fisa ‘compromise’ completes police state transformation

from larry chin: On Wednesday, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation permitting government spying, including giving immunity to telecommunications companies involved in secret domestic surveillance programs. With the stroke of George W. Bush’s pen, the US is now a police state by definition.

The extent of the spying program, and its larger implications, have been revealed by Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on secret domestic spying program of Bush/Cheney’s National Security Agency (NSA) and AT&T: AT&T whistleblower: spy bill creates infrastructure for police state

The update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, called the “FISA compromise,” or more appropriately, the “spy bill,” largely completes the triumph of the Bush/Cheney administration and a bipartisan criminal consensus. By convenient design, the FISA revision derails pending lawsuits filed against the Bush administration’s corporate spying partners (AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon), silences (the largely empty-to-begin-with) congressional investigations into the Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying program.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and the Democrats have now moved to silence all discussion about the issue.