November 20, 2007 Warrantless Spying and Telecom Immunity By Jim
Babka Congress is still attempting to fix and perfect the
Protect America Act (PAA). We opposed this bill back in August.
In haste, it was passed. It was a terrible bill that undermined
the already tissue-paper thin privacy protections that the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court provided.  Some of you
are sticklers for detail. That's good. You should be. But the
details in this case are a jumbled mess, full of technicalities.
And we would be the first to admit, we don't understand every
detail. But we've posted a report on our blog that goes into
greater detail about what just happened on the Senate side.  But
there's good news, overall. We're winning!  Until last week,
leaders of our coalition thought we were on the ropes. They
thought a bill nearly as bad as the PAA was going to pass, with
immunity for the major telecoms that permitted vacuum sweeps of
their networks likely to pass as well. The immunity part was
particularly discomforting