[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Committee passes surveillance laws update in face of veto threat Committee passes surveillance laws update in face of veto threat By Terry Frieden WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday passed on a strict party-line vote an update to the nation's electronic surveillance laws despite a veto threat from the attorney general. The bill would mean the nation's intelligence services do not need to request a court warrant to monitor foreign-to-foreign communications involving suspected terrorists. All 10 Democrats on the committee voted for the measure, while all nine Republicans opposed it. Republicans objected to the effort to push through a complicated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act modernization plan on which they had not been consulted. Approval of the proposal by the Democrats was assured after late changes were made in several provisions to satisfy Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island. Administration officials had been lobbying for a permanent change to the FISA law after an intelligence court ruled earlier this year warrants were needed for those communications. Congress in August passed a temporary change and now is considering various bills to make it permanent. One of the key changes approved by the committee would make clear the FISA law is the exclusive authority for approving warrants for electronic surveillance. The full Senate still must approve the bill. The committee is expected to vote later Thursday on a controversial question of whether to grant retroactive immunity to the telecommunication companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program. Some of the companies are being sued by people who say their privacy rights were violated when phone records, e-mail logs and other information were turned over to the government without court approval. The White House is pushing for approval of the immunity provision, but many Democrats on the panel are opposed to it. On Wednesday Attorney General Michael Mukasey told a key Democratic senator he would recommend the president veto the Judiciary Committee bill if it arrived on the president's desk. The veto threat adds to an already testy atmosphere in which the highly partisan Senate Judiciary Committee has struggled to reach a consensus on how to update the 30-year-old FISA law, which they agree has been overtaken by dramatic changes in technology. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, Mukasey was adamant in opposing Leahy's plan for changing the law. Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell co-signed the letter. "We strongly oppose the proposed substitute amendment. If the substitute is part of a bill that is presented to the president, we and the president's other senior advisers will recommend that he veto the bill," they said. Leahy last week introduced his substitute to a FISA modernization bill already approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The intelligence committee bill -- which was shepherded through the committee by its chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, won wide bipartisan support and is backed by the administration. It includes retroactive immunity to protect the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the NSA. Leahy, who opposed Mukasey's confirmation last week, is adamantly opposed to the immunity provision. Mukasey and McConnell listed almost a dozen other provisions or omissions in the Leahy plan that they said "would not provide the intelligence community with the tools it needs effectively to collect foreign intelligence information vital for the security of the nation." The White House, meanwhile, released a statement calling Leahy's plan "a step back for our nation's security." Leahy and many of his Democratic allies back provisions they believe provide essential civil liberties protections against excessive government intrusion and potential abuse. The House of Representatives, which has not included the immunity provision, is expected to consider its version of the electronic surveillance bill later Thursday. E-mail to a friend CNN's Kevin Bohn contributed to this story.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: All (#0)
Last week Mukasey said he had not been read into the NSA program(s), and already he knows enough to recommend a veto?
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Phone calls from the VP's office don't take that long.
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||