Slashdot Mirror
White House Wins On Spying, Telecom Immunity
EllisDees sends in a Washington Post report that Senate Republicans have outmaneuvered Democrats, who withdrew a more stringent version of legislation to control the government's domestic surveillance program. The legislation that will go forward includes a grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program.
In a Democrat controlled Congress, the Republicans can still use "soft of terrorism" to get certain Democrats to vote however they want them to.
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and
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"The US constitution forbids ex-post-facto laws" - the generally accepted interpretation of the prohibition on ex-post facto laws is that Congress may not make something illegal after-the-fact; this does not, however, prevent them from retroactively making it legal.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
It's easy. If you don't know who to contact or how to phrase your objection use this link:
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=727&page=UserAction
Note that you can modify the letter template before you hit send if you don't agree with all of the text or wish to add points of your own.
There is another informational article on Salon.
(*) Does not apply to non-US citizens. (Although nothing actually stops you from mailing them anyway.)
You're right - some Dems did vote along with the immunity-carrying version. And I'm afraid that the ultimate story of what happened on this bill makes the GOP look like childish assholes, and the Dems look like brainless, spineless pansies.
So far, the best collection of linkage and summary I've seen on this has been at The Mahablog (Warning: liberal. Like me, so, deal.)
Case: Katz v. US, 1967. Excerpt, " join the opinion of the Court, which I read to hold only (a) that an enclosed telephone booth is an area where, like a home, Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, and unlike a field, Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy; (b) that electronic, as well as physical, intrusion into a place that is in this sense private may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment, [p361] and (c) that the invasion of a constitutionally protected area by federal authorities is, as the Court has long held, presumptively unreasonable in the absence of a search warrant. As the Court's opinion states, "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." The question, however, is what protection it affords to those people. Generally, as here, the answer to that question requires reference to a "place." My understanding of the rule that has emerged from prior decisions is that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." Thus, a man's home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy, but objects, activities, or statements that he exposes to the "plain view" of outsiders are not "protected," because no intention to keep them to himself has been exhibited. On the other hand, conversations in the open would not be protected against being overheard, for the expectation of privacy under the circumstances would be unreasonable. Cf. Hester v. United States, supra. "