Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of\u00a069 to\u00a028 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president\u2019s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president\u2019s fear-mongering. With today\u2019s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,\u201d said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. \u201cThis legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans\u2019 international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment\u2019s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.<\/p>\n
The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government\u2019s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major \u201cconcession\u201d by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies\u2019 reports.<\/p>\n
The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president\u2019s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies\u2019 right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal \u2014 only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,\u201d said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. \u201cThis bill \u2014 soon to be law \u2014 is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In advance of the president\u2019s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,\u201d said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project.\u00a0\u201cThe bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans\u2019 international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of\u00a069 to\u00a028 and is expected to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-4079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-surveillance-big-brother","7":"category-usa-news","8":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}