Democratic victory may kill surveillance bills

The new Democratic-led House could bode well for the civil-liberties crowd. The most pressing issue for the 110th Congress will be quashing efforts they say would allow the continuation of an eavesdropping program authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington office for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the shift in leadership may mean "a very profound change" in how lawmakers address the electronic wiretapping initiative of the National Security Agency.

Before recessing for the mid-term election, the House passed a bill, H.R. 5825, to overhaul rules for wiretaps without warrants. The Senate companion measure, S. 2453, did not get a floor vote.

Bush pushed hard in the run-up to the election for Congress to codify the program, Fredrickson said. "I think that is dead."

The House now can move ahead with "what it should have been doing right from the beginning," she said, which is figuring out the broadness of the program's scope, how many Americans have been spied on and what has been done with the information.

Lawmakers first must return for a short, post-election session, which she said could be "rife with danger." "It provides the greatest opportunity for late-night maneuvers," she said, adding that the ACLU will be vigilant in "scrubbing" any bills that pass.

Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said her group will look to the new Congress to "be more skeptical of the president's claims that it's necessary to sacrifice civil liberties for national security."

Before House Intelligence or Judiciary committees take action on NSA spying or similar proposals that arise, she said she hopes they will "engage in the kind of vigorous oversight, investigation and fact-finding that really has been absent in the last four years."

There will probably not be "dramatic rollbacks of national-security-related legislation," like the controversial sections of the USA PATRIOT Act that were reinstated by the 109th Congress, Harris said. One provision involves a special subpoena power that lets the FBI scour library and Internet provider files without search warrants.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said he looks to the new House to exercise meaningful "oversight after a long and dangerous hiatus." Given the "largely comatose" status of the current Congress, a "great deal of improper or potentially criminal conduct" could have been ignored, he said.

The question of whether Democrats will fight hard on issues like torture and criminal rights for detainees also was on the minds of civil-liberties advocates. Fredrickson said the party will be "pretty cautious" with an eye toward winning the 2008 presidential election, and Turley agreed.

The party may be calculating "how they can avoid doing anything that's controversial," Fredrickson said, which would be "a real shame" because voters asked for change. "They don't want just a passive Democratic Party," she said.

Lisa Graves, deputy director for the Center for National Security Studies, said missteps that have been taken by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between the FBI and local law enforcement agencies aimed at tackling terrorism, also must be examined. In particular, she cited reports revealed through Freedom of Information Act requests that the task force has spied on Americans who oppose the Iraq war and other administration policies.

One proposal offered this year would halt funding for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping and "help restore the rule of law," Graves said.