Consumer rights advocates and the people they represent in the US was dealt with another blow today. The Senate approved a provision that would give US telecom companies retroactive immunity for warrentlessly wiretapping people using their networks.
Senators Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold tried putting an amendment into legislation that would change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The proposed amendment was going to be put into the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) The senate voted the amendment down 31 to 67.
The news comes on the heals of the news that congress is approving a bill that forces college campuses to fight copyright infringement.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued a press release on the matter saying that the bill would have to go to the House for additional debate to reconcile the differences between the act in its current incarnation and the RESTORE act.
“It’s time for Speaker Pelosi to draw a line the sand, and make clear to the president that this House of Representatives is never going to pass any bill that includes immunity for lawbreaking telecoms,” said Bankston. “It’s time for the president to show that he cares more about American lives than about the phone companies’ bottom lines by actually working toward a bipartisan agreement on how to update surveillance law for the 21st century.”
“Attempts by senators like Ms. Feinstein to find a reasonable compromise on the immunity question are much appreciated, but transferring all of the litigation to the secretive and conservative FISA court is unnecessary, inefficient and unwise,” said Bankston. “The regular federal courts are fully capable of handling these cases fairly and securely.”
The fear is that if retroactive immunity is put into law, it would stop the current litigation against AT&T in the Hempting v. AT&T case which alleges that AT&T broke US law by handing over all the information flowing through the AT&T networks to the NSA. EFF has recently brought forth an admission by the government that says that AT&T, in fact, assisted the government in tracking people without a warrant.
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