Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Why fret over privacy loss if you aren't doing anything illegal/covert?
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In a recent news article, the "Los Angeles Times" reports, " USA Today, which disclosed the program this week, reported that Qwest had refused to turn over its phone records because it believed it would be illegal. Qwest urged the NSA to get a court order, but the agency refused, the newspaper reported.
In a statement Friday, the attorney for former Qwest Chief Executive Joseph Nacchio said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters.
'Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act,' attorney Herbert J. Stern said. "
I encourage everyone to support Qwest by making it their preferred telecommunications provider.
Interestingly, AT&T is one of the companies that eagerly gave the customers' telephone records to the government. AT&T is also affiliated with Yahoo DSL via AT&T's merger with Pacific Bell. No one should be surprised at the connection between AT&T and Yahoo. Yahoo is the company that assisted Beijing in arresting and imprisoning several reporters in China.
I encourage everyone to use Qwest as the preferred telecommunications provider and to use either MSN or Google as the preferred search engine. Use your economic might to defeat tyranny.
"Otherwise it would be obvious. Had some trouble with math, too, right?"
I always love it when some yahoo attacks my intelligence. It gives me an excuse to brag about the fact that I scored in the top 1% on the GRE exam. The GRE (Graduate Records Exam) is the standard test taken by engineering graduates to get into graduate school (at least it was back in 1982). How did you do on your standard tests?
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
"I really hope your post is flamebait because if people really think like you we are all doomed."
Boy, you go me with that one! How can I reply to a content-free post?
And we must be all doomed, because my view is the majority view.
What amazes me is that such non-thinking is so common here on slashdot. Maybe it's just the 15-year-olds.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
"Interesting, from experience the people who brag about a test score that is years or decades old are the ones who have done nothing since then that is worth bragging about. In other words their greatest accomplishment in life is a meaningless piece of paper. I recommend you stop bragging about such things."
Wrong. 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. I have published many papers since then, but they would be more or less meaningless to someone not in my field.
And if you are so smart, I recommend you grow up sometime soon.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
for you anarcho-capitalists and lolbertarians and assorted other weirdos out there to start bitching about how evil class action lawsuits are.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Thank you sir... now you know my wife calls her brother every weekend, and don't call my mother often enough. So will I be getting a check in the mail or a $1,000 credit on my 2006 tax returns?
Ass hats, get off my line... >:(
That's it!
The real threat isn't coming from the tens of thousands Islamist extremist terrorists trained in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda, in Saddam's Iraq, and their associates (minus the captured ones). No!
The 9/11 attacks, the attack on the USS Cole, the Bali bombings, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the shoe bomb attempt, the US embassy bombings in Africa, the attacks and bombings in Saudi Arabia, the bombing in Jordan, the attacks in the Philippines, the Beslan attack, the dirty bomb plan, the plan to attack the soccer stadium in the UK, the plan to attack Heathrow, the 19 person ring just broken in Michigan, the hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the US, including the recent Hezbollah Mexican border smuggling ring broken, and the rest all show its not the terrorists that are the problem!!
The real threat is that *cough* fantasy *cough* cabal in the White House which the "insiders" on Slashnut know are secretly planning to ignore the next election with mass destraction. (How this will actually work, nobody explains. The Constitution limits the term in office and provides for succession.) Meanwhile, outside Mom's basement (or with more meds), the rest of us see them trying to detect and stop the next terrorist attack, prefereably before they can use a salvaged anthrax or chemical weapon from Saddam's discards, or maybe even start a nuclear Jihad with a little help, or simply send a suicide bomber to a crowded mall.
Lets reach over into one of the Evolution v. Creation debates and grab Occam's Razor. Which way do you think it cuts here?
I think I understand the impulse behind William F. Buckley's statement that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. It seems to require a certain degree of sophistication to engage in certain forms of idiocy.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Yeah. They were perfect at preventing domestic terrorist attacks from 04/20/1995 through 9/10/01, too. With that kind of a record, you'd have to trust that their efforts are the reason no attack has happened.
What kind of asinine logic are you using?
He said since 9/11/01, not before. I'd say his logic is valid given the fact we've had many acts of terrorism on the WTC during the Clinton administration that still ignored the greater threat. Unfortunately, it took the fall of two buildings before our government got its ass into gear to prevent further attacks. Of course, it can be debated we've been lucky and no future attack has been obstructed.
The misery of his people (and many other groups in that region) was created by US foreign policy over many years. The fact that they hate us is simply chickens coming home to roost. Kill enough fathers and husbands and the kids are going to grow up pissed off. If you don't understand why, then you're stupider than your posting lets on.
US foreign policy has NOTHING to do with it. Those that hate us are due in part to religious conviction. Islamic fanatics HATE the west and anyone who is pro-democracy. According to the Ayatollahs, democracy is the embodiment of hubris. As such, it's the ultimate sin.
Whatever liberal professor is feeding you this anti-USA bullshit, I suggest you ask for a refund on your tuition.
Right and wrong don't arise from "majority rules" or "might makes right". Even if I was the only person saying that what our government is doing is flat out wrong while everyone else disagreed, I'd still be right and every single other person would be wrong. Including you.
In fact, it is YOU who is wrong. Might DOES make right. That's aways been the creed throughout human history...and it always will be. A tiger is a tiger, a snake a snake, and a human is a human.
Do you really think great countries around the world would continue to exist without a military? It doesn't take an intellectual to figure this one out. The answer is so pickin obvious!
Sometimes being defensive requires offensive measures.
So, based on the fact that if someone really wants to detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil they will, you're also willing to give up all of your freedoms to slow them down a bit?
The goal isn't to slow them down. The goal is utter defeat of your enemies. Anyone who settles for less is a FOOL! It's a fact, an undeniable fact that you can never...ever...have peace without victory when your confronted with a foe of irreconcilable differences.
Who knows, maybe if we didn't go around killing off democratically elected leaders and replacing them with US-owned despots who destroy the lives of their people, those people wouldn't hate us so much... Nah.
That's a load of BS. It doesn't need futher comment.
Bush made the underlying problems worse and our country less safe (more terrorists)
No. It's people like you and your ilk (liberals) who make this country less safe. It's people like you who would rather take down the US a notch just to prove to the rest of the world we "care" and "understand". It's your suffering of irrational guilt that is aiding the enemy by not siding on the principal of VICTORY! You want peace, right? Read my previous comments.
Life is not for the lazy.
take $50 billion away from them and they will just increase their billing to recoup it and more. Money doesn't appear out of thin air, it will come from some where. Where do you suppose it will be?
....)
On another note, so what about the tapping.....maybe if they really do it they might just find out that its only a small fraction of the population creating world terrorist and other serious problems and that its the ones they are not tapping that are the ones causing problems. The process of elimination of who they are and are not tapping will lead to the same conclusion anyone applying common sence concludes. idiot polticians and military war mongers.
finding that out is a bad thing? for who?
how about some real real tv and real radio shows? certainly the NSA has such technological analysing capabilities that they can extract, in a very timely manner, terroristic communications out of the mass of communications happening every minute.
and once they get rid of the scum, then maybe they can sell the technology to the like of google, microsoft, yahoo, etc... so we actually get better search results.
now if the NSA really has such data analysis capabilities, then are they themselves not also responsible for hindering human advancement and technology of the everyday worker who could benefit in their daily activities in saving time in their online searchs?
Come on people, wise up..... the NSA is not using alien technology. They are getting more suppression of so called bad activity from the promotion of their access to the data than they have the ability to analize the data.
The whole point of the idea of London creating a TV program of their street cameras is that they don't have the ability to analize it otherwise. now multiply that by a factor of (london is small in comparison to teh country of the US
however a focused effort on monitoring the more likely to cause world problems and put in front of teh eyes of the public.... now that might just work....
I reserve the right to call someone who says this country is a "police state" a complete, utter, idiot who doesn't understand what a police state is.
Do you actually understand what a "police state" consists of? Are you currently in fear for your life because of your enlightened posting? Do you think you're going to be hauled off to jail or executed in the middle of the night with your body dumped on your front door step and your family billed for the bullet they used to kill you?
The point of the original poster wasn't that he was "glad to live in a police state" it was that he understood that we in fact are not a police state and thus he risks more of getting signed up for stupid email lists and snail mail spam by posting his address here on SlashDot than he does from any black helicopters or orbital mind control lasers.
The fact that you missed all of that and could only see that he was 18 and thus "kinda stupid" is what makes your whole diatribe so laughable.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.