between reading the legislation (which none of you will do) and reading only the summary, you might consider reading some analysis of this by someone who Is A Lawyer:
Article here: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20080702.html [findlaw.com]
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Re:habeas corpus (Score:5, Funny)
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