The White House has asked legislators crafting competing reforms of the National Security Agency to provide legal immunity for telecommunications firms that provide the government with customer data, the Guardian has learned.
In a statement of principles privately delivered to lawmakers some weeks ago to guide surveillance reforms, the White House said it wanted legislation protecting “any person who complies in good faith with an order to produce records” from legal liability for complying with court orders for phone records to the government once the NSA no longer collects the data in bulk.
The brief request, contained in a four-page document, echoes a highly controversial provision of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, which providedretroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that allowed the NSA to access calls and call data between Americans and foreigners, voiding lawsuits against them. Barack Obama’s vote for that bill as a senator and presidential candidate disappointed many supporters.
A congressional aide said the telecommunications companies were expected to “fight hard” for the provision to survive in any surveillance bill. Those firms, including Verizon and AT&T, have typically kept far more silent in public about NSA surveillance and their role in it than internet giants, like Yahoo and Google, which have pushed for reforms.
Unlike in 2008, the firms are not facing a spate of lawsuits, althoughVerizon was named as a defendant in Larry Klayman’s suit against the Obama administration challenging the constitutionality of bulk phone metadata collection.
A senior administration official noted that the provision is typical for surveillance law, to protect companies who comply with Fisa court orders for customer data.
“This would refer to any new orders issued by the court under the new regime we are proposing. This is similar to the way the rest of Fisa already operates, and Fisa already contains virtually identical language for its other provisions, including Section 215,” the official said, referring to the portion of the Patriot Act cited as justification for bulk phone data collection.
The telecommunications immunity is already contained within a billauthored by the House intelligence committee leadership, key legislative allies of the NSA.
Credit to The Guardian
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