ACLU LETTER TO CONGRESS ON FISA BILL

On July 8, 2008, Congress will vote of the FISA Bill that grants immunity to telecom companies. The ACLU (aclu.org) has written a letter to Congress opposing said bill. Thomas Cain Report has posted this letter in hopes that our readers will join the ACLU in writing their Congressional leaders in opposing FISA Bill H.R. 6304.

Thomas Cain
The Thomas Cain Report

Vote NO on H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act – Oppose Warrantless Surveillance and Immunity for Telecommunications Companies.

Dear Senator,

The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges you to vote “NO” on H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendment Acts of 2008. This bill unconstitutionally and unnecessarily permits the government to vacuum up Americans’ international communications, without a connection to al Qaeda, terrorism, or even to national security.

While there is limited prior review by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the protection afforded by that review is almost completely illusory. H.R. 6304 also grants retroactive immunity to companies that facilitated warrantless wiretapping over the last seven years.

For these reasons, we ask you to stand with the Constitution and vote no on this overreaching legislation. Because this bill essentially eviscerates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and many of the Fourth Amendment protections it contained, we will be scoring this vote. Our major concerns with this legislation include: H.R. 6304 ensures the dismissal of all cases pending against the
telecommunications companies that facilitated the warrantless
wiretapping programs over the last 7 years.

The test in the bill is not whether the government certifications were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because issuance has been publicly documented, all the cases seeking to find out what these companies and the government did with our communications will be thrown out.1 This immunity not only denies justice to those whom the government spied on in the last seven years, but undercuts the entire incentive structure in FISA and will encourage telecommunications company law breaking in the future.

FISA has long contained provisions allowing Americans to seek civil redress in the courts, meaningful precisely in a situation such this where the government is complicit in the violation and criminal and other sanctions are highly unlikely.2 If an entire industry is exempted from civil liability for violating long-standing privacy laws, it will send a message to all the companies in possession of our most sensitive information that compliance with statutory protections is optional, because congress will bail them out after the fact.