WORLD> America
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WORLD> America
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US Senate to pass bill overhauling eavesdropping rules
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-09 23:36 Opponents to letting telecommunications companies off the hook have proposed amendments that would delay immunity until the full extent of the wiretapping program is revealed by a government investigation, or strip it from the bill entirely. They argue that only in court will the full extent of the program be understood, and only a judge should decide whether it broke the law. The new surveillance bill also sets new rules for government eavesdropping. Some of them would tighten the reins on current government surveillance activities, and others loosen them compared with a law passed 30 years ago. For example, it would require the government to get FISA court approval before it eavesdrops on an American overseas. Currently, the attorney general approves that electronic surveillance on his own. But the bill also would allow the government to obtain broad, yearlong intercept orders from the FISA court that target foreign groups and people, raising the prospect that communications with innocent Americans would be swept up. The court would approve how the government chooses the targets, and how the intercepted American communications are to be protected. The original FISA law required the government to get wiretapping warrants for each individual targeted from inside the United States. The number of needed warrants ballooned as technology changed and purely foreign communications increasingly passed through US wires. The bill would give the government a week to conduct a wiretap in an emergency before it must apply for a court order. The original law only allowed three days. Yearlong wiretapping orders authorized by Congress last year will begin to expire in August. Without a new bill, the government would go back to old FISA rules, requiring multiple new orders to continue those intercepts. |
