[Infowarrior] - House Dems pull wiretap bill out of political fear

[Richard Forno]

 House surveillance bill pulled

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_on_go_co/terrorist_surveillance_7&pri
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By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 42 minutes ago

Republicans successfully maneuvered to derail a Democratic government
eavesdropping bill Wednesday, delaying a House vote until next week at the
earliest.

The bill, which seeks to expand court oversight of government surveillance
in the United States, fell victim to a gambit by the chamber's Republican
minority. Democrats were forced to pull the bill from the House floor with
no certainty about how it might be revived.

A Democratic staff member said the bill will not be rewritten but
substantive amendments may be allowed when it finally does come up for a
vote, which is the Democrats' intention.

The earliest that could happen is next week, as Thursday the House will be
busy with an attempt to override a presidential veto of a children's health
care bill.

The Democratic eavesdropping bill would have allowed unfettered telephone
and e-mail surveillance of foreign intelligence targets but would require
special authorization if the foreign targets were likely to be in contact
with people inside the United States, a provision designed to safeguard
Americans' privacy.

Those so-called "blanket warrants" would let the government obtain a single
order authorizing the surveillance of multiple targets.

Republican critics, however, said the blanket warrants would tie up
intelligence agents in legal red tape, impeding them from conducting urgent
surveillance of terrorist suspects. "Congress needs to move forward, not
backward," President Bush said at a White House news conference as the
debate in Congress began. Bush had vowed to veto the bill if it reached his
desk.

The House's Democratic leaders pulled the bill after discovering that
Republicans planned to offer a motion that politically vulnerable Democrats
would have a hard time voting against.

The amendment would have said that nothing in the bill could limit
surveillance of Osama bin Laden and terrorist organizations. While Democrats
say their bill already provides that authority, voting against the amendment
could make it seem as though a member of Congress were against spying on
al-Qaida.

Republicans sought to play down the amendment's role in causing the bill to
be pulled. Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House
Intelligence Committee, said the bill was losing moderate Democratic votes
because it was fundamentally flawed.

Passage of the Republican amendment would have sent the bill immediately
back to committee, effectively killing it. Key Democrats believed they were
short of the votes needed to defeat the move.

"Our proposal gives Democrats a very simple choice: They can allow our
intelligence officials to conduct surveillance on likes of Osama bin Laden
and al-Qaida or prohibit them from doing so and jeopardize our national
security," said Republican leader Rep. John Boehner of Ohio in a statement.

The Democratic bill had faced opposition from the left, as well. The
American Civil Liberties Union has been waging a campaign against it,
arguing it should require individual court orders every time an American's
communications are intercepted. Some liberal Democrats shared those
concerns, and "Republicans took advantage of a tenuous situation," said
Caroline Fredrickson, ACLU's Washington Legislative director.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, argued that
the bill carefully balances civil liberties with the need for speed and
flexibility in spying on terrorists.

The current surveillance law gave the government so many authorities "that
people are not safe and secure in their own homes. The government can go in
there and search computers and residences," Reyes said. "This legislation
corrects the deficiencies."

Bush's veto threat came in part because the bill lacks retroactive immunity
from lawsuits for telecommunications companies. They have been accused in
about 40 civil suits of violating wiretapping and intelligence laws by
secretly providing the government access to Americans' e-mails and phone
records without court orders.

House Democrats have pledged that no immunity will be granted until the
White House tells Congress exactly what the telecommunications companies did
that requires legal protection.

The administration contends that without immunity the companies could be
bankrupted by legal penalties.

The Senate's version of the bill, expected to be released Thursday, is
likely to include at least a limited immunity provision, according to
sources close to the process who demanded anonymity because the measure was
not final.

The measures would amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
which dictates when the government must obtain eavesdropping warrants from a
secret intelligence court.

That law was last changed in August after the administration argued
technological advances had made it too cumbersome and created a dire gap in
its intelligence collection.

The updated law allowed the government to eavesdrop without a court order on
communications conducted by a person reasonably believed to be outside the
U.S., even if an American is on one end of the conversation ‹ so long as
that American is not the intended focus or target of the surveillance.