I can’t quote or link to the AP story (There is now a story I can link to over at Arstechnica on the new compromise.), but the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives have agreed upon a compromised Protect America ActFISA replacement bill that includes telecom immunity. This ends 4 months in which the House did nothing instead of doing a bad thing. They have not yet passed this bill, so those outside of the committee that drafted compromise may still not pass it. There can be no compromise on telecom immunity for the reasons I outlined before.
The other big part of the compromise is that the government may not invoke war powers or other authorities to supersede surveillance powers in the future. Of course, they are already bared from doing this, hence the lawsuits they have incurred by doing it. Who is to say that yet another law against it will stop them in the future. You know what would stop them? If the people/companies in a position to enable the surveillance were so frightened of the repercussions for violating the law that they refused to help! I wonder how we could cause them to shake in their boots so? Oh maybe we could not provide them immunity from past actions, and make them pay for what they did. That way, next time they will know not to do it. End result, liberty is preserved; those who seek to destroy it, in this case the Bush Administration, are thwarted. Liberty must be protected against all enemies, not just the ones with guns.
Update: They passed it, see the ars story here. All I can say is fuck you Nancy Pelosi (and the other 104 democrats who voted for the bill), apologies and comparing it to an even worse bill don’t protect my liberties. Props go out to Denis Kucinich and Mike Capuano (my congressman) who did not vote for the bill. With everything else that happened this weekend I’m so disillusioned right now I can’t even comprehend it.