Chris Dodd for President

The New York Times editorial board takes a look at the FISA legislation before Congress and takes strong positions advocating for oversight and limitations on executive authority. They explain some of the key issues of FISA reform legislation:

SUNSET The law must have an expiration date. Congress should not grant the government unending powers to spy on Americans. The Bush administration, predictably, wants just that. We support the House bill’s two-year expiration date.

COURTS AND WARRANTS Any new law must include real supervision by the special FISA court. The administration wants to gut the court’s powers, taking away the requirement for advance warrants for most eavesdropping on international communications originating or ending in the United States. The administration would allow the court to rule afterward on whether required procedures were followed, but strip the court of its remaining powers to enforce such a judgment. It is vital to retain provisions in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s bill that would make it clear that the government cannot just collect information in bulk — by, say, tapping all calls to and from Pakistan — but has to cite targets, including specific phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Even if the government is legitimately targeting someone overseas in an eavesdropping operation, the 2007 law would permit it to collect vast databases that would include Americans at the other ends of those communications. Mr. Feingold is working on vital amendments that would restrict the ways the government could store and use such information.

The Senate bill would require a warrant to eavesdrop on an American who is in another country. The White House opposes this provision. It must be retained.

AMNESTY The telecommunications companies must not get amnesty. Lawsuits against them must be allowed to proceed, in the interest of the rule of law and also to force disclosure of the nature and extent of the lawless eavesdropping that began after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Times fails to address minimization of the scope of surveillance and data mining, though I would add it to the list of critical issues in FISA legislation.

Also, Glenn Greenwald rebuts some basic misconceptions about what the current round of FISA legislation does and does not do.

On Saturday at the Yearly Kos Convention, Senator Dodd sat down with one of my favorite bloggers, Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald's site is well known for his investigations into the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance of American citizens and his eloquent defenses of the rule of law. The interview was a real meeting of the minds -- the only presidential candidate who's made restoring the Constitution a central part of his campaign and one of the blogosphere's leading advocates for an unmitigated defense of the Constitution. If you like the work Senator Dodd has done to fight for the rule of law, against the use of torture, against the politicization of the Justice Department, and for restoring the Constitution, I think you'll enjoy reading Greenwald's interview. Here is an excerpt of Senator Dodd's interview with Greenwald:

GG: One of the things that I think could be invigorating about your campaign is that you are making these constitutional issues the centerpiece of your campaign. You said in the debate that one of the most critical issues we face is the assault on our constitution, which you indicated was unprecedented. Can you talk about why this assault on the constitution is so fundamentally different than anything that has come before it? You were in the Senate during the Iran-contra scandal under Reagan. What is it about what they are doing now that makes it so fundamentally different? CD: Well, it's so pervasive. I mean, its domestic. It's foreign. And it is has been so calculated on so many levels. With Iran-contra, Reagan wanted to give money to the contras. I didn't like the motivation, but it was very targeted, focused point.