“To stall legislation needed to help our intelligence community prevent attacks and protect American lives is not only irresponsible, it’s also dangerous,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
The immunity provision is strongly opposed by elected officials and civil liberties groups in Maine.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, allows law enforcement officials to seek warrants from a secret court to wiretap phones. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, large telecommunications companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, cooperated with the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.
The Bush administration has threatened to veto legislation if companies are not shielded from lawsuits such as one filed by the Maine Public Utilities Commission against Verizon. The state agency wants to know whether Verizon violated customers’ privacy either by providing records to federal agents without a warrant or monitoring and recording phone calls.
Congress passed a six-month stopgap measure, the Protect America Act, which did not include an immunity provision. That extension expires Feb. 1, and debate on a new bill is excepted to begin as soon as today.
A compromise bill forged between the Democratic chairman and the senior Republican member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee includes the lawsuit immunity provision.
That measure has enough support from Senate Republicans and some Democrats to pass, which would set up a fight between the Senate and House, which passed its own bill last year that did not include the immunity provision.
Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins favor immunity.
Snowe, who serves on the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, voted for the measure in committee. It passed 13-2.
“The measure does not absolve anyone from any criminal wrongdoing. It applies to civil lawsuits. Should any criminal allegations arise against telecommunications officers, government officials or others, such investigations would not be prevented by this provision,” Snowe said.
Snowe said it is unlikely a bill would get the support needed to pass without immunity.
Collins said the bill “strikes the right balance of protecting Americans’ civil liberties while not impeding the ability of our intelligence community to monitor the communications of foreign terrorists overseas.”
Maine’s attorney general, Steven Rowe, wrote Snowe and Collins on Tuesday asking them to oppose legislation granting lawsuit immunity because it would “hamper” the Maine PUC’s investigation into Verizon.
Other, similar lawsuits – which the Department of Justice has tried unsuccessfully to stop – have been filed in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut and Missouri.
An immunity provision would make the lawsuits moot, said Shenna Bellows of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. Bellows noted that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are not asking for monetary damages; they’re seeking a court-ordered injunction to prevent future instances of warrantless surveillance.
A group of 108 Maine lawyers sent a letter on Monday asking Snowe and Collins to oppose the measure.
“Immunity sends the message that it’s OK to break the law if asked to do so by the government,” they wrote. “Immunity undermines the Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Washington Correspondent Jonathan E. Kaplan can be contacted at (202) 488-1119 or at: jkaplan@pressherald.com
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