This past Friday, June 20, the House of Representatives wrote the Administration another blank check: it ignored its 2006 electoral mandate to stand up to the White House’s bullying – instead passing an unconstitutional plan in new FISA legislation that allows the federal government and the telecom companies to wiretap Americans’ phone lines without a warrant. (FISA is the legislation regulating the gathering of foreign intelligence.) More outrageously, it provides highly-profitable, billion-dollar phone companies like AT&T with legal immunity, preventing Americans from suing their phone companies in the courts – even if the phone companies have illegally eavesdropped on them.
Will Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Senate be able to stand strong and remove this capitulation by Speaker Pelosi and the House to conservatives who would undermine our rights in the name of security, leaving us with neither? Encouragingly, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said he does not support the immunity deal because it it prevents a court from reviewing the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program.
But it’s not clear if Sen. Reid has enough support for this fight, telling Bloomberg’s Al Hunt this past Friday that "Probably we can't take that out of the bill, but I'm going to try.”
Let’s support Sen. Reid and the Senate’s effort to strip telecom immunity from the FISA bill. Sign our Petition to Make the Telecoms Liable for Spying on Americans.