It’s Not Just The Telecom Portion Of The Spying Bill That Stinks

Obama should keep his word that he would fight that part of a FISA bill that lets off the hook telecoms that helped the Bush administration spy on Americans.  MoveOn is leading the charge.

These companies helped the Bush Administration illegally spy on the emails and phone calls of innocent Americans. By giving “immunity” to these companies, all lawsuits brought against them by civil liberties groups would be thrown out of court. That means we may never find out how far Bush went in breaking the law. And once it’s done, it can’t be undone. That’s why we need Obama to promise to block any bill that has immunity.

But immunity for telecoms isn’t the only thing wrong with the bill.  The Star-Ledger ennumerates some of the other probems with what BushCo wants to do, and will do, if aided by its Democratic congressional enablers:

The president also very much wants the other major part of the new wiretapping law, the section that amounts to an aggressive broadening of federal surveillance powers. The provisions would emasculate the ability of federal judges to review wiretapping orders, especially if the orders were for a general information “dragnet” as opposed to targeting specific persons.

Snooping government agents would be officially free to plug into phone and data lines and copy and review untold millions of calls and e-mails, all without serious adult supervision.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.