I found this today and it scares me. They are still playing posturing games and the news is making this information available to the enemy. So the enemy knows they can communicate with autonomy right now. Nobody's watching because its illegal. The original FISA bill only allows monitoring calls from outside the U.S. to outside the U.S. This is ridiculous!
[
Senator
Chuck Grassley accuses House Democrats of being reluctant to allow the
government to track foreign terror suspects, demonstrating to him that
they don't seem to want to stop those threats.
Before
leaving for its Easter recess, the House approved its version of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as FISA. President
Bush rejects Democrats' new version of the bill because it does not
provide legal protections for telecommunications companies that have
helped the administration conduct surveillance on foreign terror
suspects. The president backs a bipartisan Senate-approved version of
FISA.
Senator Grassley (R-Iowa) says FISA was critical in helping the
government thwart terror plots to blow up the Holland Tunnel in New
York and a building in Los Angeles. "We've been able to track
terrorists' telephone conversations under this law," he says, "and it's
going to run out if we don't get it renewed."
Grassley explains why he does not like how the House amended FISA.
"They're going to put roadblocks into our FBI and security agencies'
tracking [of] terrorist phone calls," he argues, "and we need to be on
top of terrorists' communications because we have found out that we've
been able to intervene and prevent terrorist activity."
He says because of FISA, the government also was able to recently put a
stop to a terrorist plot to blow up American defense facilities in
Germany.
The House, says the Iowa lawmaker, should have gone along with the
Senate version. "[B]ecause what we did ... was a bipartisan approach,"
he states. "In the House they tend to be more partisan. Democrats don't
seem to want to track terrorists."]