In their rush to get home for their Fourth of July vacations, the members of the Senate left some important work on their desks -- the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The bill is a rare bit of common sense in this election-year cycle and should be passed first thing upon the Senate's return.
After much political rancor, House Republicans and Democrats came together last month and passed a compromise bill that will bring the country's surveillance laws into the 21st century, yet still protect individual civil liberties. The Senate is dragging its feet because the compromise bill's opponents -- mostly Democrats -- want also to punish the telecommunications companies that answered President Bush's order for help with his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program. That is the wrong target.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the White House directed telecommunications carriers to cooperate with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance -- the administration's effort to do a better job of "connecting the dots" to prevent terrorist attacks. In its review of the effort, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the administration's written requests and directives indicated that such assistance "had been authorized by the president" and that the "activities had been determined to be lawful."
We now know that they were not lawful. But the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power.
The bill passed by the House will prevent any repeat of that wrong, but it also lets those companies off the hook for past actions. While that's tough for many of us to swallow, the compromise still strikes the right balance between protecting our rights and our national security.
It would force an administration to use FISA courts (FISA refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up these courts in the 1970s) to obtain a court-approved, individual warrant for spying activity directed at an American citizen. The government would have to show "probable cause" that that person was engaged in terrorist activities or espionage against the United States.
These are strong measures to protect American civil liberties. More controversial is the bill's provision to allow in an emergency -- such as the aftermath of a terrorist attack -- the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to begin a surveillance project without a FISA warrant as long as they seek FISA approval within seven days.
