Senate Covers Telecom Spying
Posted on | October 18, 2007
You knew it was coming. President Bush threatened to veto any FISA updates that don’t give blanket immunity to communications companies who assisted the NSA in spying on Americans.
Despite an intense lobbying effort from such privacy groups, the Senate sealed an expected deal this week with President Bush to grant major telecommunications companies — including Verizon, Comcast and AT&T — immunity from prosecution for their role in the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program if they can “demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.”
The legislation finalizes the deal between Senate Democrats and the Administration over the terms of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance. It was first reported in the Washington Post.
Earlier, Bush had pushed for immunity to be included in a six-month update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but Democrats managed to strip that provision from the bill. He said he’d refuse to sign a bill that doesn’t spare prosecution for the telecommunications industry.
News reports have fingered phone companies AT&T and Verizon as major players. Both firms are entangled in several class action lawsuits for handling over millions of customer files. Verizon recently admitted that it had honored requests for information at least 720 times without a court order.
The telecoms will walk. Big Money has its way with Congress—again—at the expense of our liberty, abetted by a president who hears no other voices. In the Bush era, Congress’ role has shrunk to merely legalizing retroactively anything the Administration wants to do.
They don’t work for us anymore.
