Telecom immunity 4ever?

Is it just me, or does this whole push for the telecom immunity portion of the FISA bill just scream 1984 to anyone?  Not only retroactive immunity, but immunity for the future too?  Does this not create a whole institution that becomes unaccountable to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?  Oh wait, we already have one of those..  the administration.

And wasn't there a law previous to this bill that allowed the government to spy on people - as long as they got approval from an oversight court?  So now why are we less safe?  Now we are missing intelligence?  It seems we've been missing that since 2001...