-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 15, 2007 1:43:06 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Bush Demands GREATER "Big Brother" Powers, LESS
Accountability for Abusing Them
Administration Seeks to Expand Surveillance Law
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, April 14, 2007; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/
AR2007041301932.html?hpid=topnews
The Bush administration yesterday asked Congress to make more non-
citizens subject to intelligence surveillance and to authorize the
interception of foreign communications routed through the United
States.
Currently, under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
individuals have to be associated with a foreign terrorism suspect
or a foreign power to fall under the auspices of the FISA court,
which can grant the authority to institute federal surveillance.
The White House proposes expanding potential targets to include non-
citizens believed to possess, transmit or receive important foreign
intelligence information, as well as those engaged in the United
States in activities related to the purchase or development of
weapons of mass destruction.
The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to
keep information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the
purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign
intelligence." Currently such information is destroyed unless it
indicates threat of death or serious bodily harm.
And they provide for compelling telecommunications companies and e-
mail providers to cooperate with investigations while protecting
them from being sued by their subscribers. The legal protection
would be applied retroactively to those companies that cooperated
with the government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The White House draft offered the first specifics of the proposal,
which Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said Tuesday
is needed to respond to "dramatic" changes in communications
technology used by intelligence targets in this country.
The proposed changes do not address the controversial intelligence
program, initiated in October 2001 and first disclosed in December
2005, that monitors communications between people in the United
States and other countries when one party is suspected of having
terrorist connections, according to senior administration officials.
The White House also threatened to veto a Senate version of the
annual intelligence authorization bill, primarily over provisions
that require a response within 15 days to Senate intelligence
committee requests for particular documents, and reports to all
committee members upon the initiation of extraordinarily sensitive
activities, under threat of withholding funds. Under current
practice, only committee chairmen and vice chairmen are told of
such activities.
The White House, in a "statement of administration policy" sent to
the Senate on Thursday, questioned the 4 percent reduction in
funding that the intelligence committee applied to national
intelligence programs and its threat of prohibiting funding for
several classified projects pending reports to the panel.
Saying such provisions are "inconsistent with the need for the
effective conduct of intelligence activities . . . and legislative-
executive comity and cooperation," the policy document said Bush's
"senior advisers would recommend he veto the bill" if it retains
the provisions.
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