Election-year spying deal is flawed, overly broad

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[Commentary] The skids are greased. President Bush and the candidates who want his job, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, are all on board. As early as today, the Senate will begin voting on new rules governing how spy agencies intercept phone calls and e-mails between suspected terrorists overseas and people in the USA. The compromise is meant to quell the storm that erupted after Bush's warrantless wiretapping program was revealed in 2005. So does the bipartisan support mean it's a good deal? Not really. Among this latest measure's defects:

1) In loosening surveillance rules for overseas targets (intelligence officials wouldn't even need to show that they're suspected of terrorism), the program relies on the government's good intentions to preserve the rights of innocent Americans who get swept into government data banks as a byproduct. History suggests that relying on government discretion is a very bad bet.

2) It seeks to block future presidential lawbreaking by stating that this legislation is the only legal framework for such surveillance. But the original 1978 law said the same thing, which didn't stop Bush from ignoring it after Sept. 11, 2001.

3) It effectively would grant retroactive immunity to phone companies that cooperated with the president's illegal plan and now face about 40 lawsuits.

A federal court must grant the protection as long as it finds that the president asked for the wiretapping and that the attorney general asserted it was legal -- which they did. The compromise, which passed the House by a substantial margin last week, isn't all bad. It requires an official account of what happened when Bush circumvented the law, requires a warrant for Americans being targeted overseas and sets up ongoing monitoring to keep the overall program on track. But the bottom line is that the president didn't need to ignore the law in the first place. The secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act routinely grants 99.98% of the warrants the administration asks for, even after surveillance has begun. The nation would benefit if Congress held the president closer to these minimal safeguards, rather than writing him a bigger blank check.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080625/edit25.art.htm


Election-year spying deal is flawed, overly broad