Editorial: Surveillance stalemate

Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

President Bush has threatened to veto legislation that would allow the government to continue its domestic surveillance program because the measure does not include retroactive protections for telecommunications companies that allowed the National Security Administration to eavesdrop on customers without warrants.

Telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon are facing multibillion-dollar civil lawsuits filed by customers who say their privacy was violated when the companies allowed federal agents seeking information on possible terrorist activity to eavesdrop on conversations in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

An appeals court also is considering whether the companies committed criminal offenses in allowing the surveillance.

The surveillance, which included communications between Americans and overseas parties, often was done without obtaining warrants from a special court as outlined in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The White House maintains that warrants were not needed because Bush can, as the nation's chief executive, order such eavesdropping under special circumstances. Legislation passed by the House on Wednesday would allow the eavesdropping to continue so long as federal agents followed more stringent rules in obtaining warrants for such surveillance. The House did not, however, include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies because the Bush administration has refused to reveal what role the companies had in the surveillance program.

Lawmakers say that they cannot grant immunity for activities unless they know what those activities entailed. Bush says that the telecommunications companies must be protected or they could be bankrupted by the lawsuits. With immunity, all lawsuits would be moot.

Monitoring suspicious communications that could help foil terrorist plots should be allowed under a very specific and carefully monitored process. But unless the White House is willing to reveal what roles that telecommunications companies played in the warrantless surveillance of Americans' conversations, then Congress has no choice but to offer legislation that rejects granting what amounts to blind immunity.