A little bit lost in the news of the other illegal activities of the Bush administration, don't forget Thursday's revelation that the FISAA allowed the "National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year."
This news, and the bombshell included in the story that the NSA actually wanted to illegally wiretap a member of Congress, drew an immediate response from Sen. Feinstein, the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who vows to hold hearings within the month to investigate these abuses. It also renewed Sen. Feingold's commitment to fixing the mess Congress made last year in passing the FISAAA. Telco amnesty can't be undone, but the loopholes it created that resulted in the most recent NSA abuses can, and must be.
EFF, the organization that's been fighting warrantless wiretapping in the courts, lays out what needs to happen now:
These revelations underline the need for new action on NSA surveillance abuses, both from Congress and from the White House.
Congress should repeal or reform the FISA Amendments Act, as it has now become undeniable that the checks it set on surveillance power are insufficent and dysfunctional. In addition, Congress should establish a comission or a select committee to fully and publicly investigate the NSA program, past and present.
As for the White House and the DOJ — First, they should do as Senator Feingold recommended earlier today, and waive the state secrets privilege in pending surveillance litigation. Second, they should withdraw their baseless claims of sovereign immunity. These simple actions would clear the way for true accountability through an independent judicial ruling on the legality of the program.
With this information, it's more critical than ever that EFF's lawsuits be allowed to go forward, and that we have judicial review of what happened in this program under the Bush administration. That will inform Congress and the administration on fixing FISA moving forward.
There's one other thing the Obama administration can do. As Joe Conason points out at Salon, Thomas Tamm, the career Justice department official who blew the whistle about the NSA program, is still under criminal indictment. They can stop that, as justice would demand. Meteor Blades told the Tamm story yesterday. It's a must read.