Civil liberties groups got a stunningly unexpected win Thursday as the Senate Judiciary panel passed their version of the new government spying bill out of committee without including a provision giving immunity to telecoms being sued for helping the government secretly spy on Americans.
The biggest winner from the development is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whose suit against AT&T in federal court would almost certainly have been wiped out by the immunity provision.
The provision - which was part of the version passed by the Senate Intelligence committee in mid-October - was widely expected to make it into the bill, due to the administration's full court press on the issue, the telcos small army of lobbyists and the vocal support of California Democrat Dianne Feintstein. Feinstein's vote was expected to reverse the Dems 10-9 advantage in the committee.
But after a long day of complicated finagling over technical amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and proposed alternatives to total immunity for companies such as AT&T and Verizon, committeee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) decided to send the bill out of committee without an agreement on immunity.
UPDATE: Caroline Fredrickson, who heads the ACLU's D.C. legislative shop said via email "We appreciate the work of Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) to protect the civil liberties of all Americans. We still have reservations with both the House and Senate bills, and will continue to work to improve the legislation. It is heartening to know that people who feel their privacy was violated by the phone companies and by their own government are one step closer to having their day in court."
Without the immunity for the telecoms, the Bush administration cannot keep the details of their illegal domestic spying program secret from the American people. The Bush administration dangled lucrative contracts to the telecoms in exchange for creating this illegal spying program. And the telecoms' greed caused them to ignore the law, and privacy rights of American citizens. The Bush administration has been trying to legislate immunity for the telecoms in order to cover their own ass.
And the Senate Judiciary Committee said no.
Update: I did find some more interesting information on TPM Election Central regarding the inside story on how this bill went through the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Here's a bit more detail on what happened on the Judiciary Committee today. Sources say Senator Russ Feingold offered an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the bill, but it was defeated. Then Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking GOPer on the committee, offered a "compromise" amendment saying that in these lawsuits the Federal government, and not the telecoms, would be the defendants.
But because of a procedural difficulty Specter's amendment wasn't voted on -- and Senator Patrick Leahy, the chair of the committee, essentially went around Specter's amendment and moved to have a vote to report the bill out of committee without any telecom immunity in it. That passed along strictly party lines. And that's where we are.
It seems that Feingold offered and amendment to strip the telecom immunity provision out the bill, but Specter didn't like that. Specter tried an end-run in offering a "compromise" amendment, where the Federal government would be the defendant in these lawsuits, and not the telecoms. With the Federal government as the defendant, the Bush administration could still dismiss the lawsuits, claiming that revealing the details on the domestic spying program will jeopardize the Great War on Terror. The good news is that Leahy saw through Specter's ploy, and voted the bill out of the committee without the telecom immunity provision. Of course, had the bill gotten out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with the telecom immunity intact, it would probably died on the Senate floor with Senator Chris Dodd's filibuster threat.
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