House surveillance bill pulled
The Democratic eavesdropping bill would have allowed unfettered telephone and e-mail surveillance of foreign intelligence targets but would require special authorization if the foreign targets were likely to be in contact with people inside the United States, a provision designed to safeguard Americans’ privacy.Those so-called “blanket warrants” would let the government obtain a single order authorizing the surveillance of multiple targets.
Republican critics, however, said the blanket warrants would tie up intelligence agents in legal red tape, impeding them from conducting urgent surveillance of terrorist suspects. “Congress needs to move forward, not backward,” President Bush said at a White House news conference as the debate in Congress began. Bush had vowed to veto the bill if it reached his desk.
The House’s Democratic leaders pulled the bill after discovering that Republicans planned to offer a motion that politically vulnerable Democrats would have a hard time voting against.
The amendment would have said that nothing in the bill could limit surveillance of Osama bin Laden and terrorist organizations. While Democrats say their bill already provides that authority, voting against the amendment could make it seem as though a member of Congress were against spying on al-Qaida.
I haven’t followed this bill really closely, and I don’t have strong opinions on whether it is good or bad. I dislike the tactic that Republicans took here though. The ammendment was a bad one, that either means nothing or too much depending on how it is interpreted and is simply designed to paint Democrats as being oppossed to surveilance of Bin Laden.
That of course isn’t true. The question, and its a good question, is how much evidence we have to have in order to say that we a monitored party is a terrorist and who and how we decide that.
Even if this bill isn’t a good one, I don’t believe that employing this tactic serves the country.
