Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:30:20 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: US Law Enforcement Given Unprecedented Surveillance Powers Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 10:54:27 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: Senate votes 96-1 for "USA Act" -- without Feingold's amendments X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/ X-Author: Declan McCullagh is at http://www.mccullagh.org/ X-News-Site: Cluebot is at http://www.cluebot.com/
Details of Feingold's unsuccessful amendments: http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/11/1430203&mode=thread
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http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/12/0440201&mode=thread
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) had planned on introducing four privacy amendments to a bill widely viewed as anti-privacy. The debate ran from 9 pm to midnight on Thursday.
The sequence went as follows for all the amendments: 1. Feingold introduced an amendment to the USA Act 2. Feingold, Wellstone, Cantwell spoke in favor of it 3. Just about everyone else led by Hatch, Leahy, Daschle opposed it 4. Daschle moved to table 5. Just about everyone voted to table 6. Goto Line 1
The votes were: 83-13 to table the "trespasser" snooping amendment 90-7 to table roving wiretap limits 89-8 to table subpoena limits
Feingold never introduced his promised fourth amendment, which would have limited secret searches.
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http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47522,00.html
[...]
In a series of votes ending at midnight Thursday, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly defeated the last-ditch efforts by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) to limit police surveillance powers.
The Senate then voted 96-1 for the unaltered USA Act (PDF), which includes the biggest eavesdropping expansion in a generation. Feingold was the lone dissenter.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) described Feingold's three amendments as "outdated and nonsensical." Hatch said "current law perversely gives the terrorist privacy rights.... We should not tie the hands of our law enforcement and help hackers and cyber-terrorists to get away."
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) said the USA Act was a "delicate but successful compromise" that provided adequate protection for civil liberties. Daschle said his opposition to Feingold's amendments was "not substantative but procedural" because the Senate needed to move quickly on the legislation.
[...]
--- Subject: FC: House votes 339-79 to approve USA Act v2.0 "anti-terror" bill X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/ X-Author: Declan McCullagh is at http://www.mccullagh.org/ X-News-Site: Cluebot is at http://www.cluebot.com/
You can tell how your congresscritter voted on the unsuccessful attempt to send back t to committee -- a good idea -- which failed 73-345: http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2001&rollnumber=385
The 339-79 final roll call vote to approve the USA Act v2.0: http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2001&rollnumber=386
Text of USA Act v2.0: http://www.house.gov/rules/sensen_028.pdf
Background on debate: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02652.html
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http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47549,00.html
House Endorses Snoop Bill By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 2:00 a.m. Oct. 13, 2001 PDT
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Friday afternoon to hand unprecedented surveillance powers to police.
Just hours after the Senate approved its version of the anti-terrorism bill, House legislators followed suit by voting 339-79 to ease limits on wiretapping and Internet monitoring.
The big difference: The House attached an expiration date to the "USA Act" (PDF). The wiretap sections expire in December 2004 -- unless the president decides it is in the "national interest" to extend them until December 2006.
During the five-hour debate, legislators complained that House leaders had forced a vote before anyone had a chance to review the 175-page bill. Early in the morning, top House Republicans met privately and abruptly agreed to use the Senate's anti-terrorism bill instead of a more moderate one that their colleagues had expected.
Democrats were the most strident critics of that decision. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) said: "What we have today is an outrageous procedure: A bill, drafted by a handful of people in secret, comes to us without a committee review and immune to amendment."
Frank was talking about a rule handed down from GOP leaders on Friday morning that banned any changes to the USA Act before the vote.
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