News coverage: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/washington/14nsa.html --- Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release For Immediate Release: Friday, July 14, 2006 Proposed Surveillance Bill Would Sweep NSA Spying Programs Under the Rug Bill Threatens Future of EFF Case and Other Legal Challenges San Francisco - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said today that he has negotiated a proposed bill with the White House regarding the NSA's illegal spying program. While the final bill is not public, a draft of the bill obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a sham compromise that would cut off meaningful legal review -- sweeping current legal challenges out of the traditional court system and failing to require court review or congressional oversight of any future surveillance programs. "This so-called compromise bill is not a concession from the White House -- it's a rubber stamp for any future spying program dreamed up by the executive," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "In essence, this bill threatens to make court oversight of electronic surveillance voluntary rather than mandatory." Although the bill creates a process for the executive branch to seek court review of its secret surveillance programs, it doesn't actually require the government to do so. The bill would, however, require that any lawsuit challenging the legality of any classified surveillance program -- including EFF's class-action suit against AT&T -- be transferred, at the government's request, to the FISA Court of Review, a secret court with no procedures for hearing argument from anyone but the government. The bill would further allow the government to prevent the court from disclosing any information about the government's surveillance programs to opposing counsel, regardless of the court's strict security procedures. "When the privacy of millions of Americans is at stake, we deserve more than a closed hearing by a secret court," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. For the draft of the Specter bill: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/NSA/specter_draftbill_071306.pdf For this release: http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_07.php#004824 About EFF The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/ -end- _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]