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Senate To Reconsider Wiretap Immunity
bughunter passes on a report from Wired Threat Level about the effort by Democratic lawmakers to roll back some provisions of the Patriot Act. Three of its provisions expire at the end of this year, and the reform attempt is expected to be attached to legislation to renew them. "Lawmakers are considering key changes to the Patriot Act and other spy laws — proposals that could give new life to lawsuits accusing the nation's telecommunications companies of turning over Americans' electronic communications to the government without warrants. On Oct. 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee likely will consider revoking that immunity legislation as it works to revise the Patriot Act and other spy laws with radical changes that provide for more government transparency and more privacy protections." Among the other likely goals of reform efforts, according to Wired, are limiting the government's power to issue National Security Letters, and limiting "black bag" searches to cases of spying or terrorism — 65% of past searches were authorized in drug cases.
The actions the telecoms took were legal under the PATRIOT act, which was the law of the land at the time. You can't just go back and make them illegal now, that's blatantly unconstitutional (and a much graver assault on all of our liberties than unwarranted wiretaps). Take out the provision now and chalk it up to another lesson learned: be more careful about what gets passed into law in the future (not that there's any hope that any politicians will learn that lesson).
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Like hell! The Bush Administration was completely corrupt and I have not seen any signs of that with Obama. You're just a sour-grapes Republican who knows Bush sucked and is just trying to make Obama look like the Bush Administration. You are wrong. I do not accept your premise.