June 19, 2008 08:45 PM UTC

Wiretaps? Bring 'Em On Say Dems!

•  
• by: Druid

The White House and Congress today reached a deal on the most comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s intelligence surveillance laws in 30 years. It would provide potential retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that previously cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and extend government surveillance powers.

After months of negotiations between President Bush’s top advisers and congressional leaders, the deal was announced today and set to be approved on the House floor tomorrow. Senate passage of the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which had been held up since last summer largely because of fights about the immunity provision, would likely come next week.

The Democratic leadership is rolling over on this.  Hoyer is proving himself to be a real coward on a lot of these issues.  It seems as though the Dem leadership is hoping that the people are so focused on the ’08 Race that they can slip these changes through.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), who has been the lead Democratic negotiator with the White House and congressional Republicans, said this week that the bill is much better than the version approved earlier this year by the Senate, which allowed for no court review of telecom immunity.

“It will accommodate the protection of civil liberties going forward,” Hoyer said yesterday.

But the outlines of the deal bode poorly for more than 40 lawsuits filed against telecommunications providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint for providing vast troves of customer data to government investigators after the terrorist attacks.

How exactly will this protect civil liberties Mr. Hoyer?  What do you think of this Senator Salazar?  I am curious to find out.

How does this change the current policy of wiretaps?  When are we going to get the full story on who the administration has been listening to and who they have not?  Shouldn’t these questions be answered before the Dem leadership pusses out again?

The last quote is the best:

“It looks like it was all give from the Democratic side and all take from the Republican side,” said Caroline Frederickson, a Washington based lobbyist for the ACLU.

Go to the Washington Post for the full story.