The Raw Story reports that the Senate will proceed with an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that includes retroactive immunity for telecom companies that complied with the Bush administration's request for wiretapping. Federal law prohibits telecommunications companies from disclosing subscriber information to anyone without a court order. President Bush and Vice President Cheney maintain that telecom immunity is essential to the War on Terr'; otherwise, telecom companies won't want to help out the government for fear of lawsuits.

That's all well and good, but FISA already contains provisions for lawsuit immunity. Under current law, if the administration goes through the process of obtaining a FISA warrant, then anyone who helps the administration in executing the warrant is immune from prosecution.

This all begs the question: what is the executive branch doing that is so secretive and so pressing that not even FISA is sufficient to control it? Bush and Cheney wish to engage in wiretapping with no oversight at all, which is exactly what FISA was enacted to prevent in the first place!

Thankfully, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) has promised to filibuster any legislation that comes to the floor with an immunity provision. And well he should, for not all telecoms blindly agreed to the Bush requests. Those that refused questioned the legality of the request and were worried that they might be open to prosecution. The rest acquiesced, for reasons that are unclear (and that we're not allowed to know). Opening up telecom companies to prosecution lets them know that they broke the law and that when the president comes to them with a questionable request, they should think hard about it, as they may be open to prosecution from unhappy citizens whose conversations were recorded in a way that is against the law.