Democratic Senators Introduce Act to Repeal FISA's Retroactive Immunity.
By Susie Madrak Thursday Oct 01, 2009 6:00amThis is certainly good news. I don't know if it has a snowball's chance in hell of passing, but you never know:
Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announced today that they will introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act, which eliminates retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.
“I believe we best defend America when we also defend its founding principles,” said Dodd. “We make our nation safer when we eliminate the false choice between liberty and security. But by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have participated in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, the Congress violated the protection of our citizen’s privacy and due process right and we must not allow that to stand.”
Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “Last year, I opposed legislation that stripped Americans of their right to seek accountability for the Bush administration’s decision to illegally wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Today, I am pleased to join Senator Dodd to introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act. We can strengthen national security while protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Restoring Americans’ access to the courts is the first step toward bringing some measure of accountability for the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to conduct warrantless surveillance in violation of our laws.”
“Granting retroactive immunity to companies that went along with the illegal warrantless wiretapping program was unjustified and undermined the rule of law,” Feingold said. “Congress should not have short-circuited the courts’ constitutional role in assessing the legality of the program. This bill is about ensuring that the law is followed and providing accountability for the American people.”
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where President Obama stands on this one, considering he was against the FISA legislation before he was for it.
But I'm glad this bill is even in existence.
Me too. At least they are willing to give it a shot.
Yeah, it's not like you can predict with 100 percent certainty that the Dems will abandon this too, when it comes to a vote.
They don't really expect it to go anywhere.
If they thought it might, they'd never have introduced it...
Obama will stand on the VETO.
There's now way in hell this is passing. Too many people on both sides of the aisle will end up going down if the shit Bush got away with comes to light. People like Mikulski and others can't let that happen.
That's why so many people are pissed off with the Dems and with Obama himself. He voted for immunity for the telecoms, regardless of what he said before the vote. He sided with big business. He went against the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights.
Too many people are far too quick to forgive him for that. Why? Because he SAID some other nice things they agree with. (Like health care reform, and shutting down Guantanamo.)
But what has he actually done?
In short, this will never happen.
What has McCain done? Railed against how evil torture was, then allowed Bush to do it then made jokes about killing Iranian civillians.
Sorry chum, as much as I despise his cloture vote, Obama was still the better choice.
not what they say.
to watch a telecom mouthpiece try to convince congress that their corporation had
acted in good faith.
Mohammed Atta acted in good faith too but that didn't make what he did right.
I have some criminal acts in my past I'd like to have "retroactively immunized"
"...bring us a warrant." The "we HAD to cooperate...they told us to..." defense wears pretty thin in view of this, IMHO!
I believe they were paid by the government for their cooperation. Seriously. They were providing a "service", just like call waiting and conference calls, there's a charge.
if AT&T had felt a greater obligation in providing FISA circumvented access because they possess the lions share of international switches.
Also if AT&T allows Google to access the iPhone, I'll forget this whole thing happened.
Being it involves Senator 'Immunity for Torture' Leahy I sure as hell would not count on it going anywhere. Just window dressing for his up-coming election campaign. If for some reason it actually DID come close to passing Leahy would probably vote against it.
and, hopefully many Americans will pay attention.....so they can finally understand how easy it is for our civil rights to be taken/given away and how hard it is to get them restored (if they are).
Fear is a powerful persuader.
Well, this is the perfect opportunity to find out who in Washington is really against big corporation/
government intrusion into our lives and who just mouths the words.
Welcome to Hell!
Lemme see here....
Republicans are in the minority...so the Democrats should only need 107 votes to pass this puppy...
http://api.ning.com/files/EVFyIZ3YQ9oMF2-aFWt...
You will recall that "thePrez" voted FOR immunity.
Figger he's changed his mind?
Me neither...
The only way this could possibly happen is with immunity from prosecution for any past offenses.
I agree with Susie's pessimism. This is kinda like saying they're going to try and repeal the bail-out. The only time to stop it is when it was up for vote the first time.
First of all, figure that everyone from Texas is voting NAY (Texas is home to both AT&T and Verizon).
Help yourself to a heaping plate of what-ifs and terrorism harum-scarum. Garnish with spineless Democrats conceding that 'we're not saying we don't want to protect the country'.
Count on Jane Harman, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid to capitulate.
n. pl. plu·toc·ra·cies
1. Government by the wealthy.
2. A wealthy class that controls a government.
3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
I hate to say it but because the technology is there to sweep up and save all the data, it can't be undone and will occur in other forms from here on out.
I think we need to get used to the notion that almost nothing is private (because of the nature of modern communications) and you could be recorded or on camera even when not on the phone or at your computer.
"Privacy on the Line" by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau.
This is a little dry, but covers important landmarks in the legal definition of privacy and how new technologies/changes to FISA affect it, and where we can expect to go from here.
Diffie is one of the pioneers of public-key encryption and a VP at Sun Microsystems; Landau is a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems.
I'm also a big fan of Bruce Schneier's "Beyond Fear," which looks at security from a practical perspective, without all this 'fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here' horseshit.
Thanks for the recommendations shadow. I copied them to my notes and I'll try looking them up.
just from the Internet. The Third Reich would have been overjoyed to have have the internet where they could just snoop any blog-web site to put together a list.
They might have even been able to keep Germans glued to their seats with enter-info-tainment while they plummeted whatever country was in their interest.
upon how the Conservatives and the Republicans frame the debate.
If the Republicans come out against this... then, by golly, some Dems will come out against it too (I fully expect all of Arkansas' delegation of Democrats to vote against it... bloody wankers).
... one whiff of, "Democrats want to leave us unprotected against terrorists!" and the lot of 'em will roll over and beg for a cookie.
People aren't going to bother to think about this stuff. They'd much rather believe Dunkin' Donuts and Rachael Ray were sending a secret message to hidden terrorists when she wore a keffiyah-like scarf in an ad (that Dunkin' Donuts pulled) ... rather than, "Rachael Ray wore an ugly scarf."
pepperoni pizza delivery this up and coming weekend and won't notice or more likely remember what happened.
... you can expect the Retroactive Repeal of the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act.
I'll see your Retroactive Repeal and raise you two Retroactive Repeals.
Challenge it in court. I think the SCOTUS already ruled that retroactive immunity is unconstitutional.
...to see encouraging signs like this coming from some democrats. BUT... even if this legislation passes, our government is still doing a "one step forward, two steps back" dance. There's much work to be done to restore our system of checks and balances.
Here's a quote from Leahy: "Restoring Americans’ access to the courts is the first step toward bringing some measure of accountability for the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to conduct warrantless surveillance in violation of our laws."
So here we have Leahy admitting that on this issue, Bush broke the law, something most of us knew as fact back when he was in power. I don't know how many times Bush blatantly broke our laws while he was in office, but I'm sure Leahy has a pretty good idea. Where then, were his demands for impeachment when Bush was in power?
I like the word retroaction. How about a Retroactive Credit Act in which the credit card companies to return to the account conditions that existed on January 1, 2007. Raised APRs, reduced credit limits, increased payments from 2% to 5%, etc., etc. All their sleazy tricks
(in a rush to get under the wire of the new restrictions effective in
February 2010) reversed.
How could the Congress give them a year in which to rob us blind?
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