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ACLU fights immunity deal with net
The American Civil Liberties Union is teaming up with other public interest groups to defeat legislation that would give telecoms protection from lawsuits for participating in President Bush’s secret eavesdropping program to detect terrorists.
The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Act for Change, Working Assets and MoveOn created a new website to demand that lawmakers oppose legislation that would expand surveillance powers in America and overseas without a court warrant.
The ACLU wants the proposed electronic surveillance legislation to require individual warrants before the government is allowed to access information about calls made in America.
“The tide is turning on telecom immunity,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington legislative office. “The American people did not send members of Congress to Washington to allow companies to get away with breaking the law.”
Fredrickson singled out senators who have pledged to block any legislation that give telecoms immunity from lawsuits.
Those who have pledged to stand against immunity are: Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Christopher Dodd, D-Ct., Russell Feingold, D-Wis., Edward Kennedy D-Mass., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Congress expressed outrage when the New York Times revealed in December 2005 that the National Security Agency had been secretly eavesdropping on phone calls and emails of people living in America with ties to terorists since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Now it is poised to essentially make warrantless wiretapping legal,” Fredrickson said.
“We need to turn the Senate and the House around so that they will uphold civil liberties and not just rubber stamp this administration’s blatant and continued attempts to undermine individual freedoms,” she said.
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