(2007-08-08) Fisa Protect America Signed

George W Bush signed the "ProtectAmerica" update to FISA, giving the White House broader powers for warrantless eavesdropping.

This goes beyond the Terrorist Surveillance Program. As described by President Bush in December 2005, communications monitored by the TSP had to involve, on one end, a known al-Qaeda figure. Now, the subject of surveillance simply has to be "reasonably believed" to have "foreign intelligence information" and be, more likely than not, outside the U.S. "The only thing they can't do is that they can't ask the FBI to go put a tap on your phone to listen to your phone conversations with other people in the U.S.," says Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies. "But what they basically do is they scoop up the stream of all calls going in and out of the U.S."

Former National Security Lawyer Bryan Cunningham seems willing to lie about it.

The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance. The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court.

In a telephone briefing for reporters on Monday, officials said the administration had set out to resolve a "narrow" technical problem that had called into question whether intelligence officials needed to get a court warrant to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications that happened to pass through American telecommunication switches. But in fact the legislation as enacted not only provides that no warrant is needed in such a situation but also goes further, in giving the administration discretion to eavesdrop on foreign communications that might involve Americans.

Here are links to the Roll Call votes (16 Democrats voted for it (including Jim Webb, Joseph Lieberman, and Dianne Feinstein); not a single Republican voted against it). But 12 senators failed to vote (Not Voting) on the bill (including John McCain, Barbara Boxer, and John Kerry), seemingly to escape any blame.

• Chris Dodd was the one Senator currently running for the White House who left the campaign trail to debate the Protect America Act.

But mostly, the spectacle left us wondering what the Democrats - especially their feckless Senate leaders - plan to do with their majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads to use it to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control president. (Democratic Party)

Update: more details from the ACLU.

Oct09 update: Judiciary Chairman JohnConyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Intelligence Chairman SilvestreReyes (D-Texas) introduced legislation Tuesday, updating changes Congress made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act over the summer despite broad opposition from Democrats in the House, who were concerned the update could trample of the civil liberties of U.S. citizens.

• the ACLU reviews the Restore Act.

• A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration plan, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications utilities that participated in the once-secret program to eavesdrop without court warrants. No one is willing to predict with certainty how the question will play out. Some Congressional officials and others monitoring the debate said the final result might not be much different from the result in August, despite the Democrats' insistence that they would not let stand the extension of the powers.