The U.S. Senate voted 68 to 29 to grant an extension to measures that enlarged the government’s spying powers. The measures, initially passed by Congress last August, allow the U.S. government to wiretap private phones without a warrant or any advance review.
The bill also contains legal protections for phone companies who cooperated with the wiretapping program implemented by the Bush administration following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
A House-approved version contained no legal protections for phone companies. AT&T and other major phone companies face 40 lawsuits from customers related to illegal wiretapping. The House and Senate must now work out a compromise before the bill is sent to the White House.
The bill is a gift to the large, repressive U.S. intelligence apparatus. With the blessing of congressional Democrats, the bill will continue the trampling of workers’ privacy rights. Most affected will be Arabs, Muslims and other oppressed people in the United States.
The limits of bourgeois free speech rights in matters of “national security” are laid bare with this reactionary bill.
