And as for the “those-who-would-sacrifice-liberty-for-security- deserve-neither” crowd? Well, perhaps they can find some solace in this comment from Senator Christopher S. Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “There’s nothing to fear in this bill, unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.”

All depends on who you ask, I guess, because the Electronic Frontier Foundation says there’s actually quite a bit to fear no matter who you have on speed dial.

“It is an immeasurable tragedy that just after its return from the Fourth of July holiday, the Senate has chosen to pass a bill that betrays the spirit of 1776 by radically expanding the president’s spying powers and granting immunity to the companies that colluded in his illegal surveillance program,” said Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “This so-called compromise bill represents a shameful capitulation to the overreaching demands of an imperial president. As Senator Leahy put it in yesterday’s debate, the retroactive immunity provision of the bill upends the scales of justice and makes Congress and the courts handmaidens to the White House’s coverup of its illegal surveillance program.”

And as for the “those-who-would-sacrifice-liberty-for-security- deserve-neither” crowd? Well, perhaps they can find some solace in this comment from Senator Christopher S. Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “There’s nothing to fear in this bill, unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.”

All depends on who you ask, I guess, because the Electronic Frontier Foundation says there’s actually quite a bit to fear no matter who you have on speed dial.

“It is an immeasurable tragedy that just after its return from the Fourth of July holiday, the Senate has chosen to pass a bill that betrays the spirit of 1776 by radically expanding the president’s spying powers and granting immunity to the companies that colluded in his illegal surveillance program,” said Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “This so-called compromise bill represents a shameful capitulation to the overreaching demands of an imperial president. As Senator Leahy put it in yesterday’s debate, the retroactive immunity provision of the bill upends the scales of justice and makes Congress and the courts handmaidens to the White House’s coverup of its illegal surveillance program.”

The U.S. Senate approved espionage legislation yesterday that would not only grant the National Security Agency sweeping new powers to intercept international phone calls and emails, but it would also grant retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that participated in the government’s post-9/11 warrantless domestic spying program.

With a 68-29 vote, the Senate passed the revision to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act along to the House of Representatives, which has already taken issue with its telecom-immunity provision. Said Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), “[The Senate has] just sanctioned … the single largest invasion of privacy in the history of the country.“

Sen. Russell Feingold (D., Wis.) was equally incredulous. “It is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were,” he said. “And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance.”

Ah. And that being the case, it follows that we shouldn’t simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for broader clandestine surveillance powers. Right?

Said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department intelligence lawyer who represents several telecommunication companies: “This is a dramatic restructuring of surveillance law. And the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets.”

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