Washington,
D.C. - The latest Republican proposal to amend foreign intelligence
surveillance law was announced yesterday by Senator Kit Bond , and
included a purported "compromise" on the issue of whether telephone
companies that illegally assisted in the government's warrantless
wiretapping program should be granted immunity from lawsuits such as
the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against AT&T.

"The purported immunity 'compromise' announced on Thursday by
Senator Bond is a pure sham that's even worse than the original
immunity provision passed by the Senate," said EFF Senior Staff
Attorney Kevin Bankston. "The stacked-deck immunity determination to be
made by the court apparently still doesn't include any meaningful
review of the telecoms' conduct or the legality of their cooperation
with the NSA, simply a review of whether the companies got a piece of
paper saying that the president authorized the surveillance. And the
deck would be stacked even more by the proposed transfer to the FISA
court -- the most conservative and secretive federal court in the
nation. Bottom line: it's still immunity, and this so-called compromise
concedes nothing."

EFF represents the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action
lawsuit brought by AT&T customers accusing the telecommunications
company of violating their rights by illegally assisting the National
Security Agency in widespread domestic surveillance. There are nearly
40 legal cases currently pending in the Northern District of California
courts that have arisen from the warrantless surveillance.