Walter Pincus: Administration Seeks to Expand Surveillance Law

[kpete]

Administration Seeks to Expand Surveillance Law

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 14, 2007; Page A03

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The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to keep information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign intelligence." Currently such information is destroyed unless it indicates threat of death or serious bodily harm.

And they provide for compelling telecommunications companies and e-mail providers to cooperate with investigations while protecting them from being sued by their subscribers. The legal protection would be applied retroactively to those companies that cooperated with the government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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The White House also threatened to veto a Senate version of the annual intelligence authorization bill, primarily over provisions that require a response within 15 days to Senate intelligence committee requests for particular documents, and reports to all committee members upon the initiation of extraordinarily sensitive activities, under threat of withholding funds. Under current practice, only committee chairmen and vice chairmen are told of such activities.

The White House, in a "statement of administration policy" sent to the Senate on Thursday, questioned the 4 percent reduction in funding that the intelligence committee applied to national intelligence programs and its threat of prohibiting funding for several classified projects pending reports to the panel.


more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR2007041301932.html?hpid=topnews