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luckydog1 -> maybe I was wrong, or let's hear it for the Democratic Congress (8/6/2007 11:35:59 AM)
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The US government now has greater authority to eavesdrop without warrants on American citizens' telephone calls and e-mails after President Bush signed new surveillance legislation into law on Sunday. Authored largely by the White House, the new law, officials say, provides a legal framework for warrantless monitoring that was already being conducted by the National Security Agency outside of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Many Democrats and civil rights activists argue that this new law erodes fundamental American liberties and privacy rights (yet the leadership brought it right to the floor and not a single one attempted a filibuster----my comment /not part of the story). Supporters contend that it's vital to fend off potential terrorist attacks.......
The new law expands the eavesdropping powers Bush claimed he had the right to exercise with his Terrorist Surveillance Program in two major ways, reports The Boston Globe.
First, the law requires telecommunications companies to make their facilities available for government wiretaps, and it grants them immunity from lawsuits for complying. Under the old program, such companies participated only voluntarily – and some were sued for allegedly violating their customers' privacy.
Second, Bush has said his original surveillance program was restricted to calls and e-mails involving a suspected terrorist, but the new law has no such limit. Instead, it allows executive-branch agencies to conduct oversight-free surveillance of all international calls and e-mails, including those with Americans on the line, with the sole requirement that the intelligence-gathering is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." There is no requirement that either caller be a suspected terrorist, spy, or criminal.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0806/p99s04-duts.html see the full story here....
Maybe Pelosi and Reid do care more about the Country than I thought, or maybe it is just naked Politics....
But consider what it means. IF Pelosi and/or Reid had thought the American people were against or neutral on this issue it would never have gotten a vote. But they brought it right to the floor.
These very isues have been debated ad nasuem on these boards. I await the tortured explanations with anticipation.
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