The Senate is set to resuming debating warrantless wiretapping reform legislation this morning at 9:30 AM Eastern.

The first vote will likely be on the Leahy Amendment, which is a conversion of the Senate Judiciary Committee bill, which has very good minimization standards and stops blanket warrants. The Leahy Amendment also includes no retroactive immunity for the big telecoms that helped the Bush administration spy on Americans. Sadly, the Leahy Amendment is expected to fail.

Other amendments will be offered. The notable ones will be the Dodd/Feingold Amendment, which would strip retroactive immunity from the underlying bill (the Intelligence Committee bill). We expect this amendment to only get about 20 votes.

The Specter Amendment would substitute the federal government as the defendant in the cases against the big telecoms; the cases would otherwise be allowed to proceed but any liability would be paid by the US taxpayers. This amendment will probably lose.

The Feinstein “good faith” Amendment would move the cases against the big telecoms out of the regular judicial system and into secret intelligence courts. Robert Cruickshank of Courage Campaign continues to do great work analyzing Feinstein’s amendment. He’s updated the post I linked to last night with looking at the procedure laid out in Feinstein’s “good faith” amendment and comes to this conclusion:

…”good faith” would be sufficient for FISA to grant immunity.As described above, we already knew that this amendment was unacceptable because it gave a secret court, which the public has no ability to access, the power to determine whether our basic legal rights will be upheld. Now we learn that under Feinstein’s amendment it will be very easy for the FISA court, which virtually never turns down a government wiretap request, to grant telecom immunity. The telecoms will have every reason to claim they acted in good faith, and we know that the Bush Administration will back them up. This amendment is a recipe for immunity through the back door – or more accurately, through a secret court.

It’s my understanding that the Feinstein “good faith” Amendment has a chance of passing, though it would not have the support of some of the most liberal members of the Senate.

At some point, when the course of the legislation seems clear, the expectation is that Senator Chris Dodd will filibuster the bill, in the hopes of stopping retroactive immunity. He won’t have to do this if the Leahy or Dodd/Feingold amendments pass, but they are not expected to.

I’ll keep you posted with updates – the debate is starting shortly. For now, please contact your Senators and ask them to oppose retroactive immunity and stop warrantless wiretapping.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

Disclosure: I have joined the CREDO Mobile team to stop the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program and hold the telecom companies accountable for their lawbreaking.