House Members to Bush: No Immunity for Lawbreaking Phone Companies

After weeks of high drama on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives rejected an attempt to give telecommunications companies a free pass for their role in spying on Americans. The House voted 213 to 197 to reject the Bush administration’s call for retroactive immunity for the companies from lawsuits over their legality.

The ACLU and other privacy groups have gone to court to learn whether the president’s secret wiretapping program violated the Constitution and millions of Americans’ rights.

The White House had pressured House members to rubber-stamp a Senate bill granting immunity and shredding other protections against rampant spying. Under U.S. law the government must obtain warrants from a surveillance court that reviews the evidence in secret.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted nearly every request it reviewed. Yet the president and surrogates including Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell have tried to undermine even that modest judicial oversight.

California ACLU members have watched this vote closely and urged their House members to reject the president’s power grab. The ACLU’s California affiliates sued AT&T and Verizon in 2006 on behalf of 17 individual plaintiffs and more than 100,000 ACLU members statewide for violating customer privacy and the Constitution by giving the U.S. government access to call data without a warrant.

— Michael Soller, Mar 18, 10:14 AM   

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