Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) has introduced new legislation—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Oversight Resource Enhancement Act—that can be seen as a last ditch attempt to legalize the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping initiative.
Similar to legislation Specter proposed a few months ago, the proposed bill would increase the number of individuals authorized to issue warrants and transfer all lawsuits involving the administration’s warrantless wiretapping initiative to the US Supreme Court.
Specter is the outgoing chair of the judiciary committee and after first threatening to subpoena the Bush administration over the warrantless wiretapping program, then went on to co-author a bill with the administration to legalize the initiative.
Any Senate bill would have to be reconciled with legislation that has already passed the US House of Representatives. And herein lies the rationale for seeing Specter’s move as a desperate attempt to save the White House bacon. The House bill legalizes warrantless wiretapping of US citizens and gives immunity to the telecommunications giants that have cooperated with the government program.
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