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The Problems With This FISA Bill
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The July 3 editorial "FISA Follies" may have been right in saying that the issue of whether to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that allegedly cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program is "not the most . . . important aspect of the complex FISA debate." But the editorial's position on both immunity and the privacy protections in the revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before the Senate was deeply misguided.
Granting blanket immunity to companies alleged to have cooperated with this illegal program will only encourage such companies to cooperate with an executive branch that wants to break the law and violate Americans' privacy in the future. Moreover, this bill gives the government broad new powers to collect information on innocent Americans within the United States without providing nearly enough protections for privacy.
The government absolutely must be able to wiretap suspected terrorists to protect our security, and every member of Congress supports that. With this bill, however, for the first time since FISA was adopted 30 years ago, the government would be authorized to collect all communications into and out of the United States without warrants. That means Americans e-mailing relatives abroad or calling business associates overseas could be monitored with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing by anyone. This bill overturns the laws and principles that have governed surveillance for the past 30 years. The Senate should reject it.
RUSS FEINGOLD
U.S. Senator (D-Wis.)
