Congress to revisit expanded spy law next week
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Hearing scheduled for next week may be first step in addressing widespread complaints about new federal spying powers signed into law earlier this month.
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A look at actions in Congress on Tuesday:
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House Republicans plan to revive portions of the Justice Department's "Patriot Act II" draft in legislation to address the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations to strengthen America intelligence capabilities, The Associated Press has learned.
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WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved landmark legislation to revamp Americaâs intelligence network, clearing the way for major reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of the September 11 attacks.
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Two bills designed to curb the proliferation of Internet &quot;spyware&quot; took another step toward law this week with overwhelming approval from the House of Representatives, but supporters said
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WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday called on Congress to hammer out a bill to overhaul US intelligence agencies when lawmakers return to work next week.
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Congress is close to approving a broad intelligence overhaul, but the changes that will matter most still lie ahead.
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Members of Congress vowed today to conduct investigative hearings -- and consider reining in parts of the Patriot Act -- following revelations of pervasive problems in the FBI's use of national security letters to secretly obtain telephone, e-mail and financial records in terrorism cases.
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Congress is poised to pass a bill that could bury dozens of lawsuits over the Bush administration's warrantless spying, hiding them behind the closed doors of an intelligence court in Washington D.C. By Ryan Singel.
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The U.S. Congress has granted a temporary 15-day extension to a controversial law that allows the government to conduct telephone surveillance on suspected terrorists without first obtaining a court warrant.
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The intelligence package that Congress approved this week includes a series of little-noticed measures that would broaden the government's power to conduct terrorism investigations, including provisions to loosen standards for FBI surveillance warrants and allow the Justice Department to more easily detain suspects without bail.
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A month after giving the Bush administration new latitude to conduct electronic surveillance on American soil, some in Congress are having second thoughts.
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President Bush said Wednesday that a law hastily passed in August to temporarily give the government more power to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign terror suspects must be made permanent and expanded
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The U.S. Congress is investigating  the military's expanding intelligence role to see if the  Pentagon is meeting its legal obligation to inform lawmakers of  its activities, congressional officials said on Friday.
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The fate of a bill to reorganize the nation&#39;s intelligence agencies is likely to be decided Monday when the House of Representatives meets, key lawmakers and staffers said.
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(InfoWorld) - When the U.S. Congress adjourned in the early morning hours Saturday, it left a number of technology-related bills unfinished, including two bills addressingÂ fraudulent access to personal telephone records. Despite pressure from members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the full House failed to act on the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act. The law would have allowed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses. The committee has been looking into privacy concerns related to so-called pretexting since early this year, but the issue came to a head last month, whenÂ Hewlett-Packard revealedÂ it had used questionable investigative techniques in the surveillance of board members, employees, and reporters. With pretexting, private investigators or identity thieves pretend to be customers of mobile phone carriers or other companies in order to gain access to personal records such as call logs. Congress still has more time to act on the pretexting legislation or six related bills this year, however. After a month-plus break allowing lawmakers to focus on the Nov. 7 election, Congress will return for a lame-duck session Nov. 9. Democrats last week complained that the House Republican leadership had held up the pretexting legislation, but Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and Energy and Commerce chairman, said he'd continue to push for the legislation. Congress alsoÂ failed to pass a wide-ranging broadband billÂ that would replace local franchise rules with a national system for telecom providers launching Internet Protocol-based television services in competition with cable TV. And although U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing a controversial National Security Agency (NSA)Â surveillance program, two bills making it easier for the government to conduct surveillance without court-ordered warrants also stalled. One piece of Internet-related legislation did pass early Saturday. The Senate passed a bill providing money for seaport security, and added to the bill was a provision prohibiting U.S. banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to online gambling sites. A group of professional poker players had asked Congress to reject the bill, but a group of House Republicans pushed for the legislation, saying offshore gambling sites were breaking U.S. gambling-control laws. Bush had called for legislation to authorize the NSA program, which has listened in on the electronic communications of U.S. residents without court-ordered warrants, as a way to head off multiple lawsuits targeting the program. He has argued the program is necessary to help keep U.S. residents safe from terrorism. The HouseÂ passed one surveillance bill, but the Senate failed to act. The House bill would allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties and privacy advocacy group, said it was happy to see the surveillance and broadband bills stall. Republicans supporting the surveillance bill were pushing it as a way to show they were focused on national security during the last weeks of the congressional campaign, said Nancy Libin, a staff counsel at CDT. "Now that they've gone home, I'm not sure what kind of priority it will be when they come back," she said. Several civil liberties groups had opposed the broadband bill as it lacked protections for so-called net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want a law that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing service to Web sites offering competing content, and they have successfully halted the Senate version of the broadband bill, despiteÂ heavy lobbying from large broadband providers.
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Leading Republican and Democratic lawmakers continue to press for passage of a landmark bill to reform US intelligence agencies. The fate of the legislation appears to hinge on a few key