Legislation to limit surveillance programme

Washington: The Senate Intelligence Committee has approved legislation that would place new controls on the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance programme but includes provisions sought by the White House to protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits for aiding the government spying effort.

The measure, passed 13-2, represents a tentative deal between a key Senate panel and the White House. The issue has been a source of acrimony since it was revealed nearly two years ago that President Bush authorised the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without court warrants on conversations of Americans.

But the committee's compromise faces a series of challenges. Those include opposition from other members of the Senate as well as a competing House Bill that would impose tighter restrictions on spy agencies and deny any legal protections to phone companies.

The Senate measure is the product of weeks of discussions between the Bush administration and the nation's top intelligence officials with Senator John D. Rockefeller, the chairman of the intelligence committee, and Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the panel's ranking Republican.

Access

Rockefeller, Bond and other members were granted access this week to previously secret documents outlining the administration's legal rationale for the warrantless surveillance programme.

Their Bill would give a special federal court expanded authority to monitor an espionage programme that was authorised by Bush in the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

The measure is designed to overhaul a 1978 law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was passed to crack down on domestic spying abuses by the CIA and other agencies. Top intelligence officials have pressed for sweeping revisions, arguing the law has not kept pace with the emergence of the internet, the spread of cell phones and other telecommunications advances.