Fergie's Tech Blog

White House, Congress Looking For Ways to Keep Surveillance Alive

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write on Newsweek.com:

Faced with the growing likelihood that Congress will not meet a looming deadline to approve critical electronic-eavesdropping legislation, the Bush administration is working on a short-term fix--a temporary extension to a law enacted last summer amid Democratic complaints that the White House had muscled the bill through.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is the administration's principal negotiator with Congress on the surveillance legislation, says it would much prefer that Congress move forward with a permanent extension of the spy law. Privately, however, intel czar Mike McConnell has acknowledged that there may be little chance of winning passage of a permanent new bill before the current law expires.

posted by Fergie @ 1/09/2008 10:42:00 PM