Article I, Section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
What does it matter?
Watch this Congress cave again over the summer!
"The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents.
The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation (alerted to the issue in part by a NEWSWEEK story last fall) is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House.
Except it wasn't a post 9/11 program!!!
Bush's Wiretapping Began BEFORE 9/11!! and the New York Times Admits Bush Administration Spying Began in December of 2000... BEFORE TAKING OFFICE!
At the time, the White House was proposing a surveillance bill—strongly backed by the telecoms—that included a sweeping provision that would grant them retroactive immunity from any lawsuits accusing the companies of wrongdoing related to the surveillance program....
The debate over a new surveillance authorization is likely to be complicated by figures showing sharp increases in the government's electronic eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.... Later this week another report is expected to also show increases in secret wiretaps and break-ins approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in terror and espionage cases. But even these secret wiretaps and break-ins—estimated to be about 2,300—tell only part of the story. They don't include other secret methods the government uses to collect personal information on U.S. citizens.
--MORE--"
Also see: The New York Times Tool
