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of procedures used by the government, including the method for selecting those subjected
to surveillance. A related matter involved the question of legal liability for U.S. corporations
that have cooperated with the NSA by providing it with data, apparently including e-mail
and telephone communications between persons in the United States, as well as between
persons in the United States and others abroad. With lawsuits pending against major
telecommunications firms, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to
provide them with immunity for their handling of customers' information.9

The Extraordinary Rendition Program

Extradition treaties between the United States and many foreign governments require U.S.
officials to arrest and extradite individuals suspected of having committed crimes in other
signatory nations, and for whom arrest warrants have been issued in those nations. This
practice is known as rendition. However, since the mid-1990s, the United States has
engaged in "extraordinary rendition": turning over suspected criminals or terrorists to
foreign governments for interrogation, trial, or imprisonment, even if no specific warrants
have been issued for their arrest. Human rights advocates allege that the practice may
allow suspects to be tortured in the countries to which they are taken.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) first used extraordinary rendition in cooperation with
foreign governments that were trying to investigate and dismantle militant Islamist
organizations, particularly al-Qaeda. The policy was deemed necessary because without it,
terrorist suspects held in the United States were entitled to due process rights that the CIA
feared could jeopardize intelligence sources. The CIA also believed that intelligence
agencies in suspects' home countries would be more successful than American officials in
obtaining information from them, because of their common language and culture. The
administration of President Bill Clinton accordingly issued an order in 1995 that permitted
the practice.
Since 9/11, the United States has continued to use extraordinary rendition in terrorism
investigations that involve foreign-born suspects who are believed to have key information.
The government does not release information about the identity of suspects rendered, the
countries to which they are taken, or the conditions under which they are held. However,
some cases do come to public attention.
On September 26, 2002, for instance, Canadian citizen Maher Arar was detained by U.S.
officials at New York City's JFK Airport, where he was awaiting a connecting flight on his
way home from a vacation. In early October, U.S. authorities transferred Arar, who was
born in Syria but had lived in Canada since he was 17, to the custody of the Syrian
government as a suspected terrorist. He had been under U.S. investigation due to his
relationship with two individuals suspected of ties to al-Qaeda.
Arar later reported that the Syrians held him for 10 months in a windowless cell, where he
was beaten and tortured in an attempt to make him confess to terrorist activities.10 He
said that under this pressure he did confess that he had worked with terrorists in
Afghanistan.
Canadian officials were not informed of Arar's rendition until several days after the fact.
When it did learn that he had been rendered, Canada issued a temporary travel advisory
warning Canadians born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria "to consider carefully whether

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