FISA Amendments Act of 2008

As the controversy swirls - most of us don't know what the Senate will actually be voting on. The FISA bill has two problems - both at the core of the bill.

Protection from foreign terrorists

The first problem is at the heart of the bill - security. Unfortunately, if the bill is passed by the Senate, you and I will have no right to privacy in electronic communications. The government will always be able to claim that they were trying to prevent a terrorist threat.

The current law already allows the U.S. government to intercept communications (thought to be) between a domestic source and a foreign intelligence agent outside the United States, it can petition the Foreign Intelligence Security Court ("FISC") for a FISA warrant - either prior to implementing a wiretap or after the fact.

You'd think that an overhaul of FISA would make us safer. Au contraire! The New Act

• expands the governments ability to (indirectly) spy on U.S. citizens if it can reasonably claim that the true target of the surveillance in question is a foreign party located abroad but
• actually restricts the government's ability to target Americans that happen to be living or working overseas.)

The new bill doesn't just fail the security test. It goes even further to erode our civil liberties. The bill avoids the probable cause problem by allowing the government to target without restriction persons "reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign surveillance information".

Telecom immunity

Most of us know that the bill generously grants telecommunications companies a broad immunity against financial and criminal liability for helping the U.S. government spy on domestic communications without a warrant or probable cause. There's only one string attached: Telcoms must show that the government asked them to spy on Americans.

All the years these companies were spying on us illegally and they get immunity. No penalties. No prison terms. In no other situation would a criminal get off for breaking a law if the law is changed later. It still was illegal when they broke the law.

Moreover, if you are as conspiracy minded as I am, you might wonder what other information the telecoms were collecting and how they used it. What corporate profits were gleaned from spying on non-terrorist customers?

What to do?

The Senate could be voting on the FISA bill containing immunity as early as next week. As always, you can write, fax, email, call your senator. If your senator is up for re-election - let them know that you will not donate to the campaign if they vote aye.

Candidate Obama is supposed to submit an ammendment stripping the telecom immunity from the bill. That would be a good start but doesn't address the bigger problems with this bill. This one needs to be scrapped completely.