U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress – 2nd Session
as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
Vote Summary
Question: On Passage of the Bill (H.R. 6304 )
Vote Number: 168 Vote Date: July 9, 2008, 02:47 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Bill Passed
Measure Number: H.R. 6304 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 )
Measure Title: A bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes.
Vote Counts: YEAs 69
NAYs 28
Not Voting 3
There are quite a few senators taking in heavy contributions from the telecom industry, needless to say:
Bush mentions that his birthday was 4th of July weekend, however he didn’t mention it was the day Thomas Jefferson died. Wonder what Jefferson would have thought if he learned what was to happen to the Constitution again this past week.
Found this over at Brian Dennert’s blog at the Star. Certainly puts this issue in a plain and simple manner. I wonder what our local Congressional Representative Elton Gallegly will do to protect our rights now. Any thoughts on his concern for the Constitution?
In the ongoing fight over FISA, privacy and the rule of law are again on the line. That was the case yesterday when the House of Representatives caved and overwhelmingly passed a bill that creates loopholes for Bush to engage in unchecked spying on Americans and cuts off lawsuits against telecom companies that broke the law.
There’s a deeply disturbing premise behind this dangerous FISA legislation: The president simply has to claim his request was legal for immunity to be granted to telecom companies that illegally handed over personal information to the government.
No matter how illegal, offensive or intrusive a company’s invasion of your privacy has been, it won’t make a difference if this legislation passes because if the president gave the company a note claiming their behavior was legal, they’re completely off the hook.
Throughout the extended FISA debate, you and the ACLU have worked tirelessly to protect personal privacy and the rule of law. Together, we’ve given the Bush administration a run for their money, stopping a number of freedom-stealing proposals. The Senate is expected to be vote on the bill early next week. Don’t let your senators cave in now.
Bush is drawing a line in the sand between McCain and Obama. Current FISA allows electronic surveillance on foreign soil, allows surveillance on Americans calling Foreigners for three days before warrant, allows for “emergency” situations. Why do we need telecom immunity now? Bush Administration trying to protect itself.
Glen Greenwald of Salon thinks so. In his blog yesterday Greenwald highlights reasons why Bush wants immunity for the telecom industry and it may have more to do with protecting his administration than battling any terrorists. Here is what Greenwald has to say:
In his Press Conference yesterday, Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush candidly explained why he was so eager to have Congress grant amnesty to telecoms:
Allowing the lawsuits to proceed could aid our enemies, because the litigation process could lead to the disclosure of information about how we conduct surveillance.
The bit about Helping the Enemies is purely false, just standard Bush fear-mongering. Federal courts receive and rule on highly classified information with great regularity without any public “disclosure.” FISA (in 50 USC 1806(f)) specifically provides that secret information can be submitted to the Judge without even the other side having access to it. If — as the President suggested — courts can’t be trusted with national security secrets, then it would mean, just as he intends and just as much of the press has accepted, government officials are free to break the law in secret by claiming that national security concerns prevent courts from ruling on what they did. In a Super Scary World, the need for secrecy outweighs all. But on a more important level, Bush is finally being candid about the real reason the administration is so desperate to have these surveillance lawsuits dismissed. It’s because those lawsuits are the absolute last hope for ever learning what the administration did when they spied on Americans for years in violation of the law. Dismissal via amnesty would ensure that their spying behavior stays permanently concealed, buried forever, and as importantly, that no court ever rules on the legality of what they did. Isn’t it striking how that implication of telecom amnesty is never discussed, and how little interest it generates among journalists — whose role, theoretically, is to uncover secret government actions?
There was an explosion of press interest for a couple of days last May when former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified about the melodramatic hospital scene where John Ashcroft refused the demands of Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to authorize whatever it was the President’s domestic spying program entailed, but the most significant revelation from Comey’s testimony was — and still is — that the administration was engaged in spying activities back then so patently illegal and unconscionable that the entire top level of the DOJ threatened to resign if they continued.
What was it that the administration was doing that provoked that reaction even among its own far right political appointees at the DOJ? On which Americans were they spying without warrants, how were those Americans selected, and what was done with the information? Former OLC official Marty Lederman perfectly described the glaring, unanswered questions about Bush’s domestic spying programs raised by the Comey testimony — questions that are still unanswered and will remain so forever if Congress gives Bush telecom amnesty:
If [the TSP is] the narrow version of the NSA program, just how broad and indiscriminate was the surveillance under the program that Ashcroft, et al. would not approve? . . . This is the real heart of the Comey story — What happened between September 2001 and October 2003, before Comey and Goldmsith came aboard? Just how radical were the Administration’s legal judgments? How extreme were the programs they implemented? How egregious was the lawbreaking?
We still have no idea. Nobody does. And the establishment press could not be any less interested in finding out. The number two official at the Justice Department openly reveals that the President — with the active, knowing collaboration of the telecom industry — was breaking the law so severely for years that it was about to provoke mass resignations from his loyal right-wing appointees, and we all just collectively yawn, blissfully content not to know what they did. The telecom lawsuits are the last hope for finding any of this out. They’re the last hope for ever having this still-secret behavior subjected to the rule of law and enabling the American people to learn about what their Government did for years in illegally spying on them. That’s why — the only real reason — the White House is so desperate for telecom amnesty. That’s what George Bush means when he says that amnesty is urgent “because the litigation process could lead to the disclosure of information about how we conduct surveillance.” In a functioning democracy, when high political officials break the law, such behavior is actually supposed to be “disclosed,” not concealed. read more
Congress is stalled over the Protect American Act and Constitutional rights. Bush is threating we are not protected unless a bill granting telecom immunity is passed. Is Bush trying to scare folks into giving away more of their privacy? Many members of Congress think so. In the Washington Post, Rockefeller, Conyers, Leahy, and Reyes speak out about what is happening:
Nothing is more important to the American people than our safety and our freedom. As the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, we have an enormous responsibility to protect both.
Unfortunately, instead of working with Congress to achieve the best policies to keep our country safe, once again President Bush has resorted to scare tactics and political games.
In November, the House passed legislation to give U.S. intelligence agencies strong tools to intercept terrorist communications that transit the United States, while ensuring that Americans’ private communications are not swept up by the government in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Almost two weeks ago, the Senate passed similar legislation. The Senate bill also contains a provision to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that assisted the executive branch in conducting surveillance programs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
While the four of us may have our differences on what language a final bill should contain, we agree on several points.
First, our country did not “go dark” on Feb. 16 when the Protect America Act (PAA) expired. Despite President Bush’s overheated rhetoric on this issue, the government’s orders under that act will last until at least August. These orders could cover every known terrorist group and foreign target. No surveillance stopped. If a new member of a known group, a new phone number or a new e-mail address is identified, U.S. intelligence can add it to the existing orders, and surveillance can begin immediately.
As Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein acknowledged while speaking to reporters on Feb. 14, “the directives are in force for a year, and with the expiration of the PAA, the directives that are in force remain in force until the end of that year. . . . [W]e’ll be able to continue doing surveillance based on those directives.”
If President Bush truly believed that the expiration of the Protect America Act caused a danger, he would not have refused our offer of an extension.
In the remote possibility that a terrorist organization that we have never previously identified emerges, the National Security Agency could use existing authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to track its communications. Since Congress passed FISA in 1978, the court governing the law’s use has approved nearly 23,000 warrant applications and rejected only five. In an emergency, the NSA or FBI can begin surveillance immediately and a FISA court order does not have to be obtained for three days.
When U.S. agencies provided critical intelligence to our German allies to disrupt a terrorist plot last summer, we relied on FISA authorities.
Those who say that FISA is outdated do not appreciate the strength of this powerful tool.
So what’s behind the president’s “sky is falling” rhetoric? more
Good discussion about what is going on. Bush wants to let the old FISA expire if he doesn’t get his way with telecom immunity. In other words, if Bush doesn’t get his way with granting immunity for telecoms such as AT&T and Verizon in domestic spying, he would rather put the nation in danger by letting the standing FISA legislation expire.
This is some of what the new immunity clause, that Bush wants to add to the standing FISA legislation is all about:
Mark Klein is the AT&T whistle blower that provided this account (From Ryan Singel of Wired):
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF’s lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.
According to a statement released by Klein’s attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T’s #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.
“I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room,” Klein wrote. “The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room.”
Klein’s job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
“While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T’s internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal,” Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein’s statement.
The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, “known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets,” according to Klein’s statement.
Narus, whose website touts AT&T as a client, sells software to help internet service providers and telecoms monitor and manage their networks, look for intrusions, and wiretap phone calls as mandated by federal law.
Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans’ communications. more
From Salon:
A federal judge rules for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its suit against AT&T for cooperating with the NSA to spy on customers.
By Kim Zetter
May 18, 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge denied AT&T’s request on Wednesday to force the Electronic Frontier Foundation to return documents the nonprofit organization received from a retired AT&T employee.
The documents that former AT&T technician Mark Klein gave EFF earlier this year, and which the court has sealed, contain details of what EFF and Klein are alleging is a secret agreement between the telecommunications company and the National Security Agency to provide the government agency with illegal access to communications belonging to its customers. In a preface to the documents, Klein said he was motivated to blow the whistle in 2004 “when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on Internet traffic.”
The documents, which Klein released to the New York Times and other newspapers before the court sealed them, describe how AT&T diverted the communications of customers to a secret room that the company maintained at its hubs in San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Calif., Los Angeles and Seattle. The rooms housed “computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire Internet,” Klein wrote. “These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what people are doing.”
Klein’s assertions help support a class-action lawsuit that EFF filed against AT&T in January on behalf of its customers, alleging that the company violated the wiretap statute, the FISA statute and several communications and privacy laws in aiding the government’s domestic spying operation without a court order.
AT&T claimed the documents contained trade secrets and asked the court to force EFF to return them to prevent the organization from distributing them further. EFF acknowledged that it had provided the documents to two technical consultants, who helped investigate and validate Klein’s claims. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled against AT&T, but did order EFF not to give the documents to anyone else. The order does not, however, prevent Klein from sharing the documents with anyone else. Klein is not a party to the EFF lawsuit against AT&T, and so the judge couldn’t prevent Klein from disclosing the documents.
AT&T spokesman Marc Bien declined to comment after the hearing on what action if any the company might still take against Klein to protect the trade secrets that it says are in the documents that Klein possesses.
Klein’s attorney, James J. Brosnahan, said the documents should be made public since the public’s right to know “trumps any proprietary information.” He added that although Klein had shared his information with members of the Senate, he had not given the documents to anyone since the court sealed them and would not do so now, out of respect for the court. Brosnahan said he thought it was interesting, however, that AT&T had not yet taken any legal action against his client. “They have, what, a hundred lawyers up there? And they haven’t sued him,” he said.
Brosnahan said the real issue, however, was not the documents but whether AT&T had diverted all customer correspondence and Web traffic to the government. “Someone in this country has got to answer the question quickly: Is that true? And if that’s true, when will it stop?”
Bien would not take questions and only responded with a prepared statement after the hearing. “AT&T does not provide customer information to law enforcement agencies or government agencies without legal authorization … If and when AT&T is asked by government agencies for help, we do so strictly within the law and under the most stringent conditions. ”
A number of questions remain to be answered by the court before the case can go forward. Both the Department of Justice and AT&T are seeking to have the case dismissed — the DOJ on the basis that the case will yield classified information and harm national security, and AT&T on the grounds that the company’s actions are immune from liability.
With regard to national security, EFF lawyer Cindy Cohn said that nothing EFF had filed so far contained state secrets. Cohn said that EFF gave the government the documents before filing them and that the government allowed EFF to file them. “They would not have granted that permission if they claimed that it was a state secret. So plainly the information that we’ve filed so far is not a state secret.” more
There will always be another election. When that comes, keep your state senator in mind. Did your senator vote to protect your privacy? Do they uphold our liberties?
Today in the senate, the FISA debate was wrapped up and the vote was held. Hillary Clinton did not show up to vote. California Senator Dianne Feinstein voted to allow telecom immunity and spying on Americans. Too bad, Feinstein isn’t up for re-election until 2012. However, we have good memories around here.
Want to know how your state senator voted?
From Senate.gov, here is a summary and the voting record of each senator according to their state:
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress – 2nd Session
as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate
To strike the provisions providing immunity from civil liability to electronic communication service providers for certain assistance provided to the Government.
Not there. She did not vote to protect Americans’ privacy.
The importance of this vote, which had been hotly debated in the Senate for months, and Senator Clinton’s lack of attendance on this day speaks volumes about her concern for American liberties and freedom. The update to FISA gives the telecom industry immunity for their warrantless surveillance program. Clinton’s lack of action on this bill is in clear contrast to her spoken views on the Bush administration. On this vote, Clinton bowed out. Her bowing out supported the Bush administration’s agenda. Just what party is she working with? Her past and current voting history may seem more in-line with what we want change from.
Barack Obama did show up and he did vote to stop the FISA changes that would provide immunity to the telecom industry, clearly scoring major points for American liberties.
From Politico:
An attempt to strip lawsuit immunity for telecom firms that helped the government tap phone calls fell well short in the Senate Tuesday, leaving liberal Democrats on the losing side of what they believe is a fundamental civil liberties debate.
Only 31 senators — all Democrats — voted to take away retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies facing lawsuits over wiretaps carried out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Sixty-seven senators — a mix of Republicans and Democrats — voted against the amendment.
With the immunity provision intact, the Senate voted late Tuesday afternoon to pass the bill, 68-29, setting up a tough negotiation with the House, which opposed telecom lawsuit immunity. The Senate vote amounts to a major victory for the White House, which had threatened to veto the bill if it did not protect telecom companies that aided spy agencies with wiretapping.
The vote also provided an opportunity to showcase the key differences on national security between presidential candidates, as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted against immunity for telecoms, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), voted to keep immunity in the bill. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) did not show up for the vote. All three candidates were in the Washington area Tuesday morning for the region’s three primaries.
Every Democrat should be seriously concerned about Senator Clinton and her intentions.
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