Opposition to telecom immunity finally growing
By Josh Zaharoff
Posted on Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 08:29:22 AM EST
Some welcome news: the top Democrat and Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee are cooling to the idea of telecom amnesty.
Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), had said that before even considering such a proposal, they would need to see the legal documents underpinning the program, which began after Sept. 11, 2001, and were put under court oversight in January.
On Tuesday, the committee was given access to some of the documents. But Leahy said yesterday that he had a "grave concern" about blanket immunity, saying that "it seems to grant . . . amnesty for telecommunications carriers for warrantless surveillance activities."
This should absolutely not go through. Granting blanket immunity to the telecoms for permitting warrantless wiretapping by the Bush administration would be doubly tragic: (1) it simply lets the telecoms off the hook for illegal activity, without any due process, a result that can only be seen as an affront to the law and to justice, and (2) it would eliminate the greatest point of leverage in investigating the extent, nature, and legality of the government's domestic spying program. If the telecoms are preemptively off the hook, they have little to fear by blocking investigations into their actions and, by extension, those of the power-hungry executive branch.
We're not out of the woods yet, though. Leahy and Specter are hesitating, but they're not drawing the line in the sand, though Sen. Chris Dodd did that last week. Here's more from the two ranking Senators.
The activities seem to be "in violation of the privacy rights of Americans" and of federal domestic surveillance law, [Leahy] said, noting that he is still "carefully considering" what is in the documents.
Immunity "is designed to shield this administration from accountability for conducting surveillance outside the law," Leahy said. Dismissing the lawsuits would eliminate "perhaps the only avenue" for "an honest assessment" of the legality of the warrantless surveillance program, he said.
Specter agreed that the "courts ought not to be closed" to such lawsuits. "If, at this late date, the Congress bails out whatever was done before -- and we can't even discuss what has been done -- that is just an open invitation for this kind of conduct in the future," he said.
Specter added that he thinks the carriers "have a strong, equitable case" but that his inclination is toward indemnification, where the government would assume any financial penalties.
As you can see, the slowdown on the telecom amnesty portion of FISA is good, but it's not clear how much fight the Senators have in them. We know the Bush administration may never give up the fight when it comes to maintaining secrecy and expanding its power. We'll need Leahy and Specter to continue blocking this process and to ultimate strip amnesty out of any bill that goes forward.
Tags: telecom, immunity, FISA, abuse of power, wiretapping, spying (all tags)
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