House votes to expand Bush wiretap powers, telecom immunity
Nick Juliano
Published: Friday June 20, 2008
Less than 24 hours after introducing a controversial measure to expand President Bush's authority to spy on Americans, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Friday voted to approve the administration- and Republican-supported bill, sending it to the Senate where it will likely be adopted.
Civil liberties and privacy advocates forcefully panned the measure, which was crafted behind closed doors in negotiations among moderate Democrats, Republicans, the White House and telecommunications lobbyists.
"It’s Christmas morning at the White House thanks to this vote," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said in a news release. "The House just wrapped up some expensive gifts for the administration and their buddies at the phone companies."
Friday's vote represented the beginning of the end in a legislative battle aimed at reining in the warrantless surveillance program Bush acknowledged instituting after 9/11.
"Immunity for telecom giants that secretly assisted in the NSA's warrantless surveillance undermines the rule of law and the privacy of every American," said Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Congress should let the courts do their job instead of helping the administration and the phone companies avoid accountability for a half decade of illegal domestic spying. If this legislation passes the Senate and is signed into law, the American people will have lost their last best chance to discover the true scope of the president's wiretapping program and to determine whether or not the law was broken."
EFF is representing plaintiffs in more than 40 lawsuits alleging the telecoms broke the law and violated their customers' privacy by facilitating the warrantless wiretaps.
The House had earlier proved to be a bulwark in the way of the president's attempt to retroactively legalize his conduct and excuse from legal oversight the telecommunications companies that assisted him. That wall fell Friday.
Pressure mounts on Obama to oppose
Now activists are turning their attention to the Senate, and pressure is mounting on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to step up and lead an effort to block the latest FISA bill.
"We look to leaders in the Senate who value the rule of law to stand up and strongly oppose this blanket immunity for telecom lawbreakers," Bankston said, "and in particular urge Senator Barack Obama to lead his party in rejecting this false compromise."
Obama has said nothing about the recently announced FISA compromise. Robert Gibbs, his presidential campaign's communications director, said he was unsure whether Obama would participate in debate on the FISA bill, which is expected next week in the Senate. Gibbs promised to provide more information later after he was asked about Obama and FISA by RAW STORY and other reporters during a conference call Friday.
The Democratic candidate was criticized earlier this week for endorsing Rep. John Barrow, a pro-immunity Georgia Democrat, who is in the middle of a primary campaign against a progressive State Senator.
When the Senate passed an earlier FISA bill in February, Obama supported amendments to strip immunity from it. He supported a filibuster after that amendment fail, although the Illinois senator did not vote on the final bill itself.
Pelosi, Hoyer lead effort in opposition to majority of Dems
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer shepherded through a surveillance bill opposed by the majority of their caucus.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act update passed 293-129, with support from just 107 Democrats. Opposing the measure were 128 Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Timothy Johnson of Illinois.
"Watching the House fall to scare tactics and political maneuvering is especially infuriating given the way it stood up to pressure from the president on this same issue just months ago," Fredrickson said. "In March we thought the House leadership had finally grown a backbone by rejecting the Senate’s FISA bill. Now we know they will not stand up for the Constitution."
Pelosi said the only choice the House had was between the FISA update it considered Friday and a worse version passed by the Senate earlier this year. A FISA update the House approved in March, that did not include immunity and earned praise from civil libertarians, was apparently no longer an option because Democrats decided it could not pass the Senate.
She said she was unsatisfied with the immunity provision, which leaves telecommunications companies "with a taint," but she said the overall bill was acceptable because it improved on the Senate version. The House compromise requires intelligence agencies' Inspectors General to review the warrantless wiretapping program, instead of the independent judicial review that would have come from the lawsuits moving forward.
Acknowledging the controversy in the bill, Pelosi didn't attempt to prevent the defection of a majority of the Democratic caucus. (This, by the way, stands in stark contrast to the way in which Republicans ran the House; they would not even bring a measure to the floor if it did not have majority GOP support.)
"I'm not asking anybody to vote for this bill," Pelosi said at the end of her floor speech. "I just wanted to let you know why I am."
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