The House passed a revised counter-terrorism bill this afternoon by a substantial majority. The bill is expected to be considered by the Senate on Saturday 8/3, and is likely to pass. The House-passed bill DOES NOT contain ANY of the privacy threatening provisions. Provisions dealing with funding for the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (Digital Telephony) were REMOVED from the bill just before the vote after civil liberties groups AND the FBI objected to the language. Provisions dealing with emergency wiretap authority and "roving wiretaps" were also not included in the House-passed bill. In addition, the bill does not contain any encryption provisions. Earlier in the week, the Administration had circulated an outline of their anti-terrorism proposal which included new, unspecified restrictions on encryption. Senators Burns (R-MT), Leahy (D-VT), Pressler (R-SD), Lott (R-MS), and others worked hard to prevent any encryption provisions from being included in early versions of the bill, and deserve a lot of credit for fighting for the Net. It's nice to finally have a number of powerful allies joining the usual defenders of net.freedom on Capitol Hill. The bill passed today contains provisions increasing airport security, studies on ways to improve US anti terrorism policy and other terrorism issues, and a controvertial provisions expanding federal racketeering laws to cover terrorist activity. The bill also contains a small but not insigificant privacy victory. The bill doubles the punishment from 5 to 10 years for unlawful disclosure of information obtained from a warrant and increases certain penalties for violation of the Privacy Act. This is not over yet -- many of these issues, particularly encryption and Digital Telephony funding, are likely to be back before the Congress in September, so stay tunned... Thanks to everyone who called Congress today to object to the new sweeping surveillance provisions that were dropped from the bill! It looks like we mave had really made a difference in this debate. More as it comes... Jonah -- Jonah Seiger, Policy Analyst Center for Democracy and Technology <jseiger@cdt.org> (v) +1.202.637.9800 http://www.cdt.org/