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 |  Subject: ANCAPS: Lawmakers reject immunity for phone firms involved in eavesdropping  Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:10 pm | |
| WASHINGTON: After its first secret session in a quarter-century, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday rejected retroactive immunity for the phone companies that took part in the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it voted to place greater restrictions on the government's wiretapping powers.
The decision, by a largely party-line vote of 213 to 197, is one of the few times when Democrats have been willing to buck up against the White House on a national security issue. It also ensures that the months-long battle over the government's wiretapping powers will drag on for at least a few more weeks and possibly much longer.
With President George W. Bush and Democratic leaders squaring off almost daily on the wiretapping question, neither side has shown much inclination to budge. The question now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers passed a bill last month that was much more to the liking of the White House. Unlike the bill approved Friday by the House, it would give legal immunity to the phone providers that helped in the National Security Agency's wiretapping program, which Bush says is essential to protect national security.
The House bill approved Friday includes three key elements: It would refuse retroactive immunity to the phone companies, providing special authority instead for the courts to decide the liability issue; it would add additional judicial restrictions on the government's wiretapping powers while plugging certain loopholes in foreign coverage; and it would create a congressional commission to investigate the NSA program.
Even if the House bill were to gain approval by the Senate - a prospect that appears unlikely - a veto by the White House appears certain. The margin by which the House vote was approved was far short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto.
Even before the first vote was cast, Bush assailed the Democrats' proposal in remarks Thursday at the White House, calling it "a partisan bill that would undermine America's security."
"Companies that may have helped us save lives should be thanked for their patriotic service, not subjected to billion-dollar lawsuits that will make them less willing to help in the future," the president said. "The House bill may be good for class action trial lawyers, but it would be terrible for the United States."
In fact, while some private lawyers are assisting in the litigation, the groups leading the efforts, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, are nonprofit advocacy groups.
Bush also blasted the requirement in the legislation to create a bipartisan commission with subpoena power to examine the workings of the NSA's program. Democrats say it may be the only way they will learn how the program was really run, but Bush called it "a redundant and partisan exercise that would waste our intelligence officials' time and taxpayers' money."
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was sharply critical of the president's assessment that the legislation would not make America safer. "The president is wrong, and he knows it," she said Thursday.
Republicans convinced Democratic leaders to convene a secret session of the House on Thursday evening to discuss classified intelligence related to the phone companies' role in the NSA program. Republicans said the session was crucial to understanding what role the companies had played, but Democrats accused their counterparts of political grandstanding. It was the first secret session since 1983, when the House met behind closed doors to consider funding for the contra rebels in Nicaragua.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/14/america/house.php |
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