Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill

[meeks]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/ap_on_go_co/terrorist_surveillance

WASHINGTON - Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

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The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon.

Opponents assailed the eavesdropping program, asserting that it imperiled citizens' rights of privacy from government intrusion. But Bush said the legislation protects those rights as well as Americans' security.

"This bill will help our intelligence professionals learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they're saying and what they're planning," he said in a brief White House appearance after the Senate vote.

The bill is very much a political compromise, brought about by a deadline: Wiretapping orders authorized last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders and potential delays to continue those intercepts. That is something most of Congress did not want to see happen, particularly in an election year.

The long fight on Capitol Hill centered on one main question: whether to protect from civil lawsuits any telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on American phone and computer lines without the permission or knowledge of a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. against wiretapping lawsuits.

Forty-six lawsuits now stand to be dismissed because of the new law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. All are pending before a single U.S. District Court in California. But the fight has not ended. Civil rights groups are already preparing lawsuits challenging the bill's constitutionality, and four suits, filed against government officials, will not be dismissed.

Numerous lawmakers had spoken out strongly against the no-warrants eavesdropping on Americans, but the Senate voted its approval after rejecting amendments that would have watered down, delayed or stripped away the immunity provision.

The lawsuits center on allegations that the White House circumvented U.S. law by going around the FISA court, which was created 30 years ago to prevent the government from abusing its surveillance powers for political purposes, as was done in the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. The court is meant to approve all wiretaps placed inside the U.S. for intelligence-gathering purposes. The law has been interpreted to include international e-mail records stored on servers inside the U.S.

"This president broke the law," declared Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.

The Bush administration brought the wiretapping back under the FISA court's authority only after The New York Times revealed the existence of the secret program. A handful of members of Congress knew about the program from top secret briefings. Most members are still forbidden to know the details of the classified effort, and some objected that they were being asked to grant immunity to the telecoms without first knowing what they did.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter compared the Senate vote to buying a "pig in a poke."

But Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., one of the bill's most vocal champions, said, "This is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our terror-fighters."

Just under a third of the Senate, including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, supported an amendment that would have stripped immunity from the bill. They were defeated on a 66-32 vote. Republican rival John McCain did not attend the vote.

Obama ended up voting for the final bill, as did Specter. Feingold voted no.

The bill tries to address concerns about the legality of warrantless wiretapping by requiring inspectors general inside the government to conduct a yearlong investigation into the program.

Beyond immunity, the new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government surveillance activities, but others would loosen them compared with a law passed 30 years ago.

For example, it would require the government to get FISA court approval before it eavesdrops on an American overseas. Currently, the attorney general approves that electronic surveillance on his own.

The bill also would allow the government to obtain broad, yearlong intercept orders from the FISA court that target foreign groups and people, raising the prospect that communications with innocent Americans would be swept in. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets and how the intercepted American communications would be protected.

The original FISA law required the government to get wiretapping warrants for each individual targeted from inside the United States, on the rationale that most communications inside the U.S. would involve Americans whose civil liberties must be protected. But technology has changed. Purely foreign communications increasingly pass through U.S. wires and sit on American computer servers, and the law has required court orders to be obtained to access those as well.

The bill would give the government a week to conduct a wiretap in an emergency before it must apply for a court order. The original law said three days.

The bill restates that the FISA law is the only means by which wiretapping for intelligence purposes can be conducted inside the United States. This is meant to prevent a repeat of warrantless wiretapping by future administrations.

The ACLU, which is party to some of the lawsuits that will now be dismissed, said the bill was "a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy."

[Buddy]

And the flip flop continues as Obama tries to abandon the left in his obvious run to the center. "I voted for it...until I voted against it."

[Darth Rock&Roll]

george will be pre-emptively pardoning himself and his pals same as others who came before.

s.o.p on the hill.

real change can't come from a politician, it comes from the people.

[Buddy]

What a noble ,if pointless, response to my comment. "The people" don't exist anywhere, individuals and collectives of diverse opinion do.

[MikeC]

And the flip flop continues as Obama tries to abandon the left in his obvious run to the center. "I voted for it...until I voted against it."

Well Buddy, Obama is about Change after all....changing his position that is.


MikeC

[Steve James]

"Just under a third of the Senate, including Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, supported an amendment that would have stripped immunity from the bill. They were defeated on a 66-32 vote. Republican rival John McCain did not attend the vote."

Right, everybody knows that there needs to be immunity from secret police state actions. What was Obama thinking? Poor guy. Well, at least he thought it was important enough to vote. The slacker.

[steelincotton]

No flip flops from Obama, he's only one Senator (at this moment) and can only do so much. As Steve as pointed out.

I don't think some folks understand how it all works up there in the house/senate, etc.

On another note, I like what Obama said yesterday. I WILL PUT AN END TO IRAQ WAR. All this flip-flop nonsense is just that... nonsense!!

[Mike Strong]

Wow, - steelincotton, - you really are a TRUE BELIEVER ...


... yeesh

[steelincotton]

Wow, - steelincotton, - you really are a TRUE BELIEVER ...


... yeesh

Believe it or not Mike, I'm really not. It's just that the alternative turns my stomach.

With that said, I'm sure Obama will let me down eventually, I already hate the fact that he's a bible thumper, but what can I say, nobody is going to please me 100% of the time. Well, maybe Dennis Kucinch would have, but that's just an old dream now. So for now, I'm all for giving Mr. Obama a chance to do something positive for a change in Washington.

After all, he couldn't possibly do any more harm than Bush, Cheney, and McCain have already done to our country.

[meeks]

Wow, - steelincotton, - you really are a TRUE BELIEVER ...

so Mike, how does McBush's idea to spend billions more dollars to keep US invasion of Iraq going so that Bush's business interests will have direct control of the oil and his friends/family at Haliburton will continue to reap benefits of (previously) billion dollar contracts handed to them without a competition?

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/145903/bushs_uncle_profited_from_20_million.html
Bush's Uncle Profited from $20 Million Defense Contractor Fraud
By May Monten, published Feb 09, 2007

President Bush's uncle, William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, was on the Board of Directors of a defense contractor company that has been accused of reaping millions from an illegal stock-option timing scheme.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit this week against the company's former Chief Financial Officer and former Controller, accusing them of engaging in a six-year long scheme to grant undisclosed backdated stock options to themselves and to other officers, executives, and employees.

All together, $20 million in unauthorized compensation was involved, with $15 million of that going to the top executives and to the directors.

Backdating options involves manipulating the value of the options by using a date in the past, when the stock market was lower, as the date that the options were granted. It is the lack of disclosure that is key to making this transaction a fraudulent one. Options backdating is not necessarily illegal. In order to be legal, though, the backdating must be properly disclosed, which was not done here.

While the SEC did not accuse Bush's uncle and the other directors of wrongdoing, the directors did benefit from the scheme. Bucky Bush made about $450,000 in 2005 by exercising his stock options and selling his shares. Together, the directors made about $6 million from the scheme.

SEC Enforcement Director Linda Thomsen said, "Our actions against [former Chief Financial Officer] Gerhardt and [former Controller] Landmann demonstrate the commission's ongoing commitment to addressing fraudulent stock-option practices and ensuring full and fair disclosure of executive compensation."

The SEC and the Justice Department are currently investigating more than 100 companies for suspected illegal options backdating.

Bucky Bush's company, Engineered Support Systems Inc. of St. Louis, sold equipment and electronics to the military. The company benefited financially from the Iraq war. At the time that he sold his shares, Bucky Bush told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times that "he had not pulled any strings in Washington to win Iraq war contracts."