The measure, H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, condones the actions of telecommunications companies that cooperated with illegal warrantless surveillance after 9/11 by virtually assuring the dismissal of the dozens of lawsuits pending against them. And it invites future abuses by failing to give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to protect law-abiding Americans from being spied on by their government.
Congress has now made it far too easy for spy agencies to vacuum up data from private phone calls and e-mails without meaningful oversight by an independent court. The bill fails at the most fundamental level to restore the independent judicial check on executive power that the Bush administration has done so much to undermine.
- Barack Obama voted in favor of this bill that gives immunity to telecoms that have aided illegal government surveillance in the past.
- Barack Obama voted in favor of this new law that gives the government the power to conduct dragnet surveillance that has no connection to terrorism or criminal activity of any kind.
- Barack Obama voted in favor of this law that is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution and with the most basic values of the Republic we live in.
