Why Immunity Matters
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, March 3, 2008
When he's talking extemporaneously, President Bush's rhetoric on the issue of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with his warrantless wiretapping program tends toward the simplistic and argumentative.
"We want to know who's calling who," he said at last week's press conference, emphasizing his words by thumping the lectern. "We need to know in order to protect the people."
No one, of course, is arguing the contrary. The debate is over how to go about it. And the major sticking point in the current congressional tussle over surveillance legislation is about immunity: Whether the telephone and Internet companies that for years let the government spy on their customers without a warrant should be protected from civil lawsuits alleging that they violated federal law in doing so.
And indeed, beyond the hyperbole, the Bush administration is articulating a more measured, three-part argument for immunity, based on concerns about fairness, secrecy and future cooperation.
It just so happens that all three parts of this argument are flawed.
(Continued here.)
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, March 3, 2008
When he's talking extemporaneously, President Bush's rhetoric on the issue of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with his warrantless wiretapping program tends toward the simplistic and argumentative.
"We want to know who's calling who," he said at last week's press conference, emphasizing his words by thumping the lectern. "We need to know in order to protect the people."
No one, of course, is arguing the contrary. The debate is over how to go about it. And the major sticking point in the current congressional tussle over surveillance legislation is about immunity: Whether the telephone and Internet companies that for years let the government spy on their customers without a warrant should be protected from civil lawsuits alleging that they violated federal law in doing so.
And indeed, beyond the hyperbole, the Bush administration is articulating a more measured, three-part argument for immunity, based on concerns about fairness, secrecy and future cooperation.
It just so happens that all three parts of this argument are flawed.
(Continued here.)
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