If you don’t relish the idea of the government enlisting telephone companies to listen in on your phone conversations, you might want to read about this.Today the Senate voted down the Dodd-Feingold ammendment to the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) bill, which would have stripped retroactive immunity from the surveillance bill. What does this mean exactly? It means that even though it has been found that telephone companies broke the law by participating in illegal surveillance at the request of the U.S. government, they will be immune from prosecution for their offences.Some argue that the government needs to have access to a wide variety of communications for national security purposes. But others strongly disagree, calling the illegal wiretapping an attack against a citizen’s right to privacy. The Dodd-Feingold amendment was created to allow the prosecution of telecom companies who were found to have broken the law.The amendment was voted down 67-31.Senators Obama and McCain were present to vote on the bill today in D.C.Obama voted in support of the bill. McCain voted against it.Clinton was one of only two senators absent from the vote, presumably busy campaigning today in the Potomac primaries. Read more