March 5, 2008
SENATE WIRETAPPING
BILL: THE WORST OF BOTH
WORLDS
Just last month the Senate passed legislation that is pretty
much the same monster Congress passed in August, the so-called Protect
America Act. The major difference is that it gives
the Attorney General the sole discretion to provide retroactive and prospective
immunity to any telecommunications company that spied on its customers. Members of the House should vote “NO” on
any compromise legislation that substantially looks like that bill. Members should be on the watch for the
worst provisions of the Senate bill:
- Just
like the Protect America Act, S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act, allows the
Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence to issue year long orders
for surveillance without any prior court review, as long as one participant in
the conversation is foreign. As a
result, the courts would not operate as a check on governmental access to our
information.
- S.
2248 allows surveillance orders that do not even specify who is going to be
listened to or what facilities the government is going to tap into, authorizing
dragnets that can sweep up Americans’ communications just as long as a specific,
known US person isn’t the
“target.”
- S.
2248 allows the government to keep, use and disseminate any US
person’s information collected under this new warrantless dragnet. The Senate bill does not contain any
statutory limit on how Americans’ phone calls and emails can be used, nor does
it require that the information ever be destroyed, permitting the government to
data-mine or otherwise abuse it.
- The
Senate bill permits the Attorney General to single-handedly kill all pending and
future consumer protection cases brought in either state or federal court that
seek to hold the telecoms accountable for illegally handing our information over
to the government. This authority
is unlimited and would even end states’ utility commission investigations or
suits that only seek to stop the companies from spying on us in the
future.
- S.
2248 is subject to a six year sunset, on December 31, 2013, putting the next
mandatory review of this law past two future elections.
