Bush Wants Phone Firms Immune to Privacy Suits

BUSH WANTS PHONE FIRMS IMMUNE TO PRIVACY SUITS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens' privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program. The measure is part of a legislative package drafted by the Justice Department to relax provisions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that restrict the administration's ability to intercept electronic communications in the United States. If passed, the proposed changes would forestall efforts to compel disclosure of the program's details through Congress or the court system. Civil liberties advocates opposed the immunity measure. They said the government had yet to disclose to Congress the attorney general's legal opinion supporting the surveillance program and what role the phone companies played in it. They charge that blanket immunity would amount to a legislative pardon to telecommunications companies and others that have aided the government's warrantless surveillance, without explaining the pardon's basis.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR200705...
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