[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 157 (Wednesday, October 17, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S12949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  FISA

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, following the majority leader's 
comments and admonitions about the coming telecommunications 
surveillance intercept bill, otherwise known as the FISA bill, I think 
what the majority leader said was absolutely essential, that the work 
product that comes out of the Intelligence Committee and then the 
Judiciary Committee be bipartisan in nature. We do not want to repeat 
what happened in the first week of August, in which there was so much 
misinformation and mistrust on both sides of the aisle. It was very 
difficult to cobble together a bill, which the intelligence community 
told us was essential because of the increased traffic, which is 
otherwise defined as increased communications of some indication that 
there might be the planning stages of an additional attack upon the 
United States. In that atmosphere of warnings, we were told we had to 
pass a bill.
  It was in that crisis atmosphere that a piece of legislation was 
cobbled together in the midst of mistrust and misinformation on this 
floor. But the safeguard was put on it that what was passed and 
ultimately signed into law by the President was only good for 6 months. 
In other words, it sunsetted or ceased to exit at the end of 6 months. 
Therefore, in now constructing the permanent law, we need to come 
together.
  Now, this Senator, a member of the Intelligence Committee, has been 
quite firm in my insistence to both of the leaders of our committee--
Senator Rockefeller, the chairman, and Senator Bond, the vice 
chairman--that they come out with an agreed-upon, bipartisan piece of 
legislation to protect the rights of American citizens, their civil 
liberties, their privacy and, at the same time, to be able to utilize 
instruments of the Government of the United States to be able to go 
after the people who want to do us harm. I believe that the agreement 
has pretty well been reached between Senator Rockefeller and Senator 
Bond. What is potentially going to hold up an agreement is the question 
of what kind of immunity should be given to the telecommunications 
companies who had, at the request of the U.S. Government, after 
September 11, 2001, allowed their databases to be used for the purposes 
of trying to determine who the bad guys were.
  Everything I am saying has all been out in the press. It is well 
established. The House has taken a position of not wanting to have any 
immunity for the telephone companies on a retroactive basis. They 
already have immunity on a going-forward basis as a result of what we 
passed in August, and that is now law. It is my hope that the two 
leaders of the Intelligence Committee will be able to get agreement on 
what that immunity should be, and that will be a large part of the 
discussion that is supposed to take place in the markup in the 
Intelligence Committee tomorrow.
  As the majority leader, Senator Reid, said, it is very important we 
get this right and that we get this done soon in order that it can then 
go from the Intelligence Committee to the Judiciary Committee and that 
it can come out of the Judiciary Committee, come to the full Senate and 
then a conference committee can iron out the differences between the 
House and the Senate versions and then get a final product to the 
President for him to sign into law. It is important it be done now in a 
timely manner, instead of waiting until the last minute, when the clock 
is going to strike 12 on the tolling of the time of the 6 months that 
the law will cease to exist. This ought to be done under the cool 
deliberation of making it right instead of being forced into decisions 
at the last moment because time is running out. It is my hope, and it 
is certainly going to be my intent, to try to help this process along 
as a member of the Intelligence Committee.

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