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Telecoms Facing $50 Billion Lawsuit for Wiretaps
hdtv writes "According to a MarketWatch article, BellSouth Corp and Verizon Telecommunications are facing lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for the decision to turn over calling records to the government. The damages amount to $1,000 per person, whose records were turned over to Feds. According to the article, 'consumers could sue the phone service providers under communications privacy legislation that dates back to the 1930s. Relevant laws include the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, and a variety of provisions of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, including the Stored Communications Act, passed in 1986.'"
The unrest against the goverment's tyranny is reaching a critical point.
Expect another 'terrorist act' real soon to distract us from the issue of our eroding civil rights.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Or the Government that bullied them into handing over the information? Though I imagine the telecom companies are an easier target, so where the money is, so goes the lawyers.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
Sue the government AND the telecoms!
fledgear the archer
You're a law abiding citizen. You've never ever done anything wrong. You support your country. You're a role model.
An old school buddy comes into town and calls you. You meet, talk a little, what happened, how life changed, what you did, you got married, got a job, whatever and other things. Everything's cool, except for one thing: He got into some shady business. He was selling some equipment to someone who turned said equipment into a bomb, and a day later some parts of town go down in flames.
Next day, a SWAT team crashes into your living room, pins you, your wife, your kids, and drag you away for questioning. After all, you were talking to someone who supplied bomb material. Were you with him? What did you two talk about? You've even been seen with him!
A few days later you're released. Maybe still under surveillance, but they didn't find any evidence pointing to you. But your neighbors saw what happened. A SWAT team kicking down your door, dragging you off... why? They stop talking to you. After all, would YOU want to be seen with a suspect? Maybe with the chance of seeing someone SWAT down your door? Better not, better be safe than sorry...
Same for your kids, your wife...
Can you imagine now why privacy COULD be a good thing? Not only despite, but BECAUSE you don't do anything wrong?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...tell me A) where and how to sign up, and B) honestly, and not as a partisan / America suxxx troll, what the chances are of the judge and juries voting with their inner moralities, and not being blinded by political "moralities" along the way?
Thanks in advance -
~Nugneant
Because of the six degrees of seperation rule. Odds are someone you know is a communist. If you don't know anyone who is a communist odds are you know someone who knows someone who is a communist... etc etc etc. If you are unwilling to divulge the name of any communists, and since obviously by the rule of six degrees of seperation you at least know someone who knows someone who knows someone ect... who is a communist, you must be a communist. QED.
Just replace communist with terrorist and ask your self again why the right to privacy is important. Granted six degrees of seperation is just to illistrate a point, and it may be possible that there is somoene other there who doesn't know anyone who has ever commited a crime, disagreed with the current political climate, or commited a copyright violation. All of which including the sale of counterfeit t-shirts (oklahoma city bombing according to us customs was funded by the sale of counterfeit t-shirts) are signs of being a terrorist apparently.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
If the citizens choose the government, and you cannot trust the citizens, then you cannot trust the government.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
It's fairly easy to figure out what they are doing with the data. With a log of who called whom, when, and for how long, you can build a social network diagram like this. These diagrams tell you at a glance who are the most influential people. In this diagram, 'Ron' and 'Patti' are highly connected people. It's likely they are in a close relationship with each other.
If you wanted to destroy a terrorist network as quickly and cheaply as possible, you simply need to figure out the people at the nexuses of these social networks, and take them out. (In our example above, you would take out Ron and Patti -- they connect the green and red groups) The problem is, this also works for any other type of organizations -- ones that imposed martial law, for example.
Now, for most of the time, these social networks are almost entirely informal, based only on socializing. The thing of it is, they can quickly become the basis for any opposition or resistance movements ( think Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement ). If you wanted to go beyond fighting terrorism and, say, impose martial law and rule as a dictator, taking out rebellious, influential people ahead of time, or even afterwards, would make your life easier.
P.S. There is some kind of calculus that volunteers for congressional reps use for various types of communication. For instance, an email is assumed to represent the thoughts of 5 other constiuents, a phone call, 20, and a paper letter, 50. My numbers are a guess, but IIRC the paper letter carries the most weight as far as representatives surmising constiuent opinion based on feedback. So it would behoove your cause if you also sent a paper letter.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The erosion of civil liberty is a threat to national security.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
If you did reply seriously, great. I now know that you are 22 years old, not 18.
A search with this info using Peoplefinders.com yields a YORK, SHEYENNE, 22 years of age, with a relative (possibly mother) named YORK, MICHELE, age 53. For only $9.95, anyone here can find out more information about this person or their relatives, including more past addresses (and more specific addresses to confirm the poster's information).
See how privacy works? Once a leak occurs, it quickly becomes a flood.
60 Minutes had a story about Amgen a few months ago. Amgen were carrying out tests for a treatment for a serious disease. They had to halt the tests when side effects starting showing up - drug companies can not afford to take risks these days once they suspect there are problems.
So the patients sued Amgen - for halting the trials! They said the treatments were working.
60 Minutes thought the story was about how greedy and uncaring drug companies are. I thought the real story was about how it's fast becoming impossible to do business in the United States, even with the best of intentions.
How does this document fit in with your philosophy, then?
And what about this document?
Yes, there is a big difference, isn't there?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Here here! There is no shame is saying that people deserve to be safe, and that there are many valid threats at a federal, state and local level (to be addressed accordingly).
However, I can certainly understand the anger some feel in regards to the "fear mentality". This historically effective strategy has been abused in recent years, and even the dimmest Americans are coming to accept that.
barack to the future?
Trust me, you don't want what you think you want (Quest). They are not heros. This company was noted for committing the largest accounting scandal in world history until they were bested only days later by Enron and MCI WorldCom. Quest would be in the news every day, like Enron, except they were overshadowed. ($2B seems like chump change.) Their service is dismal. They are more arrogant than any other phone company.
They were not striking a blow for freedom -- they were scared of a class action lawsuit, because they have more experience in such matters than most other phone companies.
After reading over my phone company's privacy policy, http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=2506#4 it seems that they have violated said policy. According to AT&T, "We must disclose information, when requested, to comply with court orders or subpoenas," but there clearly weren't any court orders involved with them turning the information over to the NSA, according to this article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/38 59829.html.
AT&T says that the data is "Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=2566, and that "Protecting the privacy of your service and usage records is your right and our duty under federal law," although "our local SBC telephone company may also be required to disclose CPNI for legal and regulatory reasons such as a court order," but again there was clearly no court orders involved according to the article about Qwest's refusal to cooperate.
If they didn't break any laws (which I doubt, but is a possibility) they certainly have broken their promise to their customers. That might be grounds for legal action, false advertising perhaps?
Too bad for the telcos congress didn't make them exempt like the credit reporting agencies. See FCRA section 604 and search for "Exception for national security investigations"... Hmm...kinda makes you think doesn't it...long live King George!
Why don't I? I saved all your butts from the soviet horde. I'm too old to reup.
"National Security" has become the new "We Do This For Our Children".
I've been thinking of a new slogan to counter the "National Security" argument.
Cowardice is unpatriotic.
Any time you do something out of fear of your safety you are now unpatriotic.
If anyone ever brings up argument that restricting freedoms and over powerful government is ok because of security concerns, just call him a coward and tell him you just labeled him "unpatriotic" for not being brave like the founding fathers or your grand pappy fighting on the beaches during WWII.
We should accept that our freedom comes at a price, and if we die by the hands of those against our open society than that is what we must accept this cost and we must brave about it.
Caving in to fear is the most "unpatriotic" thing an American can do as a citizen.
Sure, it would be a meme tactic, but I'm tired of seeing people labeled "unpatriotic" because they don't support "national security".
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
>>Since this is a civil suit, that plus the bits that do leak through should be sufficient to >> indicate that it happened and that the parties concerned had reasons to doubt the legality.
.. its also enough to trigger a fed level inquiry if the lawsuit were to gain enough popularity. Any time they play the "Sealed for national security" card people tend to get even more curious. At a potential 1K a pop, people have more reason to be curious if they would qualify , but to do so those records would need to be made available.
:)
.. the NSA is going to be doing quite a bit of blushing, and the telcoms are going to cry bully. Should be interesting to watch.
:)
Well this could do a few things
Peer pressure is kinda neat
If this gets into court and holds ground, now you have a nice front that millions of conspiracy nuts can join into , again needing those records to see if they qualify.
Either way they go, if this gets footing
Just my take on it anyway