| Offices : Beckley • Charleston • Fairmont • Martinsburg • Washington, DC | E-mail Senator Rockefeller |
February 12, 2008
ROCKEFELLER STATEMENT ON SENATE PASSAGE OF FISA BILL
Washington, DC – Tonight, the Senate passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, legislation aimed at permanently strengthening and improving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The legislation, which passed 68-29, now must be reconciled with the House-passed version of the bill. The following is Chairman Rockefeller’s statement:
“With the Senate passage of this bill we are one step closer to restoring critical checks and balances to the President’s surveillance program.
“This is a very good bill that achieves what we set out to accomplish – restore civil liberty protections through proper FISA court oversight, and allow for targeted surveillance of potential terrorists.
“For the first time, we have expanded protections to U.S. persons no matter where they are in the world, and we increased the role of the FISA Court including court approval of minimization procedures to ensure that the identities and information of American’s incidentally collected is omitted.
“Unfortunately, much of the debate over this bill has focused on liability protection for telecommunication carriers, instead of the new civil liberties protections and oversight mechanisms that have been included.
“We spent many months, under tense negotiations, to craft provisions that would modernize and strengthen FISA while protecting Americans right to privacy. That is what this bill will do, and that is why it should be passed and signed into law.
“Anger over the President’s warrantless surveillance is appropriate and the Administration should be held accountable. However, we should not hold the carriers hostage to years of litigation for stepping forward when the country asked for their help and providing assistance they believed to be legal and necessary.
“The fact is, if we lose cooperation from these or other private companies, our national security will suffer.”
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