Glenn Greenwald: What FISA capitulations are Democrats planning next?

[babylonsister]

Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday October 9, 2007 06:37 EST
What FISA capitulations are Democrats planning next?

(updated below - Update II)

An article in this morning's NYT reports what many have long been expecting -- that Congressional Democrats are ready to capitulate to the White House again on warrantless eavesdropping just as they did in August, only this time by making their capitulation permanent:

Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.

Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.

This article may very well turn out to be accurate. Personally, I've been arguing since the disgraceful August FISA gift to the Bush White House that the chances were far greater that Democrats, before the six-month sunset provision elapsed, would actually pass an even worse FISA bill -- one that gave the President all the warrantless surveillance powers they gave him before plus what he wants most: retroactive amnesty for lawbreaking -- rather than adhering to their promise to "fix" what they did. So it is quite possible that Congressional Democrats will do here what they have been doing all year long, ever since they were pointlessly given control of Congress -- namely, meekly (and/or eagerly) give George Bush everything he demands.

But at least thus far, from everything I can tell, the picture is more complicated and less depressing than this NYT article suggests, and the defeat is not yet a fait accompli. To begin with, the bill to be proposed today by the House Democratic leadership actually contains some surprisingly good and important provisions.

That bill would compel the administration "to reveal to Congress the details of all electronic surveillance conducted without court orders since Sept. 11, 2001, including the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program." It would also require the maintenance of a data base to record the identities of all Americans whose conversations are surveilled. And it provides nothing at all in the way of amnesty or immunity for lawbreaking telecoms or administration officials. The bill introduced by House leadership is a bill the White House will never accept and would certainly veto, and it is vastly better -- in important ways -- than the atrocity they enacted in August.

It is important here to recall that there is actually an amendment to FISA that is at least arguably justifiable. Even the original FISA law never required warrants in order to eavesdrop on (a) foreign-to-foreign calls or (b) calls involving a U.S. citizen where the target was a non-citizen outside the U.S. (who just happened to call into the U.S.). But recently, technological developments resulted in such calls, even foreign-foreign calls, being routed through the U.S. via fiber optics, and a FISA court ruled this year that the language of FISA requires warrants for such calls.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html

[blondeatlast]

1. What an incredibly misleading headline (not your SL--that is the actual headline).

Sounds like we're going in the best direction with this--backward.

Greenwald thinks so too.

Whoever wrote that headline either didn't read the article or deliberately spun it.

[renie408]

2. It ALL sounds like deliberate spin.

I am not sure WHY the NYT would try to make the Dems look like shit, but both their article and this headline seem to be trying to do that.