The Politics of Eavesdropping

A White House campaign to win quick passage of a major surveillance bill has hit a new snag in recent days: four Democratic presidential candidates have signaled their intention to oppose the measure as it is currently written.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut took the lead last week when he vowed to filibuster a version of the bill overwhelmingly approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The bill gives retroactive immunity from lawsuits to major telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program after 9/11. In a statement blasting the program as "unconscionable," Dodd said he would "do everything in my power to stop Congress from shielding this president's agenda of secrecy, deception, and blatant unlawfulness."

No sooner had Dodd issued his statement than MoveOn.org—along with leading liberal bloggers such as DailyKos—launched their own campaign to pressure other Democratic presidential candidates to commit to the same position. In mass e-mails, MoveOn urged its supporters to call other Democratic senators running for president and encourage them to back a filibuster of the bill. Dodd's campaign reported $200,000 in new donations in the first 36 hours after he issued his filibuster threat.

By Wednesday, at least two other candidates—Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden--had joined with Dodd in pledging to oppose any surveillance bill that includes immunity for the telecoms. Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front runner, released a more equivocal statement, saying she was "troubled by the concerns" raised about the bill and pledging to "study it very hard." The statement continued: "As matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forward that would convince me differently."

MoveOn claimed credit for the presidential candidates' opposition to the bill. "This is a great example of progressive voters demanding boldness and principle from Democratic candidates and Democrats responding by being bold," said spokesman Adam Green. But the maneuvering by the contenders—and the role played by MoveOn—also raised concerns among senior Democrats on Capitol Hill that presidential politics might impede efforts to reach a compromise on such a sensitive and important national-security measure. "We need to get things done on this bill," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Tuesday.

The principle thrust of the bill is to update and extend the Protect America Act--passed by Congress and signed into law last summer by President Bush—which granted new authorities to the U.S. intelligence community. The law was intended to close what the administration called an "intelligence gap" due to changes in technology. It allowed U.S. intelligence to intercept the phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists overseas that passed through switches or telecom equipment inside the United States. Critics accused the White House of stampeding the bill through Congress and said it gave the intelligence agencies too much power.