Spy Hard With a Vengeance

In voting yesterday to approve every one of President Bush's demands to give him virtually unrestricted power to spy on anyone he feels like, too many Senate Democrats have - again - surrendered to GOP fear-and-smear tactics without putting up a fight. The final tally was 68-29, with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ducking the final vote.

The bill is truly horrendous. If the House follows suit and passes this version, the following would become completely legal:

• The president can order the NSA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to intercept every E-mail, telephone or Internet communication of every American citizen and legal resident with at best minimal safeguards.
  
• Without bothering to get individual or particularized warrants from any court, intelligence agencies can suck up communications at random without regard to whether or not the targets warrant surveillance, with essentially no provisions for separating out innocent bystanders. Procedures allowing the secret FISA court to review such procedures have been badly weakened, along with measures to correct violations of even these limited procedures.
• If you are spied upon, you have no way to find out what information the government has collected, or to determine what the government does with that information. You will never know which people or government agencies are shown private information, and if your activities or travel are restricted because of this, it will be impossible to find out why or to challenge it.
• Telecommunication companies who participated in government's illegal spying activities (such as AT&T with its infamous Room 641A) would be permanently immune from any consequences for their actions and cannot be forced to disclose what they did.

So much for such niceties as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and the basic American right to live free of arbitrary government snooping. Let's get busy. Contact your Representative and tell them to vote NO on this monster.

UPDATE: President Bush wasted no time in trying to terrorize the House into falling into line. Once again invoking 9/11 as he does ad infinitum whenever he wants something, he said the US will be more vulnerable to plots and attacks should the House not roll over and play dead. It's a lie, of course - FISA is a perfectly workable law - but he wants unlimited spying power. It remains to be seen whether the House will stand up to him.