And now Bush, with the help of the Blue Dogs have taken away the only means of accountability for these illegal, unwarranted actions. The only way we were ever going to find out who they were listening to was through the civil suit process. If they were not monitoring domestic citizens, fine, then the civil suits would have made this clear.

By the way, the records the companies turned over to the Bush administration dated back before 9-11, thus negating any cause-effect relationship stemming from 9-11 — which merely served as a concrete rationale for the illegal wiretapping that had already been transpiring.

The telecommunication companies did not have to turn those records over to the government, not should they have done so. They broke the law, and helped the Bush administration break more laws. Qwest, for example, did not and chose to uphold the 4th ammendment. Those who did should be held accountable for their dereliction.

http://www.aclu.org/… gen…eg20071102.html

The Senate bill does not allow the court to oversee surveillance of American citizens.

Under the Senate bill, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence would report to the FISA court on overall procedures designed to avoid targeting Americans' domestic communication, but the court would not know what communications were surveilled, or what information was obtained. And it would have to take the Executive agencies' word that they follow the overall procedures they say they  are following. Horrible.

From the ACLU's analysis:

“Further, the orders will be nearly blank as they do not even need to specify who's being surveilled, the type of communications being collected, or even the facilities the government is tapping into. This again raises acute Fourth Amendment problems of probable cause and particularity.”

“After the fact, aggregate review of processes does not meet the Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and particularity. Just like the Protect America Act, the Administration / Rockefeller bill renders the secret FISA court nearly useless, allowing it intervene only after surveillance is under way, and then only on the basis of information handed over by the executive branch.”

http://www.aclu.org/… gen…eg20071102.html

The Senate bill does not allow the court to oversee surveillance of American citizens.

Under the Senate bill, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence would report to the FISA court on overall procedures designed to avoid targeting Americans’ domestic communication, but the court would not know what communications were surveilled, or what information was obtained. And it would have to take the Executive agencies’ word that they follow the overall procedures they say they  are following. Horrible.

From the ACLU’s analysis:

“Further, the orders will be nearly blank as they do not even need to specify who’s being surveilled, the type of communications being collected, or even the facilities the government is tapping into. This again raises acute Fourth Amendment problems of probable cause and particularity.”

“After the fact, aggregate review of processes does not meet the Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and particularity. Just like the Protect America Act, the Administration / Rockefeller bill renders the secret FISA court nearly useless, allowing it intervene only after surveillance is under way, and then only on the basis of information handed over by the executive branch.”

And now Bush, with the help of the Blue Dogs have taken away the only means of accountability for these illegal, unwarranted actions. The only way we were ever going to find out who they were listening to was through the civil suit process. If they were not monitoring domestic citizens, fine, then the civil suits would have made this clear.

By the way, the records the companies turned over to the Bush administration dated back before 9-11, thus negating any cause-effect relationship stemming from 9-11 — which merely served as a concrete rationale for the illegal wiretapping that had already been transpiring.

The telecommunication companies did not have to turn those records over to the government, not should they have done so. They broke the law, and helped the Bush administration break more laws. Qwest, for example, did not and chose to uphold the 4th ammendment. Those who did should be held accountable for their dereliction.