The new legislation granting expanded wiretapping powers for national security purposes has passed after Democratic delaying tactics -- but it is only a temporary fix to a bigger issue.

The House late Saturday night approved the Republican version of a measure amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by a vote of 227-183, with most Republicans and conservative Democrats supporting the bill.

The White-House backed legislation closes what the Bush administration has called critical gaps in U.S. intelligence capability by expanding the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.

Lawmakers have been scrambling to pass a bill acceptable to the White House before they leave for a monthlong summer recess.

President Bush had threatened to veto any bill that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said did not meet his needs.

The Senate approved its Republican-sponsored bill Friday night. Immediately after that vote, a Democratic-sponsored bill failed to reach the 60-vote majority.

Saturday night's vote followed fireworks in the House, where an angry group of Republicans accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of delaying a vote on the bill, the president's legislative priority.

"Last night, the Senate passed this bill at about 9:30. Now it's almost 1 o'clock. We should have had the FISA bill on the floor the first thing this morning," Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan told reporters in the early afternoon.

"We could have passed a rule and passed this bill by 11 o'clock this morning, and it could have been on its way, and the president could have signed it," said Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Now this legislation expires in six months -- enough time to allow for Congress to re-write the FISA law to meet with today's technological realities. This comes on the heels of a ruling by a FISA judge that the law forbids the interception of any call that passes through equipment based in the US, even if it is between two individuals located outside of the United States. Under that ruling, a call that originated in Canada and ended in Pakistan would be considered a domestic call under the previous FISA regulations if it passed through a server or transmitting station located in San Francisco -- or one that began in the Philippines and ended in Malaysia would be a domestic call if it passed through the US territory of Guam. I won't even get into the question of emails communications that are hosted by a US server like those of Yahoo, AOL, or Gmail. Simply put, telecommunications technology has outstripped the old law.

Personally, I believe that the precedent in the Truong case needs to be followed here -- national security and foreign intelligence surveillance does not need a warrant, but such information cannot be used for criminal prosecutions.

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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