discussion.
BTW here is the actual bill
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_080619_fisapromise.htmHere are some facts that we probably all can agree on
1) What the bill actually agrees to is unclear, as it involves areas that are classified.
As one critic of the bill ( Patrick Radden Keefe in Slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2194254/pagenum/2) has stated
To be fair, wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")
http://www.slate.com/id/21942542) If there had not been a general election campaign the Democrats would not have agreed to it. So a political compromise was made by the Democrats with an eye to the General Election What was the political trade off?
It's no secret that congressional Democrats wanted to resolve the FISA debate before the August convention in order to avoid the perennial charge that they're softies. After the House vote last week, Barack Obama issued a statement backing off his earlier tough stance on telecom immunity. The calculus seemed clear: McCain had just reversed his own position on illegal wiretapping and was spoiling for a fight, arguing that "House Democrats, the ACLU, and the trial lawyers have held up legislation to modernize our nation's terrorist surveillance laws." You can't stand with the trial lawyers and the ACLU if you want to win a general election.
3) What was lost? Was this a massive betrayal of the IVth amendment?
a) to begin with even with the passage of this bill the American system still has much tougher restrictions against wiretapping against terrorist suspects than other governments, like the United Kingdom, and the rest of Europe
http://www.slate.com/id/2136147/.b) The agreement to Telecom Civil Immunity - (again I would prefer fines to government treasury rather than civil lawsuits) does not significantly expand or change the basic law in this field. The government already has the immunity and that immunity is expanded to sub contractors. Had the telecom companies requested the appropriate documentation in the beginning they would have automatically had immunity this simply gives them a second bite at the apple. There is no immunity for any criminal actions although it is hard to see what criminal actions there is on the telecommunications companies side by simply responding to a request. If there were criminal problems with the request it would seem to be on those in the government who initiated the request, in any case there is no immunity for criminal actions.
c) warrantless tapping?
The law makes no change in the requirement of securing warrants for domestic communications. It seems that some people responding to the many threads believed that it now allows warrantless tapping of domestic phone calls and communication. It does not.
It does however now provide for warrantless intercept of domestic-to-international communication. Not a welcome development. Something I would prefer to see overturned in the future but can it really be described as a "destruction of the 4th amendment"? d) makes unraveling the misdeeds of the Bush administration more difficult.
As one reponder noted that without the Civil Suits then it we are not going to have the tools of discovery to be able to break open even more details of the Bush administration conduct. Again as it covers classified material it is doubtful that discovery would have generated many new details on the government side although it would have been embarrassing to the telecom companies that did cave without requesting the additional proof in writing that the material requested was essential to national security and a lawful request.
Conclusion
While the bill in question contains some expansion of government power that would most likely be opposed by virtually everyone who considers DU home it seems to me that the charges that it is a wholesale betrayal of 4th amendment principles is hyperbole and not supported by the detailed analysis of those who are sharply critical of the bill.
There were political aspects taken into consideration that created a split in DU. On the one hand there are those that, like the OP find the legislation unattractive but realize that it does create a potential significant opening for McCain to attack Senator Obama on national security grounds. There are others who believe that this is a critically important issue that defines whether or not you are going to lead and establish something significantly different from the Bush administration or just something slightly better.
In this I agree with the OP. Those that have made the strongest objections to Senator Obama agreeing to the "compromise" (or agreement or capitulation) have not yet responded, as far as I can see, with a specific example of how the act diminishes the 4th amendment beyond what I described above. Yes they have printed even more aggressively critical statements from Professor Turley or from the ACLU but the ones that I have read have not contained the specific ways that the legislation destroys the 4th amendment. In fact I can't find a single reference yet that it makes any change to domestic communication at all.
The real problem, it seems to me, is that we are all frustrated by the fact that this Administration has once again out maneuvered our leaders in Congress. And on this point I agree. While I don't think this legislation is nearly as important as standing up to Bush on many other areas, not the least of which is the IWR, the fact is that it does fit a pattern that makes us all want to hurl.
There is one more point that I think needs to be made and that is even without the legislation the executive branch still has enormous power. If you still have warrants required in every situation you still have an executive institution with vast legal powers. Even legal warrants can be a violation of the spirit of the constitution. This is what the administration has done with the Justice department when it tried to give partisan screening to professional positions that had never existed before.
For that reason the election of Senator Obama is absolutely essential and will have a much greater impact on curtailing the illegal use of federal power than this particular legislation, although I respect those that have gotten fed up with Congress's overall subservient role and feel a need to make a stand here. For me Senator Obama has to run with such substantive obvious handicaps in a country that still contains vast numbers of reactionary elements that it seems only fair to let him have room to manuever and not expect that he will reverse every Bush travesty during the general election campaign. I am particularly happy that he has, among other things, agreed to review every single signing statement that Bush used to try and illegaly expand the power of the President. 
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