Ongoing FISA Legislation

Senate has put off til January the re-authoauthorization on the so-called Protect America Act which basically opened up for the government virtually every international telephone call or email by anyone in this country to or from someone overseas (the PAA was signed last August 5th and expires the beginning of Febuary ’08). The administration and its supporters in the Senate also want to grant full retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that violated the old FISA law and gave government agents virtually unlimited access to subscriber phone data without any court orders or supervision.

Best thing that could happen would be for the PAA to simply expire, but the administration will do everything it can to avoid that. A handful of Senatorts – e.g., Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, et al. – are waging a courageous fight to limit government surveillance and telecom immunity.