WASHINGTON, May 23 (UPI) -- The fight over the legality of warrantless counter-terrorist surveillance activities by the U.S. government continued this week.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled this Thursday to debate and approve a compromise version of legislation designed to establish an oversight process for the surveillance programs in question, run by the National Security Agency.
Bu the latest draft of the bill has drawn fire from the American Civil Liberties Union. The group sent a letter to members of the Senate last week, urging them to oppose the measure.
"The bill is one of the worst bills I've seen on a lot of issues," Lisa Graves, the ACLU's senior counsel for legislative strategy, told National Journal's Technology Daily. "It basically gives away the store."
Graves said that Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., struck the compromise. The bill would clarify that the president's decision to authorize warrantless wiretaps is not a crime and would remove many of the oversight procedures currently required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It also would require that legal challenges to the wiretapping program be heard by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, Technology Daily said.
Similar legislation has yet to be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, but another bill, H.R. 5371, would clarify that all foreign intelligence surveillance of Americans is subject to the oversight procedures in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The legislation would also authorize more money to help the foreign surveillance court approve warrants expeditiously.
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and Rep. Jane Harman of California, the top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, authored the measure, which enjoys the ACLU's support, Technology Daily said.
