You’re kidding me, right?
The Democrats, elected to a majority as an antidote for six years of President Bush, are prepared to “expand the government’s authority to conduct electronic surveillance of overseas communications in search of terrorists,” according to The Washington Post.
The proposal, according to House and Senate Democrats, would permit a secret court to issue a single broad order approving eavesdropping of communications involving suspects overseas and other people, who may be in the United States. That order “need not be individualized,” according to a Democratic aide.
They are calling it a compromise, because it would keep the FISA courts involved unlike the administration’s plan, which would have granted the NSA “authority to intercept without a court order any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the United States.”
The administration’s proposal also would grant the attorney general sole authority to order the interception of communications for as long as one year, if he certified that the surveillance was directed at a person outside the United States.
Democrats are painting the move as protecting civil liberties — even Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, who is as strong on civil liberties issues as anyone — but the compromise smacks of what the ACLU is calling “politics of fear.”
“The Democrats have pretty much gone along with what the administration has been pushing for, in terms of allowing them to change the program so dramatically as to allow quite a large amount of wiretapping of Americans without a warrant,” she said. (The Washington Post)
The Daily Kos offers a fairly pointed take on it, as well:
Even Rockefeller’s limited fixes, which keep all surveillance authority with the FISA court, gives too much to the administration. While the administration is “targeting” the people overseas and incidentally listening to the Americans on the other end, there is most likely nothing in the legislation to make them stop and get a warrant when Americans are involved. Rockefeller’s proposal again leaves it to administration guidelines to figure that out, in secrecy most likely, and we know what they do when no one is watching.
Hopefully the impasse over giving Gonzales control over the program will be enough to kill the entire proposal. FISA is and has been entirely adequate to answer the demands of legal surveillance. There is no need to give one inch to this administration on domestic wiretapping, of all things.
Stop this train before it wrecks completely.
I couldn’t agree more.
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Hank Kalet 