I urge everyone to contact their legislators tomorrow to ensure that the telcoms do NOT receive immunity.
Greenwald has been on the front of this fight Here is the link to Greenwald's column on Salon.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/The Electronic Frontier Foundation urges us all to take action:
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?alertId=321&pg=makeACallChristy Hardin Smith at FireDogLake has the phone numbers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a lot of important links here:
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/10/11/not-ready-to-make-nice/ *Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chairman — (202) 224-6472
*Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — (202) 224-3841
*Sen. John Warner (R-VA) — (202) 224-2023
*Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) — (202) 224-5244
*Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) — (202) 224-4224
*Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) — (202) 224-5623
*Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) — (202) 224-4654
*Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — (202) 224-5344
*Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) — (202) 224-5274
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) — (202) 224-3154
Sen. Kitt Bond (R-MO), Vice-Chairman — (202) 224-5721
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) — (202) 224-3521
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — (202) 224-5251
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) — (202) 224-5323
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — (202) 224-2921
Here are some talking points from the ACLU:
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?alertId=729&pg=makeACall&page=UserAction The FISA Flood Continues: Call Now for the Constitution! FISA Flood In Action: Click here to let us know you called.
A new bill, "the RESTORE Act" (H.R. 3773), was introduced this week in an attempt to fix the disastrous Protect America Act that was rushed through Congress in August, rubberstamping the administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
But the bill caves in to Bush’s fear-mongering in a major way: it does NOT require the government to get an individual warrant before wiretapping Americans' phone calls and emails. Instead, it allows for program or basket "warrants," which aren't really warrants at all. They're the modern-day equivalent of allowing government agents to sit in our living rooms, recording our personal conversations. Only they're more frightening, because the government now has the capacity to monitor us remotely and without our knowledge, and to save the information in a secret database forever.
One good thing is that the bill doesn't yet include immunity for telecom companies that broke the law by handing over Americans' private communications to the government, but we're hearing immunity could be added back to the bill at any time.
Please, call your representative right now. Tell him or her to only pass a FISA modernization bill that has individualized warrants for people in the United States and NOT to provide telecom companies with immunity for breaking the law.
UPDATE: No vote has been scheduled on the other FISA-modernization bill introduced this week, the FISA Modernization Act of 2007, so we have turned our attention to fixing flaws in the RESTORE Act, which will be voted on by the House this week and next
More from Greewald:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/11/klein_fisa/index.html If one actually thinks about, from scratch, what is being considered with this FISA law, it really is extraordinary. The very idea that we ought to allow the government new powers to eavesdrop on our calls and emails without warrants -- particularly since we know that they have been breaking the law for years to do just that -- is unfathomable.
And even more unfathomable is the idea that the Congress would pass a law that has no purpose other than to protect from all legal consequences the largest and most powerful corporations in the event that they are found to have broken our nation's surveillance and privacy laws. What possible justification is there for any of that? Those twin prongs simultaneously eviscerate the rule of law, equality under the law, and the core Fourth Amendment protections the Founders guaranteed.