“WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Democratic-led Congress yielded to President Bush on Saturday and approved legislation to temporarily expand government’s power to conduct electronic surveillance without a court order in tracking foreign suspects.
President Bush demanded Congress expand his surveillance authority before leaving for vacation.
Civil liberties groups charged the measure would create a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding U.S. citizens.
But the House of Representatives gave its concurrence to the bill, 227-183, a day after it won Senate approval, 60-28.
The action came amid warnings of possible attacks on the United States.
“After months of prodding by House Republicans, Congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law — and America will be the safer for it,” declared House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.
“We think it is not the bill that ought to pass,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. But he conceded he and fellow Democrats were unable to stop the measure in this national security showdown with the White House.
“Protecting America is our most solemn obligation,” Bush said earlier in the day in urging Congress to send him the bill so he could sign it into law. The measure would authorize the National Security Agency to intercept without a court order communications between people in the United States and foreign targets overseas.”
Two things I loved in this little tid-bit:
1. “amid warnings of possible attacks on the United States.”. What? When isn’t this country being threatened? I’m sure that there’s not a day in reality when someone really pissed at the USA isn’t planning something. But the part that I’m more concerned about it that this deals with the ‘threat’ of foreign actions. Really? I’m thinking this ‘possible attacks’ part will quickly include the interior of the USA too. And, I’m guessing here, it’s gonna happen in about 20 minutes. Reading emails that are between people in the ‘USA and foreign targets overseas’. What are we looking at the Taliban Myspace account here? How do they know which emails to watch? Answer: they don’t. they watch all of them. From the AT&T Employee Mark Klein said of the NSA filtering rooms in San Francisco, “Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA’s charter or with FISA,” Klein’s wrote. “And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals’ phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.”
2: George Orwell might have been right with 1984, just a few decades off that’s all.
my 2ยข
