|
A majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday voted to send to floor debate a new domestic surveillance law that dropped Administration language giving telephone carriers legal immunity for any role they played in the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program on the private phone calls and emails of Americans. Connecticut Senator Christopher J. Dodd had promised to use a senator’s power to put a “hold” on pending legislation if it included the immunity provision. President Bush said last month that he had found "common ground" with Congress on giving immunity to the phone companies. The ACLU of Connecticut is one of several state affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union that have challenged the telephone companies’ allowing the government to procure the telephone records of thousands of American citizens without judicial authorization and in violation of the Constitution. The ACLU position is that the telecom companies should have refused to disclose the information without court warrant. One company in fact did refuse. All the cases have been consolidated in a suit now pending in San Francisco federal court. The Administration’s proposed deal would obviate those court actions. "While the President may think that it's right to offer immunity to those who break the law and violate the right to privacy of thousands of law-abiding Americans,” Dodd said in a statement, “I want to assure him it is not a value we have in common and I hope the same can be said of my fellow Democrats in the Senate. "For too long we have failed to respect the rule of law and failed to protect our fundamental civil liberties. I will do what I can to see to it that no telecommunications giant that was complicit in this Administration's assault on the Constitution is given a get-out-of-jail-free card," Dodd said. The proposed immunity provision was part of a tentative agreement to extend, with modifications, a law passed earlier this year authorizing the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program with safeguards – including requiring court-ordered warrants -- that had been ignored earlier. The House of Representatives Thursday passed its version of the bill, which also left out the immunity provisions. Read more on the ACLU’s position: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/32207prs20071017.html
|
