Is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence planning, amid the debt crisis theater, to quietly speed up the renewal of a terrible, Bush-era surveillance law? According to Wired.com's Spencer Ackerman, it looks like it.

The FISA Amendments Act, known as FAA, legalized President Bush's theretofore illegal, warrantless wiretapping program, and provided immunity to the telecommunications companies who broke the law colluding with the illegal program. The FAA, passed in 2008, is set to expire next year. The Obama administration wants reauthorization and the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, called the measure "critically important."

Word is that some senators on the committee will push to include renewal of the bad bill when it meets to finalize the 2012 intelligence authorization bill, a large piece of legislation which governs the operations of the 16 federal intelligence operations.

Read Ackerman for more.