telecom bill management


House Democratic leadership (which is to say, Congressman Steny Hoyer) announced a “breakthrough” in discussions with the White House and the Republicans which would produce a “compromise” in the long fight over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I have taken several days to look over the legislation and have some comments. First, the debate over FISA is of vital significance to our country. The issues are simple. They go to protection of our democracy, now under unrelenting attack by the Bush Administration. Repeatedly, official spokesmen for the administration have mischaracterized the FISA statute, misstated the import of their own proposals, and have used fear as a tool to try to ram through ill-considered legislation that would undermine one of the fundamental principles of the American republic: the notion that the Government’s intrusion into the private dealings of its citizens can occur only after a check through the judicial branch. The debate raises many other issues. One of the most significant of them is the idea of immunity for telecommunications companies. The evidence at hand now shows that telecommunications companies facilitated criminal surveillance of their customers (ie, surveillance that violated the limitations of FISA, and was therefore felonious) at the request of the Bush Administration’s rogue Justice Department and National Security Administration. The telecoms have spared no expense lobbying in their effort to get out from under the …