FISA: Rockefeller’s Bill OKs Bush’s Telco Immunity Demand

According to the Washington Post, the Senate and Bush Agree On Terms of Spying Bill. The bill gives in to Bush’s demand and telecommunications companies are to be given full immunity.

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee’s chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

The Fourth Amendment will never be the same again.

So, telcos can present secret evidence and have lawsuits dismissed. But, if a directive is unconstitutional, can it still be considered a legal directive?

Expect the Senate Democrats to be hailing this telco immunity bill as a great compromise, because it includes some token of court review and a sunset clause.

Senate Democrats successfully pressed for a requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court review the government’s procedures for deciding who is to be the subject of warrantless surveillance. They also insisted that the legislation be renewed in six years, Democratic congressional officials said. The Bush administration had sought less stringent oversight by the court and wanted the law to be permanent.

So, according to the WaPo article, the Senate’s Judiciary Committee must also approve the bill, but Chair Pat Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen “Magic Bullet” Specter (R-PA) wants to see “documents underlying the warrantless surveillance program” before “endorsing any immunity clause”. Of course, their subpoena demanding the documents has been ignored by the Bush administration since June, so don’t expect much more than a speed bump there.

So, of course, is any one of our elected representatives asking why immunity is needed if no law was broken?

^{Cross-posted on Daily Kos.}