Warrantless Surveillance: Taking Liberties

This weekend the Democratic Congress expanded the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) giving the Bush Administration power to tap international telephone calls and email messages of American citizens. Not concerned? Well maybe you ought to be. Here's what the Center for National Security Studies says about it:

The Center for National Security Studies strongly opposes the administration’s FISA bill, S. 1927, because it would permit the National Security Agency to acquire and analyze all international communications of Americans, without any meaningful judicial oversight. The administration legislation would allow the NSA warrantless access to virtually all international communications of Americans with anyone outside the US, so long as the government declared that the surveillance was directed at people, which includes foreigners and citizens, reasonably believed to be located outside the US, a definition that covers billions of people.

The administration rejected all reasonable efforts to require that such surveillance be focused on foreigners, be directed at terrorist targets or be limited to protecting against international terrorism. They also rejected efforts to include meaningful court review of the rights of individual Americans’ swept in or even an independent audit of the affect on the privacy of Americans.

This legislation would sunset or expire in six months. However, the sunset has an exception that would allow any directives by Attorney General Gonzales and Director of National Intelligence McConnell that commandeer access to US telephone and internet companies to remain in effect until their expiration (which is likely to be until the end of the administration since the directives can be issued for up to one year, so could be issued to last for the next six months and then reissued on the eve of the sunset, in January 2008, to remain in effect until this administration is finally over in January 2009).

For CNSS’ full analysis and information on the status of requested documents about surveillance of Americans please follow this link

Here's how Washington's Congressional delegation voted:

Nay	WA	Cantwell, Maria [D]
No Vote	WA	Murray, Patty [D]

Nay	WA-1	Inslee, Jay [D]
Nay	WA-2	Larsen, Rick [D]
Nay	WA-3	Baird, Brian [D]
Aye	WA-4	Hastings, Doc [R]
Aye	WA-5	McMorris Rodgers, Cathy [R]
Nay	WA-6	Dicks, Norman [D]
Nay	WA-7	McDermott, James [D]
Aye	WA-8	Reichert, Dave [R]
Nay	WA-9	Smith, Adam [D]

Source: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1927