Report: House preps immunity-free wiretap bill 
House Democrats so far have refused to veer off course in their ongoing game of chicken with the White House over whether to grant legal immunity to phone and Internet companies that helped the government spy without warrants, and they seem to be keeping their foot on the gas pedal.
The Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday that a draft measure being prepared in the House to update the nation's spy laws does not grant immunity to those telecommunications companies, as President Bush as demanded, and it would create an oversight panel to determine whether the president's warrantless wiretapping program was legal.
"The Democratic bill will not have retroactive immunity," a congressional official told the paper's Siobhan Gorman.
Bush has promised to veto any update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that does not include an immunity provision, which would spare telecoms the burden of defending themselves from some 40 lawsuits brought by customers alleging the companies ignored privacy laws.
"By resisting White House pressure to accept the immunity provision, the proposal virtually ensures that the heated debate over how to revise domestic surveillance laws will continue past this week, as lawmakers prepare to depart Friday for a two-week recess," Gorman reports.
Since a temporary FISA update, which was hastily passed last August, expired Feb. 16, Bush, his appointees to the Intelligence Community and congressional Republicans have raised the specter of a nation unprepared to fight its foreign terrorist enemies because its capacity for domestic surveillance has diminished. An outside group also is running ominous 24-style advertisements targeting vulnerable House Democrats.
House leaders were expected to meet Tuesday night to further discuss their FISA proposal, according to the Journal:
As an interim step, House leaders are now assembling another proposal that attempts to address some of the concerns with the bill they passed in November, congressional officials said.
They described a three-part proposal. The first would create a new commission to examine the warrantless surveillance program. That measure builds, in part, off a recommendation from Suzanne Spaulding, a former CIA counsel, who suggested that Congress establish a panel to assess the threat inside the country and assess the government's current domestic surveillance efforts.
The second part would loosen some of the judicial oversight components in the earlier House bill while still requiring that a judge -- from a secret national security court -- approve new surveillance programs before they begin except for in emergencies.
The third component would address the immunity issue by permitting phone companies to defend themselves without disclosing security secrets. It might also place a limit on the damages a company would have to pay if its actions were found to be illegal.
In January, the Senate passed a FISA update that included an immunity provision after more than a dozen Democrats joined the GOP minority in the chamber to support the bill. Last fall, the House passed its own immunity-free version that also included more judicial oversight of the nation's surveillance programs. Both chambers are working to reconcile those two proposals to send Bush a single bill.
Whether the House's immunity-free version will pass remains to be seen, but Democratic leaders hope to vote on the measure later this week. Also unclear is whether the Senate will go along with the House version, but the proposed bill would at least set a benchmark of where the differences between the two chambers are.
It's purpose, a House official tells the Journal, is "to lay down a marker on what the House's position on the issue is and give the president the authorities he needs to keep the country safe."
 
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