Ex-Republican Bob Barr Condemns Recent FISA Bill

On Wednesday, Republican-turned-Libertarian and Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in which he expressed his views about the recent FISA Bill that was passed by Congress just prior to the August Recess.

Introduced by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and named the Protect America Act of 2007, the bill was passed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 60 to 28, then passed by the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 227 to 183, and signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2007. Republicans nearly unanimously supported the bill while Democrats largely opposed the bill (although the bill received considerable support from Blue Dog Democrats, without whose support, the bill likely would not have passed).

And where does the former Republican Congressman stand on this issue?

Here’s a hint. The title of his op-ed is Congress Trashes Your Privacy.

Mr. Barr writes:

Spokesmen for the Bush administration, including the president himself, in the lead up to the recent precipitous congressional action amending and expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, repeatedly claimed that its efforts were designed simply to “update” the 30-year-old law. As usual, however, the remedy went far beyond that which might have been reasonably necessary. The administration claimed also that the targets of the expanded power were only to be those persons who were themselves suspected terrorists or were communicating with known or suspected terrorists. This assertion was simply false.

There was a need to modernize certain of the technical provisions in FISA. For example, there was a recent interpretation by a court that calls sent by modern routing mechanisms through the U.S. even though both parties were located abroad required a court order, because the routing alone subjected them to the warrant provisions of the law. But such matters could easily have been handled without dramatically altering the scope of the law.

Instead of simply doing what it said publicly it needed to do —- that is, a technical fix to the law to bring its provisions in line with 21st-century communications technology —- the administration played on congressional fears and ignorance of the law to ram through an expansion of the law’s reach that made virtually every international call or e-mail subject to monitoring. This essentially gutted any oversight by the courts.

During his time in Congress, Bob Barr was one of the most conservative politicians in office. A fierce critic of the Clinton administration, he led the impeachment effort against Clinton and even wrote a book in which he lambasted Clinton.

And even he can’t support the policies of the Bush administration.