Bush's surveillance plans get a chilly response

Remarks made by President Bush over the weekend about the need to revise a 30-year-old intelligence surveillance law to aid anti-terrorism efforts has ruffled the feathers of civil libertarians and key lawmakers.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is "badly out of date and Congress must act to modernize it," Bush said during his weekly radio address. Intelligence agencies have been hampered in their ability to get vital information to keep American people safe, he said.

The country faces "sophisticated terrorists who use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate with each other, recruit operatives and plan attacks," Bush said Saturday. "Technologies like these were not available when FISA was passed ... and FISA has not kept up with new technological developments."

Not so said Caroline Fredrickson, the American Civil Liberties Union's top lobbyist. The intelligence law was written to be tech neutral, and there is no new technology that cannot be intercepted with a warrant, she said.

The solution proposed by the administration would protect "the privacy interests of people inside the United States so we don't have to obtain court orders to effectively collect foreign intelligence about foreign targets located in foreign locations," Bush said.

He also said the changes would let the government work better with private-sector entities, like telecommunications companies. Bush urged Congress to pass an intelligence modernization bill before the August congressional recess starts this week.

But Fredrickson called the administration's proposal "a blank check for warrantless domestic and international surveillance."

Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies, said Bush further misled citizens during his radio address, and his administration is "playing chicken with the privacy rights of Americans."

The White House is trying to win dramatic revisions to the law that would impact privacy rights of Americans "by stoking fears and yet again subverting intelligence to advance the administration's political ends," she said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that if changes are needed to FISA, "we'll do that -- we've done this half a dozen times already."

The bigger problem is the lack of information being provided about the scope of government spying, the Vermont Democrat said. "We have an administration that feels they're above the law, that the law applies to everybody except them, and we have a Department of Justice that goes along with that."

"We do not know if the administration has been leveling with us or not," added the panel's ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He told host Bob Schieffer that a briefing from administration officials was planned for the following day. When asked on Monday, a Specter aide said he did not have details about the meeting.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, said the administration appears to have violated FISA numerous times. "We should not reward such behavior by giving the president more unchecked powers," the New York Democrat said.