FC: Senate votes 96-1 for "USA Act" -- without Feingold's amendments

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Details of Feingold's unsuccessful amendments:
http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/11/1430203&mode=thread

---

http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/12/0440201&mode=thread

   Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) had planned on introducing four
   privacy amendments to a bill widely viewed as anti-privacy. The debate
   ran from 9 pm to midnight on Thursday.
   
   The sequence went as follows for all the amendments:
   1. Feingold introduced an amendment to the USA Act
   2. Feingold, Wellstone, Cantwell spoke in favor of it
   3. Just about everyone else led by Hatch, Leahy, Daschle opposed it
   4. Daschle moved to table
   5. Just about everyone voted to table
   6. Goto Line 1
   
   The votes were:
   83-13 to table the "trespasser" snooping amendment
   90-7 to table roving wiretap limits
   89-8 to table subpoena limits
   
   Feingold never introduced his promised fourth amendment, which would
   have limited secret searches.

---

http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47522,00.html

   [...]

   In a series of votes ending at midnight Thursday, the U.S. Senate
   overwhelmingly defeated the last-ditch efforts by Sen. Russ Feingold
   (D-Wisconsin) to limit police surveillance powers.
   
   The Senate then voted 96-1 for the unaltered USA Act (PDF), which
   includes the biggest eavesdropping expansion in a generation. Feingold
   was the lone dissenter.
   
   Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) described Feingold's three amendments as
   "outdated and nonsensical." Hatch said "current law perversely gives
   the terrorist privacy rights.... We should not tie the hands of our
   law enforcement and help hackers and cyber-terrorists to get away."
   
   Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) said the USA Act
   was a "delicate but successful compromise" that provided adequate
   protection for civil liberties. Daschle said his opposition to
   Feingold's amendments was "not substantative but procedural" because
   the Senate needed to move quickly on the legislation.

   [...]

---




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------