On July 9, 2008, the U.S. Senate committed to protecting telecommunications companies. From what, you might ask? From the lawsuits that have been springing up against the telecoms for aiding the government in wiretapping Americans without court authorization.

First, some background: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which went into effect in 1978, created a court that had to approve any wiretapping requested by the government. The idea was that the sort of secret wiretaps that occurred during Watergate and the Vietnam War, wiretaps that were for mostly political reasons, should not be allowed to occur. The court, it was decided, would provide the oversight that would keep the government above-board in its surveillance.

Fast-forward to the new millennium. According to an article published in The New York Times in December 2005, President George Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2002 to start eavesdropping on the international phone and email communications of people in this country without a court order. The NSA was to be looking for and preventing terrorist activity after the 9/11 attacks. The monitoring went on for three years before the New York Times story broke, and once the cat was out of the bag, critics began to declare that such eavesdropping, often on up to 500 unsuspecting Americans at any given time, was both illegal and unconstitutional. The program’s defenders, on the other hand, said that the activity was a vital tool in preventing terrorist attacks, and that the lack of court approval meant that the government could move more quickly in protecting this country. They also said that Bush had been given the power to initiate the snooping based on the Congressional resolution that gave him power to wage war against Al Qaeda.

Even before the program was brought out of the shadows, senators and others who knew about the monitoring were raising concerns. Some were worried that the NSA had too much power and not enough restrictions on their behavior. In addition, of course, was the fact that FISA had been bypassed entirely with this program. The court that was put into place to protect the public against unwarranted communications monitoring had been ignored by the government, and some in the government (of the few NSA, CIA, Congressional, Cabinet and administration officials who knew about the program) questioned the legality of the eavesdropping.

With the program now made public, watchdog groups and privacy advocates were up in arms against it. Americans were being denied civil liberties, they insisted, in the name of national security. While any communications that were wholly domestic (i.e., from once place in the U.S. to another) still required a warrant to monitor, the international communications of thousands of Americans were secretly heard by NSA agents. Critics of the secrecy also pointed out that FISA is more agreeable than one might expect in granting wiretapping warrants… Few requests for such warrants were ever denied, and the permissions were frequently granted in a matter of hours if the situation called for speed. In short, the administration’s actions in circumventing the checks and balances of the government did not sit well with many Americans.

As the investigations into the wiretapping progressed, it became clear that several telecommunications companies had aided the NSA in the snooping. The NSA, after all, needed cooperation from the companies to access the data records of the people they had monitored. Americans began to file civil lawsuits against the telecoms for their part in the program, and as of this week, more than 40 such suits had been filed in U.S. District Court. The U.S. Congress has been working for the past year on legislation that would address the wiretapping issues in this country, and after a bitter struggle, they reached an rather lopsided agreement this week.

This is where the protection for the telecoms comes in this week: The bill that the Senate (and earlier, the House of Representatives) approved on Wednesday overhauls the eavesdropping program but also calls for immunity for the telecoms against the lawsuits. Americans, in short, have no legal recourse against the telecoms for their participation in the questionable wiretapping activities. In fact, the White House had threatened to veto the bill if it DIDN’T protect the telecoms. Amendments that were proposed to weaken the bill or delay the immunity were also defeated. The new bill requires the government to get permission from FISA before monitoring Americans overseas, but it also allows the government to get broad, yearlong permissions that target entire groups of people. It also gives the government the right to monitor communications without permission for a week (in an “emergency” situation) before having to apply for a court order.

Many lawmakers were against the bill, for a variety of reasons. Senator Arlen Specter, R-PA, called the bill “buying a pig in a poke.” Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis., put it more bluntly: “This president broke the law.” One of the biggest complaints from the lawmakers was that the details of the snooping are still classified and kept private from many of those in Congress, meaning that the Congresspeople were being asked to vote on protecting the telecoms without actually knowing what they did in the first place. The bill dismisses the 46 lawsuits currently pending against the telecoms, but three additional lawsuits against government officials will continue for now.

The ACLU calls the bill “a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy,” but supporters of the bill call it a protection of those rights. Senator Christopher Bond, R-Mo., said, “This is the balance we need to protect our civil liberties without handcuffing our terror-fighters.” Whatever the motivation, the decision was reached on a deadline; current wiretapping authorizations will begin to expire in August, and without new legislation, the guidelines would revert to the old FISA rules, which would require many new orders and delays in the wiretapping efforts.

So are NSA officials listening to your phone calls or reading your emails right now? Probably not. Should you worry? Worry less about monitoring on your own lines and more about the broader ramifications of this legislation. What is security worth? The delicate balance of safety and liberty is one that has been brought into stark relief since 9/11, and as Americans move forward, the privacy of our communications will become an increasingly-hot issue. Some say that, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from monitoring. But in 1975, as Senator Frank Church, D-Idaho, investigated the NSA, he was troubled enough to say: “That [spying] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.” Whether you have anything to hide or not. 

Sources for this article: www.breitbart.com, The New York Times, www.cbs11tv.com, ap.google.com