Fergie's Tech Blog

Opinion: Congress Should Not Assist in a Cover-Up of NSA Spying

The EFF's Cindy Cohn writes in The San Francisco Chronicle:

When Congress rushed to pass the so-called "Protect America Act" on its way out the door for its August recess, San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, expressed great regret, telling the New York Times on Aug. 5 that the new law "does violence to the Constitution of the United States." She vowed to take steps to correct the temporary measure long before it expires in February 2008.

Now is the time for Speaker Pelosi to make good on that promise, or at least prevent any further harm. In the last couple of weeks, the Bush administration has stepped up the pressure on Congress to surrender even more of individual citizens' privacy and civil liberties. At the top of the Bush administration's list: granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that have been participating with the National Security Agency in the widespread and incontrovertibly illegal warrantless surveillance of ordinary Americans since 2001. Granting this immunity would prevent the courts from ever ruling on the legality of the "dragnet" surveillance and from imposing needed restraints. Not content with the sweeping new powers granted to it by Congress in August, the Bush administration is essentially demanding that the now Democratic-led Congress cave in to a cover-up.

posted by Fergie @ 10/12/2007 10:42:00 AM