George Bush's latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress

[EV_Ares]

Post by Glenn Greenwald @ Salon:

UPDATE: The rage level is going to be quite high today and will only get higher as the day progresses. From the Press Release jointly issued by the GOP and Democratic Chairmen responsible for this bill:

Bipartisan FISA Compromise Reached

Bill Protects Nation, Civil Liberties

WASHINGTON – Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John "Jay" Rockefeller (WV), Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Kit Bond (MO), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD), and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (MO) announced today that a bipartisan compromise has been agreed to that will modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. . . .

"This bipartisan bill balances the needs of our intelligence community with Americans' civil liberties, and provides critical new oversight and accountability requirements," said Hoyer. "It is the result of compromise, and like any compromise is not perfect, but I believe it strikes a sound balance. Furthermore, we have ensured that Congress can revisit these issues because the legislation will sunset at the end of 2012."

It's outrageous of anyone to suggest that the Democrats capitulated here. They stood firm for you and made sure that this bill will only last for five years. Jay Rockefeller celebrated this "historic, bipartisan agreement to modernize FISA is about providing an essential tool in the fight against terrorism." We're going to be slaughtered by the Terrorists unless the President can listen to our calls and read our emails with no warrants and unless the telecoms are immunized for their lawbreaking.

UPDATE II: The full text of this bill is where it belongs: on Steny Hoyer's website, here (.pdf).

Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that's obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won't ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they're being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.

So basically, one day in the near future, we're all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we're never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won't we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs' lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.

The ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson calls this "disastrous surveillance legislation" and said this about the new warrantless eavesdroppping provisions in the bill:

rest of Greenwald's post @ the link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/19/telecom/index.html#postid-updateZ1

[New Dawn]

1. Kick.

This is a very important article.