US power to spy on foreigners gets nod

By Thomas Ferraro

The Democratic-led US Congress yielded to President George Bush on Saturday and temporarily expanded the government’s power to spy on foreign suspects electronically without a court order .

Civil liberties groups charged the measure would create a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding US citizens. But the house of representatives approved the bill by 227 votes to 183, a day after senate approval, by 60 votes to 28.

“After months of prodding by house republicans, congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law — and America will be the safer for it,” declared house minority leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.

With legislators to begin a month-long recess this weekend, Bush had called on them to stay until they passed the legislation.

“Protecting America is our most solemn obligation,” Bush said earlier in the day.

The measure authorises the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people in the US and foreign targets overseas.

The administration has to submit to a secret court a description of the procedures used to ensure that surveillance without a warrant only targeted people outside the US.

The court, set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa ), would review the procedures and may order changes . The administration could appeal.

Fisa now requires the government to obtain orders from its court to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists in the US.

But after the September 11 attacks, Bush authorised warrantless interception of communications between people in the US and others overseas if one of them was suspected of terrorist ties. Critics charged that programme violated the law, but Bush argued he had wartime powers to do so.

In January, Bush put the programme under the supervision of the Fisa court, but the terms have not been made public.

Congress has subpoenaed documents in an effort to determine Bush’s legal justification for the warrantless surveillance.

The new bill was needed in part, aides said, because of restrictions recently imposed by the secret court on spy agencies’ intercepting of communications. Congress has to come up with permanent legislation within six months.

Republicans earlier rejected a Democrat alternative providing greater court supervision.

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