By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
November 11, 2007
WASHINGTON - A top intelligence official says it is time people
in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a
deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should
mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's
private communications and financial information.
Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at
the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act.
Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow
the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without
court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was
reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.
The original law required a court order for any surveillance
conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The
White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence
gathering.
The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether
to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits
for allegedly giving the government access to people's private
e-mails and phone calls without a court order between 2001
and 2007.
Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might
be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed
into people's privacy without court permission.
The committee is expected to decide this week whether its
version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies.
The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T
says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and
phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station
in San Francisco.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect
a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government
supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access
on AT&T lines.
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