Ireland's SiliconRepublic.com, In a State of surveillance:
We are about to enter into a state where every digital step you take is recorded. At the end of March, the Government will introduce the most draconian law in the history of personal privacy in Ireland: 24-hour internet monitoring. A log will be made of everyone's internet activity and every email sent and received.
Greetings from the State of surveillance.
When I called Senator Bill Nelson's office last week, the guy on the phone assured me that Nelson would vote with Senator Dodd to eliminate telco immunity from the FISA bill. [Update: I relied on that call for this post on Feb. 1.]
That turns out to be false.
Like many of his Senate colleagues, Sen. Bill Nelson sold us out to the telcos. See the full Vote on the Dodd Amendment.
I vaguely get the politics of cowardice, although you can be damn sure I won't forget this vote (or the vote for torture, either). But I sure don't get the politics of lying to constituents.
Here’s what the Senate Leadership has cooked up for FISA. Sen. Reid’s office spins this as “the GOP blinked” as they backed down from their insane demand that no amendments be considered, or at least that they all require 60 votes.
From here, it looks somewhat different: the GOP is graciously allowing a majority vote to prevail on small things, or on things where there isn’t a Democratic majority. Big things that the Democrats could win still take 60 votes — a concession that is achieved by the empty threat of a real GOP filibuster…the political equivalent of suicide.
Meanwhile, Sen. Reid’s office also says that Sen. Dodd was involved in these negotiations and implies that he signed off on it. I’d like to hear that from him. I find the details of this agreement a bit opaque, but if I understand it, there is no opportunity for Sen. Dodd to mount his filibuster if his amendment to remove telecom immunity fails.
Note that the Democrats start from a bad position — one imposed on them unnecessarily by Sen. Reid — since the base bill is the Intelligence committee one not the much preferable Judiciary Committee version, and the rules favor inertia.
Has Senator Dodd caved in here? Or does he think he can find 50 votes? Senator Nelson (FL) now says he will vote for Dodd’s amendment, but I don’t think many others of the dozen DINOs who voted to table the Judiciary version of the bill have announced they are switching.
This would be a good time to call your Senator and ask nicely but firmly that Dodd’s amendment to remove the retroactive immunity for illegal wiretaps be removed fromadded to the FISA bill.
(Some people have asked why I focus on this rather than some other, possibly worse, features of the bill that make Richard Nixon seem unambitious. It’s because the others can be undone later. There’s real doubt that this can be.)
Update Thanks to James Tyre for a link to the final version as agreed by the Senate (Current status)
Like the House, the Senate yesterday also passed a 15-day FISA extension. Bush had said he had to have six years on nuthin' and previously threatened to veto a 30-day extension. But the WashPo says that he'll sign it — I guess that someone over there grasped that unlike three years ago, if you say the sky will fall without the authority the bill gives you and you veto it at the same time, someone might ask an embarrassing question before printing your press release.
I remain very pessimistic about the ability of Senate Democrats to grow spines on this issue, although it is encouraging that weathervane Nelson (D-Fl.) voted for cloture on Monday, and that his DC phone people are saying he'll vote to remove telecom immunity from the bill; this seems something of an about-face from last week's vote to bury the Judiciary Committee version of the bill, but I'll take what I can get.
The bright spot in the story is that prospects on the House side are somewhat better. It helps that key right-wing Democrats are facing some tough primary challenges from progressives. Sometimes, just sometimes, elections help keep people focused on what their constituents want.
Now, about that war…
Sen. Feingold demonstrates how he explains problems with FISA to constituents in a 30-second demo.
Meanwhile, the House passed a 15 day extension of the current (awful) version of FISA. And then it went into recess. Which is actually good, as it puts the Senate GOP on the spot and will probably spike some of their worst parliamentary delay tactics.
Of all the creepy post-9/11 phrases to which we've been subjected (“The Patriot Act” – “Protecting the Homeland” – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – “Department of Homeland Security”), I think the creepiest and most Orwellian is the phrase “good patriotic corporate citizen,” used to describe companies which broke our laws because the President told them to. It's now apparently a Patriotic Duty to obey the President even if he tells you to violate the law.
The accompanying claim that companies should never “second-guess” the “judgment of the President regarding what's legal” — which I just heard from John Cornyn and Saxby Chambliss — is equally creepy, and is the crux of the authoritarian case for telecom immunity.
The cloture vote failed, so there will actually be debate on the current (evil) draft of FISA.
But don't get too excited,
In one sense, this is an extremely mild victory, to put that generously. All this really means is that they will now proceed to debate and vote on the pending amendemnts to the bill, almost certainly defeat all of the meaningfully good ones, approve a couple of amendments which improve the bill in the most marginal ways, and then end up ultimately voting for a bill that contains both telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping. Moreover, it seems clear that Senate Republicans deliberately provoked this outcome and were hoping for it, by sabotaging what looked to be imminent Democratic capitulation so that Bush could accuse Democrats tonight of failing to pass a new FISA bill, thus helping their friend Osama.
Lots more chances for spines to vanish.
Meanwhile, however, things have got weird,
The vote on the Motion for Cloture on the 30-day extension (i.e., to proceed to a vote on it) just failed — 48-45 (again, 60 votes are needed). All Democrats (including Clinton and Obama) voted in favor of the Motion, but no Republicans did — not a single one. Thus, at least as of today, there will be no 30-day extension of the PAA and it will expire on Friday.
Reid, however, indicated that it was certain that the House will vote in favor of an extension tomorrow, which means it will be sent to the Senate for another vote. It's possible, then, that the Senate will vote again later in the week on an extension, but it's hard to imagine any Republicans ever voting in favor of an extension since Bush has vowed to veto it.
By blocking an extension, Republicans just basically assured that the PAA — which they spent the last seven months shrilly insisting was crucial if we are going to be Saved from The Terrorists — will expire on Friday without any new bill in place.
Even milquetoast Jay Rockefeller accused Bush of committing Political terrorism. Of course there's still time for a vote on an emergency extension originating in the House…
Jotwell Blenderlaw