FISA Renewal
By JCDFA (edited from a release by 1 Pres Candidate to be nameless).
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is before the Senate
for renewal. FISA is the bill that specifies the process for obtaining
a warrant to access confidential communications records. It has been
routinely ignored by the Bush Administration, and as it turns out, they
have been doing warrantless surveillance since BEFORE 9/11.
Bush
has put a clause in the FISA bill that grants retroactive immunity to
the phone companies that turned over confidential records to the
government without a warrant. They want this retroactive immunity
because several law suits have been filed against AT&T, Verizon and
others for civil rights violations. If these cases come to court, it
will be on record in a court of law that the Bush administration
violated the law and directed the phone companies to violate the law,
as well.
The danger of granting retroactive immunity is
extraordinary. First, we would be taking away the Judiciarys normal
authority in such matters. Second, we dont know what we are granting
immunity for we dont know the extent to which our rights have been
violated. Third, companies that knowingly violated the law, even at the
governments behest, must be held accountable.
Democrats have put a hold on the FISA bill, but that wont stop the Senate
from bring the bill to the floor for a vote. The FISA statute is now
before the Judiciary Committee, and it is possible the Judiciary
Committee can vote to strip the retroactive immunity provision from the
bill. If they pass the FISA bill as is, Democrats will filibuster the
bill. They believe retroactive immunity is an egregious violation of our
Constitutional rights and he will do everything in his power to prevent
it from becoming law. If the retroactive immunity provision is stripped
from the bill, it could be reintroduced as an amendment, but it would
be infinitely easier to defeat the amendment than to successfully
filibuster the entire bill.
WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!
We
are asking anyone and everyone to contact members of the Judiciary
Committee and demand that they remove retroactive immunity from the
FISA bill.
If
you are interested in the testimony of Mark Klein, a former AT&T
employee who testified before the Judiciary Committee about the
wholesale dumping of Internet communications to the NSA, you can check it out.
Democrats believe it is a false choice between our civil liberties and our
security. We must hold the line and protect the RULE OF LAW not the
rule of men, as the Bush administration would have it. I hope you will
join us in this battle.
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