Critics blast bill proposing NSA spy changes

CRITICS BLAST BILL PROPOSING NSA SPYING CHANGES
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Anne Broache]
Criticism is growing of a proposed law touted by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) and the White House as a compromise solution to the ongoing controversy over the National Security Agency's electronic surveillance program. Sen Specter hailed the agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations with Vice President Dick Cheney and administration lawyers, as recognition that the President does not have a "blank check." But civil liberties advocates and major newspaper editorial boards with knowledge of the draft proposal have charged in recent days that the real picture is vastly different. Some say that Specter's intended bill is a "sham" that would not, in fact, bind the Administration to submitting existing or future surveillance programs for scrutiny -- and could erode checks on the chief executive's power and constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches. "The reality is, Specter is filling in the exact amount--it's not a blank check; it's whatever you want," Lisa Graves, the American Civil Liberties Union's national security lobbyist, said in a telephone interview. She added that the proposal is "far worse than the Patriot Act." Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Kevin Bankston deemed Specter's draft measure "a rubber stamp for any future spying program dreamed up by the executive," saying it "threatens to make court oversight of electronic surveillance voluntary rather than mandatory." Scathing editorials in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times this weekend took a similar tack.
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