While its being reported that Republicans walked out of Congres during a vote on the FISA Bill, Rep. Wexler of Florida told the Randi Rhodes program that the wlkout actually occured during a vote to hold Harriet Myers and Josh Bolton in comtempt of Congress.
Rep. John Campbell says changing FISA laws will make us less safe.
Campbell writes: At question is whether a foreign to foreign phone call that is routed through a switching station in the US is subject to US privacy laws even though both the caller and receiver are in foreign countries. Also at issue is US officials must get a warrant before listening if one of the persons is a known terrorist and the threat is perceived to be imminent.ÂÂ
Campbell, of course, got it wrong. Here’s a story from the NY Times when the FISA Laws were expanded (after the jump).
Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.
“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,†said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.
Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.
Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.
By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,†the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants  latching on to those giant switches  as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed†to be overseas.”
FISA courts had only denied 5 requests for warrants from the time the law started (late 1970s) until the Bush Administratin took office. Published reports indicated that domestic spying on American citizen was well underway *before* 9/11. And if the big Telecoms did nothing wrong in granting the government access to their networks, as the president has said, then why do they need immunity. Sinply put, they need it because it was wronmg, it was illegal and it is unconstitutional; just re-read the 4th amendement.ÂÂ
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