FC: Spending bills include controversial Net-legislation

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39289,00.html

   Capitol Rush to Sign Tech Bills
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

   3:00 a.m. Oct. 6, 2000 PDT
   WASHINGTON -- With only a few days left before Congress adjourns for
   the year, negotiations over controversial tech bills are intensifying.

   Since it's an election year, legislators are itching to go home to
   campaign, but they're far behind in their work: Squabbling between
   Democrats and Republicans has resulted in only two of 13 annual
   spending bills being signed into law.

   But while the partisan divide is public, many details about what will
   be included in the appropriations bills are not. Committees meet
   behind locked doors to negotiate, and rank-and-file legislators often
   aren't given time to review the final bill before they vote on it.

   "Legislative proposals that have a dramatic impact on individual
   liberty are attached without hearing, debate or an opportunity to
   amend in an open process," says Greg Nojeim, legislative counsel for
   the American Civil Liberties Union. "For example, as I speak to you,
   the Customs Service is trying to obtain the authority to open all
   outbound mail without a warrant."

   Nojeim is talking about a bill backed by Rep. Spencer Bachus
   (R-Alabama). It would amend existing law, which currently says the
   feds can't open letters "except under authority of a search warrant."

   Legislators also have inserted a mandatory Internet-filtering
   amendment, backed by Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and Rep. Ernst
   Istook (R-Oklahoma), into the appropriations bill funding the Labor,
   Health and Human Services, and Education departments.

   Libraries and civil liberties groups had lobbied hard for its removal,
   but negotiators did precisely the opposite, expanding the bill's scope
   to require any school or library that receives almost any kind of
   federal funds to adopt filtering software.

   Making it more difficult than usual to defeat such a plan is that the
   appropriations procedure is not handled by the usual committees, like
   Commerce and Judiciary, that specialize in tech issues.

   Advocates like the Center for Democracy and Technology don't know as
   many aides or legislators involved in this process -- and they're
   trying to work the phones at the same time as every other lobbyist in
   town.

   "The nature of the beast is that many of us know the people who cover
   Internet issues on a substantive, day-to-day basis (and not) the
   people who appropriate money. Appropriations is an arcane world unto
   itself in Washington," says CDT staff counsel Alan Davidson.

   "There are many people who specialize in getting things through the
   appropriations process specifically," he said. "It's a high-stakes
   game for many companies, and it's not an area where public interest
   groups have had much of an impact, especially in the Internet area."

   CDT sent out an action alert on Wednesday, trying to rally opposition
   to the filtering requirement: "CDT needs your help to prevent this
   misguided and unconstitutional legislation from becoming law!"

   There's plenty of precedent for hastily crafted legislation to become
   law in the waning days of a congressional session.

   The Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act -- which requires
   telephone companies to make their networks easily wiretappable --
   became law during the last week of the 1994 Congress. CALEA is
   currently the subject of an ongoing lawsuit brought by privacy groups.

   So is the Child Online Protection Act, an anti-erotica criminal law
   that Congress approved in late 1998 as part of an omnibus
   appropriations bill. A federal appeals court ruled in June that it
   violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

   [...]




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