The US Senate approved new rules to govern how the government eavesdrops on phone calls and e-mails. The legislation gives US President George W. Bush much of the latitude he wanted and grants retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped in the snooping after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US.
Protection for the telecoms companies is the most prominent feature of the legislation approved on Tuesday. Bush had insisted on that as essential to getting private sector cooperation in spying on foreign terrorists and other targets. It would give protection to companies that had helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after Sept. 11.
The House of Representatives, which passed its own version of the bill last year, did not include the immunity provision. House Republicans now want the House to adopt the Senate bill, which would avoid potentially contentious negotiations to work out differences between the competing versions of the bill.
About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecom companies by people alleging violations of wiretapping and privacy laws.
Bush has promised to veto any new surveillance bill that does not protect the companies that helped the government in its warrantless wiretapping program on grounds that it is essential if the private sector is to give the government the help it needs.
The president called the Senate bill a good piece of legislation that allows intelligence agencies to monitor communications of foreign terrorists while protecting Americans' liberties. He urged the House to pass the bill and send it to his desk without delay.
The Senate bill provides "fair and just liability protection to those private companies who have been sued for billions of dollars only because they are believed to have done the right thing and assisted the nation after the September 11th terrorist attacks," Bush said.
House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said he still opposes retroactive immunity.
"There is no basis for the broad telecommunications company amnesty provisions advocated by the administration," he wrote in a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding asking that documents about the wiretapping program still being withheld from Congress be handed over.
Tuesday's 68-29 Senate vote to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act belied the nearly two months of stops and starts and bitter political wrangling that preceded it, as the two sides battled to balance civil liberties with the need to conduct surveillance on potential adversaries.
At issue is the government's post-Sept. 11 Terrorist Surveillance Program, which circumvented a secret court created 30 years ago to oversee such activities. The court was part of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law written in response to government abuse of its surveillance authority against Americans.
The surveillance law has been updated repeatedly since then, most recently last summer. Congress hastily adopted a FISA modification in August in the face of dire warnings from the White House that changes in telecommunications technology and FISA court rulings were dangerously constraining the government's ability to intercept terrorist communications.
Shortly after its passage, privacy and civil liberties groups said the new law gave the government unprecedented authority to spy on Americans, particularly those who communicate with foreigners.
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