http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/31-1
Published on Monday, December 31, 2012 by Common Dreams
Obama Quietly Signs Abusive Spy Bill He Once Vowed to Eliminate
After Senate rejects oversight amendments, bill sails into law
- Lauren McCauley, staff writer
Under the cover of holiday weekend slumber, President Obama signed
into law a five-year extension of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008,
successfully solidifying unchecked surveillance authority for the
remainder of his presidency.
Known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law extends
powers of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance of
Americans' international emails and phone calls without obtaining a
court order for each intercept.
The spying bill would have expired at the end of 2012 without the
president's approval, the Associated Press reports.
According to a statement (PDF) by the ACLU, "the law's effect-and
indeed the law's main purpose-is to give the government nearly
unfettered access to Americans' international communications."
On Friday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly (73-23) to pass a renewal
of the bill (H.R. 5949), voting down four separate oversight
amendments that would have gone "a long-way in curbing the law's
worst abuses," writes the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Trevor
Timm.
Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald remarked that passage of the law,
ushered to the president's desk with broad Democratic support,
represented one of the "defining attributes of the Obama legacy" in
which a previously radical right-wing policy-in this case warrantless
eavesdropping-is meekly accepted by empowered Democrats and then
codified as law with "bipartisan consensus".
You can see a breakdown of how each Senator voted, here.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/112/senate/2/votes/236/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
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