How civil liberties groups split over Senate wiretap bill
Declan McCullagh
declan at well.com
Thu Oct 11 08:46:59 PDT 2001
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47490,00.html
...
Civil liberties groups have split over how to react to the impending
vote on the most important wiretapping and eavesdropping bill in a
generation.
The American Civil Liberties Union has taken a hard-line approach,
asking its members to reject the entire bill. An alert calls the USA
Act "a bill that would significantly undermine many of the freedoms
that Americans hold dear."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation of San Francisco has taken a
similar position, saying that "Sen. Feingold is expected to offer some
amendments, but they will not address all of the concerns with this
legislation."
Feingold's amendments rewrite only a tiny portion of the vast bill.
Even with them, the USA Act would still allow police to conduct
Internet eavesdropping without a court order in some circumstances,
allow federal prosecutors to imprison non-citizens indefinitely, and
extend the duration of an electronic surveillance order issued by a
secret court from 90 to 120 days.
The Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology is taking a
noticeably milder approach.
CDT is not urging the activists who populate its e-mail alert lists to
tell their senators to oppose the USA Act. Instead, in an alert dated
late Wednesday, CDT says: "Call your senators in Washington right away
and let them know that you think civil liberties should be part of the
balance as we move forward to protect our country from terrorism. Urge
them to support the Feingold privacy amendments."
...
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