Breaking News | Forum | UK News | USA News | World News | Political News | Sci-Tech News | War & Terrorism News | Sports News | Multimedia | Set Homepage

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007

By Thomas Ferraro

The Democratic-led US Congress yielded to President George Bush on Saturday and temporarily expanded the government’s power to spy on foreign suspects electronically without a court order .

Civil liberties groups charged the measure would create a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding US citizens. But the house of representatives approved the bill by 227 votes to 183, a day after senate approval, by 60 votes to 28.

“After months of prodding by house republicans, congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law — and America will be the safer for it,” declared house minority leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.

With legislators to begin a month-long recess this weekend, Bush had called on them to stay until they passed the legislation.

“Protecting America is our most solemn obligation,” Bush said earlier in the day.

The measure authorises the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people in the US and foreign targets overseas.

The administration has to submit to a secret court a description of the procedures used to ensure that surveillance without a warrant only targeted people outside the US.

The court, set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa ), would review the procedures and may order changes . The administration could appeal.

Fisa now requires the government to obtain orders from its court to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists in the US.

But after the September 11 attacks, Bush authorised warrantless interception of communications between people in the US and others overseas if one of them was suspected of terrorist ties. Critics charged that programme violated the law, but Bush argued he had wartime powers to do so.

In January, Bush put the programme under the supervision of the Fisa court, but the terms have not been made public.

Congress has subpoenaed documents in an effort to determine Bush’s legal justification for the warrantless surveillance.

The new bill was needed in part, aides said, because of restrictions recently imposed by the secret court on spy agencies’ intercepting of communications. Congress has to come up with permanent legislation within six months.

Republicans earlier rejected a Democrat alternative providing greater court supervision.

See More:USA News 

Have Your Say: US power to spy on foreigners gets nod
Please note, only selected comments will be published.

Or discuss this report in our new forums

RSS TrackBack URL

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 3:21 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Loading ...

ADVERTISEMENTS

SITE MAPS

7/7 Afghanistan Alternative Energy Art BBC Big Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush CIA Climate Change Cover Up Cults Culture Database State David Hicks David Ray Griffin Democrats Demos Drugs Education EU False Flag FBI Fraud Free Speech Freemasons G8 Globalization Guantanamo Health News History ID Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel Law Marches MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police State Propaganda RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Secrecy Security Slavery Space Sports Spying Stephen Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony Blair Torture TV UK News UN USA News Video Voting Warfare White House Wolfowitz World News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version