Let's not ignore the pending FISA cave-in! [View All]

[Truth2Tell]

As it becomes more clear that the Democratic leadership is poised to cave on every crucial element of the revised FISA law, Senators Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold have sent out a new http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/releases/08/06/20080610f.html">letter to Congressional Leaders practically begging for the life of the Constitution.

Reports like http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/lawmakers-see-progress-on-fisa-talks-2008-06-10.html">this latest in The Hill seem to suggest that the new Bill will not only provide immunity to the telecom companies for their clear crimes, but will indefinitely continue - and in fact expand - the ability of the Bush regime to wiretap at will.

Here's an excerpt from the Senator's letter:

...The Senate bill authorizes widespread surveillance involving innocent Americans and does not provide adequate checks and balances to protect their rights. First, it permits the government to come up with its own procedures for deciding who is a target of surveillance, and provides no meaningful consequences if the FISA Court later determines the government’s procedures are not even reasonably designed to wiretap foreigners. Second, even if the government is wiretapping foreigners outside the U.S., those foreigners need not be terrorists, suspected of any wrongdoing, or even be of any specific intelligence interest. That means the government could legally collect all communications between Americans here at home and the rest of the world. Third, the Senate version of the bill failed to prohibit the practice of reverse targeting – namely, wiretapping a person overseas when what the government is really interested in is an American here at home with whom the foreigner is communicating. Fourth, the Senate version of the bill failed to include meaningful privacy protections for the Americans whose communications will be collected in vast new quantities. We strongly believe that these problems should be corrected as the legislation moves forward.

Here's an http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDlYcn5HEs8">old Feingold YouTube to help remind us all what's at stake in this fight.

Let's not forget about this ongoing struggle amid all the Kucinich/impeachment hoopla.

Contact the usual suspects today.

Great site for contacting Congresscritters on this issue: http://stopthespying.org/">Stop The Spying