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The United States Senate rejected a bill on Thursday that would have increased judicial oversight of the nation's surveillance activities and held telecommunications firms accountable for past cooperation with intelligence officials, instead favoring legislation that has the backing of the White House.

The Senate voted 60-36 to advance a bill that allows year-long authorization of wiretapping activities and would give retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that gave the Bush Administration access to their customers communications without the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under FISA, passed in 1978, the government is allowed to wiretap targets of interest, as long as it applied for a warrant within 72 hours.

Civil liberty advocates strongly criticized the Senate's actions.

“Instead of capitulating to the administration, senators should listen to their constituents who overwhelmingly oppose warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, said in a statement. "As the FISA debate moves forward, we urge the Senate to wake up and realize it is a co-equal branch of government.”

The debate over the legality of the U.S. government's surveillance activities, which the Bush Administration refers to as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," started in December 2005 after the New York Times published an article revealing the program. More than three dozens lawsuits have been filed against the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the U.S. government and the National Security Agency -- the federal agency responsible for intelligence and surveillance. Ever since a stop-gap measure giving the Bush Administration significant surveillance powers passed in August, Congress has debated the form of future wiretapping for foreign intelligence. Originally, congressional leaders wanted to pass a law in December, but delayed the debate until this month.

The White House has urged lawmakers to quickly pass its favored legislation, so that the nation is not left with an "intelligence gap" in its attempts to track terrorism groups.

"After nearly six months of delay, Congress has still not taken the necessary action to keep our Nation safe," a representative for the White House said in a statement earlier this week. "The terrorist threat we face does not expire on February 1. For the sake of our national security, Congress must act now to send the President a bill that keeps a critical intelligence gap permanently closed and provides meaningful liability protection for companies that may have assisted in efforts to defend America following the 9/11 attacks."