ACLU: Bush's wiretap bill violates Fourth Amendment

[lonestarnot]

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/ACLU_Bushs_wiretap_bill_violates_Fourth_1204.html

Adam Doster
Published: Tuesday December 4, 2007



The Senate plans to take up legislation as early as this week to rein in the Bush Administration's spying powers by reforming the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says that when Congress rushed through wiretapping legislation this past August, they made a grave mistake.

"The Administration bill basically writes August’s mistake in stone," she wrote in a press release Tuesday. "It does nothing to protect Americans' communications and violates the Fourth Amendment requirement that courts supervise any spying on American soil."

The Senate will likely choose between two bills. The first, favored by the Bush Administration, would make the current FISA law permanent and would give retroactive immunity to Telecommunications companies that cooperated with government surveillance efforts. The second would attempt to rein in some the President’s surveillance flexibility. Fredrickson is adamant that the Senate must reject the Bush proposal and hold telecoms accountable for past indiscretions.

"The bill sent to the (not) president (fuckwad) (I added) must not let the telecoms off the hook," she said. "We still don’t know what they did. We do know, however, that the companies won’t have any incentive to follow the law in the future if they get away without having to answer to their customers about why they violated the law."

[goforit]

1. You mean our constitution still exists?

[lonestarnot]

2. No, in thought only.

[madokie]

3. maybe we should as soon as we are rid of this band of theives just roll all the laws back to pre

bushco*. I don't know of anything passed these last 7 years that needs to stand
rec

[Hubert Flottz]

4. Bush wasting our tax dollars tapping our phones and computers

is enabling any real terrorists, by weakening our defense through the further draining of our treasury, in a time of war.

Spend that money doing something to provide some REAL security on the 99% of those shipping containers coming into America without being inspected. Spend some of the money they are wasting snooping on us, on the people from New Orleans who still don't have a real home. Spend it on the uninsured kids...

Bush hasn't done one good thing for working class Americans, since he came to Washington.

[lonestarnot]

5. Yes sir Hubert Flottz.

:patriot:

[Toots]

6. But when McDermet (sp) makes public a recording he did not record

but it shows conspiracy in violating American Law and Trust he is the one to get prosecuted..

[rudy23]

7. Fourth A-what-ment now?

The Constitution is so cute.

[paparush]

8. News Flash! "Sun Rises In East. Bear Poops in Woods"

[lonestarnot]

10. Serial killer in the White House and nobody cares.

[Quantess]

9. K & R