Electronic surveillance, audio and broadcast flags, and data rete...

warrantless electronic surveillance program his highest priority in the session, staff counsel Nancy Libin said. A new surveillance bill from Senate Judiciary Chmn. Specter (R-Pa.), whose introduction of multiple bills has spurred varying reactions from privacy hawks, is closer to a bill he co-sponsored months ago with Sen. Feinstein (D-Cal.), and in some ways “placates” Bush skeptics, Libin said. But CDT worries because a House-passed bill -- sponsored by returning Rep. Wilson (R-N.M.) and giving the Whit House more powers over the program -- would have to be reconciled with the new Specter bill. Alternatively, if the House attaches the Wilson bill to a must-pass measure, the Senate either goes along or shuts down the govt., an unsavory option, Libin said. The good news is that Democrats next year certainly will do a “thorough inquiry” on the surveillance program and flaws flagged in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to see if reforms are needed, as Bush claims, she said. But if the Wilson bill fails, its provision granting immunity to telecom companies that helped the NSA program may go into another must-pass bill, she added. Departing Senate Majority Leader Frist (R- Tenn.) is considered “very sympathetic” to the Senate telecom bill’s audio flag proposal, given his Nashville constituency, staff counsel David Sohn said. So it’s a candidate for incorporation into appropriations or omnibus bills, should the telecom bill die. The RIAA’s “interesting questions” on satellite radio devices’ recording functionality, and whether it involves iTunes-like downloads in addition to radio performances, are a matter for music licensing legislation, like Senate IP Chmn. Hatch’s (R-Utah) Copyright Modernization Act, not telecom, he said. The telecom bill’s broadcast flag provision has more “procedural history,” with the FCC crafting rules later struck down, and the Commerce Committee moved to limit the bill’s application to public affairs and news programming for the consideration of video bloggers and others reusing broadcasts -- a “good first step,” Sohn said. A “much briefer version,” simply authorizing the FCC to make rules, might pass. DoJ seems to have limited its data- retention proposal’s scope to “quell some of the concerns” raised by privacy hawks, Libin said. A DoJ spokeswoman told us the agency has never taken a position on data-retention specifics, referring us to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s statements in support of retention generally. A spokesman for Rep. DeGette (D-Colo.) -- who has said for months she will introduce a bill mandating one-year retention -- told us Congress is “absolutely too busy” to take up her idea this year. “We'll be in the driver’s seat in a month and a half, and at that point we'll definitely” introduce the bill, he said. Libin said in the briefing she’s meeting with DeGette aides this week.