Retroactive Immunity for Legal Activity

Recently, the law giving the Federal Government expanded powers to listen to your phone conversations, read your emails, and monitor your electronic communications expired. Be happy.

President Bush has said repeatedly this will leaves America more vulnerable to terrorist attack. At best, he’s wrong. At worst, he’s fearmongering.

His administration has told us the telecommunications companies were refusing to allow new surveillance requests.  They have had to retract that statement and admit cooperation is continuing without disruption.

The facts are any investigation that is currently ongoing can continue without interruption until August. And any new eavesdropping can take place under the old rules, where the Justice Department need only get a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Under these rules, the Justice Department has 3 days to get a warrant after they have begin listening to the suspect’s communications. And while not a rubber stamp, the FISA court has approved almost all warrant requests put before it.

There is a new bill before the House which would put remove many, if not most, of the strictures under the traditional FISA laws permanently. The Bush Administration is adamant about getting this law passed. With such a compliant court, why the need for the new law?

To protect the telecommunication companies that violated your rights.

A variety of telecom companies allowed the government wide access to their system traffic without a warrant or court order, allowing the government to illegally troll through the communications of any American citizen without probably cause. This was against the law. The telecom companies are now facing dozens of lawsuits from people seeking redress for the telecoms’ collusion in this clandestine activity. The new eavesdropping law contains a provision granting the telecoms retroactive immunity for allowing this spying. In essence, the government wants to give the telecoms a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has said on NPR’s ‘Weekend Edition’ news show that the telecoms did nothing illegal.  As such, there should be no need for the retroactive immunity.  If the actions taken by the telecoms were lawful, then let the legal process work.  The the suits have no basis, they should, and will be dismissed.  If, however, there was a legal breach, the phone companies deserve to be held responsible for failing in their duty.  Civil, and even criminal, penalties should be assessed as appropriate.

We are a nation in danger.  But giving up the freedoms that make us a target is not a path to safety.

This entry was posted on 28. February 2008 at 14:47 and is filed under Politics. 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.