Year in review: The politics of privacy - Via Privacy : Tech news from CNET :

Nearly 30 years after its passage, a once-obscure wiretapping law, and the secret federal court created by it, roiled the waters in Washington, D.C. And the debate is far from over.

The 1978 law in question is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted in the post-Watergate era as a way to rein in abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. After September 11, 2001, President Bush authorized his administration to bypass FISA when conducting wiretaps--a mechanism that he defended as necessary but that a chorus of opponents said amounted to a violation of the law, and perhaps the U.S. Constitution itself.

But a newly Democratic Congress, distracted by the ongoing occupation of Iraq and a flap over U.S. Attorneys, proved unwilling to risk a direct confrontation with the president over the limits of FISA. Instead, it bowed to the White House's requests for pro-surveillance amendments to FISA and approved the Protect America Act, which Bush signed into law in early August.

It was an unusually hasty process. Republicans tried to accelerate a vote on the legislation by disclosing a secret ruling by the secret FISA court that allegedly imperiled ongoing electronic surveillance. The ruling was not public, and press reports about it were vague, but congressional leaders decided to schedule a quick vote on the bill before leaving for their summer holiday. After arranging a vote on the Protect America Act, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the measure "does violence to the Constitution of the United States."

One question that the Protect America Act leaves unresolved is whether telecommunications companies will receive retroactive legal immunity for unlawful cooperation with the Bush administration. Because the law expires after 180 days, debates over its renewal have centered on that question.

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