Government spying: Democrats try to implement oversight of the White House's wiretapping.(NEWS)

ON OCTOBER 17, the House of Representatives passed the RESTORE Act--an amendment to the surveillance law that civil libertarians have been assailing since August, when, in the hours before summer recess, House Democrats caved to White House demands and handed the president a six-month reign to spy on American citizens.

At press time, the Senate version was still pending. House aides had doubted they could move any legislation that would survive a Bush veto before February 2008, when the August bill sunsets. At that point, a veto would kick off a vicious fight between the Congress and the White House, with both facing the high stakes of forcing back progress--if nothing's ultimately passed, the law reverts to the old, antiquated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that most agreed required at least a narrow update.

The RESTORE Act does most things civil libertarians wanted it to do--except to get rid of a provision that may allow the government to spy on numerous Americans with a single warrant. At the same time, it maintains the provisions of the August amendment that modernized the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by allowing agents to investigate foreign suspects through taps in the United States.

The bill also ...