Breaking months of acrimonious deadlock, House and Senate leaders from both parties have agreed to a bill that gives the nation's spy agencies the power to turn a wide swath of domestic communication companies into intelligence-gathering operations, and that puts an end to court challenges to telecoms such as AT&T that aided the government's secret, five-year warrantless wiretapping program.
Civil liberties proponents quickly blasted the deal.
"The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation," said Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, the only senator who voted against the Patriot Act in 2001. "The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home."
The deal marks a huge, though belated, victory for a lame-duck White House, which fought a pitched, hyperbolic battle to expand its legal wiretapping powers after being busted targeting Americans without warrants.
Despite that desire for expanded spying powers, the president threatened to veto any bill that did not give amnesty to the telecoms that helped with program, which has been declared illegal by a secretive U.S. surveillance court.
Full WIRED article
even after he and his cronies are long gone their ruinous influence upon our government will remain, for generations to come. how ironic that the "flag wavers" are the ones destroying our constitution...
out and get on it.