According to today's New York Times, House Democrats are fighting for changes to the law on N.S.A. eavesdropping enacted in August.
The bill to be proposed on Tuesday by the Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees would impose more controls over the powers of security agency, including quarterly audits by the Justice Department inspector general. The measure would also give the foreign intelligence court a role in approving, in advance, "basket" or "umbrella" warrants for bundles of overseas communications, a Congressional official said."We are giving the N.S.A. what it legitimately needs for national security but with far more limitations and protections than are in the Protect America Act," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.
Perhaps most important in the eyes of Democratic supporters, the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications utilities that participated in the eavesdropping. That has been a top priority of the administration. The temporary measure gave the utilities immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.
As always, the challenge in this case is balancing the imperative of protecting national security without unduly compromising civil liberties. The key is not to go too far in either direction, either unduly infringing upon our freedoms or unwisely constraining our ability to stop terrorists from carrying out another 9/11. I don't envy Congress on this one, but I guess this is what we pay them the big bucks to figure out. I just hope they get this one right.
Great work by Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats in fixing a seriously flawed law. This is exactly why we turned Congress over to the Democrats.
Nuh uh, Steny. No deal. Letting the cave-in bill expire with nothing to replace it would be better than a bill that bad.
And there are serious problems with the House bill as it is, not to mention if the Senate passes something much weaker and this version gets watered down in conference to match it.
Go for what's right, don't start with a compromised position.
We were consulted. And we appreciate being consulted - but being consulted is NOT enough. Leadership and the committee did consult us, and but they did not make a vital, key change. In the current draft of the bill (the RESTORE act) there are blanket warrants -- blanket warrants are not good enough. That is the flaw in the house bill. And it will be fatal if it stays in the bill.
We must have individual warrants for any call information collected from Americans.