[Infowarrior] - House Passes New Surveillance Bill

[Richard Forno]

House Passes New Surveillance Bill

By PAMELA HESS
The Associated Press
Friday, March 14, 2008; 2:21 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031400
803_pf.html

WASHINGTON -- The House on Friday narrowly approved a Democratic bill that
would set rules for the government's eavesdropping on phone calls and
e-mails inside the United States.

The bill, approved as lawmakers departed for a two-week break, faces a veto
threat from President Bush. The margin of House approval was 213 to 197,
largely along party lines.

Because of the promised veto, "this vote has no impact at all," said
Republican Whip Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri.

The president's main objection is that the bill does not protect from
lawsuits the telecommunications companies that allowed the government to
eavesdrop on their customers without a court's permission after the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The vote sent the bill to the Senate, which has passed its own version that
includes the legal immunity for telecom companies that Bush is insisting on.

Without that provision, House Republicans said, the companies won't
cooperate with U.S. intelligence.

"We cannot conduct foreign surveillance without them. But if we continue to
subject them to billion-dollar lawsuits, we risk losing their cooperation in
the future," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

The government does have the power to compel telecommunications companies to
cooperate with wiretaps if it gets warrants from a secret court. The
government apparently did not get such warrants before initiating the
post-9/11 wiretaps, which are the basis for the lawsuits.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said the
bill is meant to fix that. It would let a judge determine whether lawsuits
should be dismissed, rather than having Congress make that decision.

"I believe that the nation is deeply concerned about what has gone on for
the last seven years, and I want to restore some of the trust in the
intelligence community," Reyes said.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecommunications companies by
people and organizations alleging the companies violated wiretapping and
privacy laws. The lawsuits have been combined and are pending before a
single federal judge in California.

The Democrats' measure would encourage the judge to review in private the
secret government documents underpinning the program to decide if the
companies acted lawfully.

The administration has prevented those documents from being revealed, even
to a judge, by invoking the state secrets privilege. That puts the companies
in a bind because they are unable to defend themselves.

Just a fraction of Congress has been granted access to the records.

Democrats argued against quashing the lawsuits without knowing in detail why
the immunity is necessary. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said the government
may have as many as five ongoing clandestine surveillance programs.
"Congress is not fully informed, and it would be reckless to grant
retroactive immunity without knowing the scope of programs out there,"
Harman said.

"All members of Congress should see those documents so they could see the
breadth and scope" of the wiretapping program, said Rep. John Tierney,
D-Mass.

The surveillance law is intended to help the government pursue suspected
terrorists by making it easier to eavesdrop on international phone calls and
e-mails between foreigners abroad and Americans in the U.S, and remove
barriers to collecting purely foreign communications that pass through the
United States_ for instance, foreign e-mails stored on a server.

A temporary law expired Feb. 16 before Congress was able to produce a
replacement bill. Bush opposed an extension of the temporary law as a means
to pressure Congress into accepting the Senate version of the surveillance
legislation.

Bush and most Capitol Hill Republicans say the lawsuits are damaging
national security and unfairly punish telecommunications companies for
helping the government in a time of war.

"There is not one iota of evidence that the companies acted inappropriately
whatsoever," said Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif.

Democrats say the bill protects the privacy rights of Americans by making
sure the telecommunications companies _ and the wiretapping program _ did
not violate any laws.

"We have the opportunity to serve the protection of our country ... and
uphold our oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United
States," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "Let us take that
opportunity."

The Democratic bill also would initiate a yearlong bipartisan panel modeled
after the 9/11 Commission to investigate the administration's so-called
warrantless wiretapping program.

Friday's vote came after House Republicans forced a rare, late-night secret
session of Congress on Thursday to discuss the bill. It was the first such
session of the House in a quarter century; the last one was in 1983, on U.S.
support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Only five closed sessions
have occurred in the House since 1825.

Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas said she didn't believe any
minds were changed on the bill.

"We couldn't have gone more of an extra mile to make sure we're doing the
best for national security," she said.
© 2008 The Associated Press