Senate votes 96-1 for "USA Act" -- without Feingold's amendments

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Fri Oct 12 09:24:02 PDT 2001


<forward>

Details of Feingold's unsuccessful amendments: http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/11/1430203&mode=thread

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) had planned on introducing four

privacy amendments to a bill widely viewed as anti-privacy. The debate

ran from 9 pm to midnight on Thursday.

The sequence went as follows for all the amendments:

1. Feingold introduced an amendment to the USA Act

2. Feingold, Wellstone, Cantwell spoke in favor of it

3. Just about everyone else led by Hatch, Leahy, Daschle opposed it

4. Daschle moved to table

5. Just about everyone voted to table

6. Goto Line 1

The votes were:

83-13 to table the "trespasser" snooping amendment

90-7 to table roving wiretap limits

89-8 to table subpoena limits

Feingold never introduced his promised fourth amendment, which would

have limited secret searches.

---

http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47522,00.html

[...]

In a series of votes ending at midnight Thursday, the U.S. Senate

overwhelmingly defeated the last-ditch efforts by Sen. Russ Feingold

(D-Wisconsin) to limit police surveillance powers.

The Senate then voted 96-1 for the unaltered USA Act (PDF), which

includes the biggest eavesdropping expansion in a generation. Feingold

was the lone dissenter.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) described Feingold's three amendments as

"outdated and nonsensical." Hatch said "current law perversely gives

the terrorist privacy rights.... We should not tie the hands of our

law enforcement and help hackers and cyber-terrorists to get away."

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) said the USA Act

was a "delicate but successful compromise" that provided adequate

protection for civil liberties. Daschle said his opposition to

Feingold's amendments was "not substantative but procedural" because

the Senate needed to move quickly on the legislation.

[...]

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