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.'"

Comments

Buckle Up

[TripMaster Monkey]

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.

Re:Buckle Up

[TripMaster Monkey]

The reason I "bragged" about my math score on the GRE exam is that a) someone explicitly questioned my math ability in a insulting way, and b) it is an objective measure.

As has been said before, your alleged results of the GRE mean little, although you seem to use this argument on a regular basis. From the linked article:

I don't usually brag about myself, but when I am insulted like that I feel that I have the right to brag to some extent. I scored in the top 1% of the Graduate Records Exam (GRE), which is taken by engineering graduates to get into graduate school.

"Don't usually brag", huh? On the contrary, it looks like 'bragging' is your standard M.O..

I have published many papers since then, but they would be more or less meaningless to someone not in my field.

This claim intrigued me, so I decided to do some research. What I found was intriguing. While the majority of search results seeem to be posts by Russ on various bulletin boards touting his bona fides, very few seemed to be in regards to actual work done by him in his ostensible field of expertise. Several results, however, stood out:

• A vapid cheerleading of Case Closed by Gerald Posner, proponent of the lone-assassin theory of the JFK assassination.
  
• An argument disputing the validity of poll results especilly amusing given his reliance on the Washington Post poll maintaining that 63% of the populace is in favor of government surveillance without a court order.
  
• A post in which he derides a former colleague for 'conspiracy theories', and denies accusations by said colleague of gerrymandering content submitted by said colleague, attributing the changes as editing for 'readability' purposes (although he expressly admits 'inadvertently' changing the meaning of the text on occasion, as well as publishing said changes without the original submitter's approval.
  

And just in case you're not convinced by now that Russ is a right-wing shill, here's his defenses of Intelligent Design:

• The Myth of the Blind Watchmaker
  
• Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?
  
  Russ Paielli stands exposed as a right-wing astroturfer, and his posts should be weighed accordingly.
  
  And if you are so smart, I recommend you grow up sometime soon.
  
  Excellent parting shot, Russ. Worthy of Brit Hume.
  

Can a friendly legal-type person...

[nugneant]

...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

Re:Here's what I did...

[lawpoop]

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.

Thank you, Sheyenne.

[MattC413]

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.

Damned If You Do

[rumblin'rabbit]

The U.S. legal system is so screwed up that it's now got me feeling sorry for big, evil corporations, no small feat that. I suspect that soon there will be no course of action that any corporation can take without getting sued for large amounts. In this case we have companies caught between the government and the consumer. Not nice.

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.

Re:Read This.

[TripMaster Monkey]

How does this document fit in with your philosophy, then?

And what about this document?

Yes, there is a big difference, isn't there?

AT&T Privacy Policy

[midimastah]

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?

Re:Until the government says "National Security"

[vertinox]

"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".