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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.'"
I expect the lawsuits to collapse, or at least gimp along on two broken legs at that point.
"National Security" has become the new "We Do This For Our Children".
*Stomps away in disgust*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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
What we need is an itelligent judge that isn't afraid to intepret the law and who will stand up for the American citizens of this country. I don't deny that we're in a time where we need some kind of safety net, but we don't need to give our liberties. If this all keeps going on the way it has been, the terrorists the gov't is seeking so hard to stop will win by splitting America apart.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Why fret over privacy loss if you aren't doing anything illegal/covert?
Very well, let's see if you'll answer that. Presumably you're not doing anything illegal or covert?
Alright. Please post right here: Your real name, your age, your home address, your work or school address, your home phone number, your cell phone number, your work phone number, a description and the license plate numbers of any vehicles you own, and a link to a recent photo of yourself.
If you're not comfortable with that information being in the hands of strangers...then you're concerned about privacy.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Because you can trust the government, but not the citizens.
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When do I get my check?
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Name: Sheyenne York Age: 18 Home address: 46 Bradford Lane South China, ME 04358 School: Erskine Academy 309 Windsor Road, South China, ME 04358 (207) 445 - 2962 Vehicles: I do not currently own an automobile. Telephone: I use e-mail. My e-mail address is zweideutig@gmail.com
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First after a call to AT&T, where I had a nice 15 minute talk with the customer service representative (she was aware there was something going on and had some canned response for reporters, but didn't understand what the "big deal" (her words) was, until I explained it to her. By the end of the conversation, she agreed that this was pretty scary... or at least pretended to, but she sounded sincere.) who told me that only one other customer had called her to complain (about 2pm).
Second, I'm cancelling my phone service w/AT&T and I will let them know exactly why. I'm switching to an Internet phone. Now, I know that this may not be much safer, especially considering any call INTO a bad phone company would be logged and reported to the NSA. (This is why Qwest customers aren't safe if they call anyone who uses AT&T, for example)... but if enough people cancel in disgust, who knows, maybe they'll get the message.
Third, I'm donating to the EFF. They need our help more than ever. And vice-versa.
Fourth, I'm ready, willing, and able to join any class action lawsuits against these companies. Even if they get thrown out.
Fifth, not an email. Not a letter. But a phone call to my state Senators and Representative.
Also #1: Has anyone put together a unified wiki/forum trying to "reverse-engineer" the NSA's data mining program from published reports + what IT folks & mathematicians think is possible? I bet with enough collaboration and discussion, the net can figure out pretty close to what they're doing with this massive database/total information awareness program (sounds a bit like they're creating associations between clusters of people, much like Amazon does when they profile you to recommend new products... The more info they have, the more they can cross-reference, looking for patterns and comparing with patterns of known profiles (criminals, political enemies, etc.).. I'd be really interested in learning more about what people think this program is and how it might work, from a technological point of view.
Also #2: Merry Fitzmas
...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
I was kinda stupid when I was 18 too.
This space available.
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.
As much as it pains me to say this, I'd rather have Google store all my personal data than any Government have access to it; hypothetically assuming for a moment that the data could only be subpeoned via a "normal" warrant - like in the olden days before all these new Patriot Act type laws.
Now don't get me wrong, I've nothing against the authorities applying for a warrant to listen into my telephone calls/emails etc if they have reasonable suspicion that I am going to commit a crime, or that I have committed a crime. Blanket monitoring with no consideration of presumed innocence is most definitely a big no-no though.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
I have to wonder if Bush can claim martial law like Lincoln did way back during the Civil War. If you remember, Lincoln essentially declared an end to free speech for a while and arrested anyone who was suspected of any sort of dissent. They were held without habeaus corpus. Certainly, Bush has and can claim that we are fighting a war on terrorism and that we need whatever information the NSA/CIA/FBI/DoD need to "protect" us. The US is becoming a really scary place to live in.
Probably at least $10 or $20 million in "campaign contributions". Yeah, let us help you out with these phone records, gubmint. And be sure to remember us next time we need something nudge nudge wink wink say no more say no more.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
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
- Domestic spying is costly for telecoms
- Domestic spying could reveal trading secrets
- Domestic spying accelerates standard encryption
An other reason for hope is the existence of organizations like EFF or ACLU.Snooping and tapping activities at the boundary of legality have made me worried, but costly legal lawsuits could be a good medicine. Like chemotherapy against cancer. Better would be strict laws which prevent such abuse. Lets see how the law dragons fight the snooping hydra.
There is an other issue which could prevent that we slip into a totalitarian state: telephone calling records of industry decision makers are valuable information. The database can give hints about mergers, stock market developments (company X has suddenly a lot of phone-calls with company Y. Do they merge? Do they launch a new product, lets buy or sell stocks accordingly). In a government, for which business is so closely linked to politics, domestic spying could be seen a free ticket for obtaining insider information. That could become a problem, once it is realized that it exists.
A third remedy about the domestic spying issue could be technology: not only standard encryption of telephone calls, but also standard masquerading about who calls whom. Such technology will first be used by people who need protection, not criminals, but CEOs or engineers working on new technology, which the competition should not know about. Of course, the people who are the primary targets of those stupid spying activities have long gone to other communication channels.
"The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable."
LOR, Chapter 2, The Passage of the Marshes
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?
I'm afraid you're the one with the active imagination, and your head firmly in teh sand.
I'm guessing you have never heard what your government did to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, a software developer who consulted with Mathworks, who was arrested, illegally detained and shipped off to Syria for torture at the behest of the American Government:
I know, I know... why bother to stand up for this guy? After all, he's a friend of a criminal, right? Except that he was an acquaintance, not a friend, and the other guy wasn't a criminal. But then, he's a foreigner, and you're not a foreigner, so you have nothing to worry about.
Just don't wonder why there is no one left to stand up when they finally come for you...
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
like your ISP, your bank, your cell phone provider, etc. You give more personal data than this to rent a video or save $0.45 at Albertsons.
The difference is that you can choose to give up the information they request. I've made a decision to allow these organizations access to certain pieces of information about myself.
I did not elect to give my government my telephone records.
I really fail to see the harm.
There's no harm in not following the rules? Do you really want a government that doesn't feel that the laws put in place are important? That the rule of law isn't important?
Interestingly enough, when the AG of the US was asked why he didn't just work with Congress to change the law, his answer was "because we believe they will refuse to change the laws". There is actually a reason why government is required to abide by the law, and that's to protect the citizenry from government intrusion. Remember that thing called the "bill of rights"? It was intended that the people - not the government - ultimately decide what they want.
When the government refuses to follow its own rules and laws, everone is harmed.
Bill Maher joked on Real Time last night that "Osama Bin Laden needs to find a new reason to hate us - he used to hate us for our freedom." While Maher was joking, he was making a very poignant point: If we give up our freedoms, the terrorists win.
The complaint isn't that the government isn't doing enough; it's that the administration is breaking the laws that are in place. They can perfectly well do the exact same thing by following the rules - get a subpoena for the records; get a FISA court to approve the wiretaps. They refuse to do that, and then play the "if you don't let us do this, the terrorists win". NO! If we *DO* let the government do this, the terrorists win!
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Okay, let's start with the obvious...
First, we go to USPS and file a change of address form. We need to do this quickly and it probably should span the next three or four months. That should give us bank account information--bank statements and the like. We can then contact the bank and arrange a wire-transfer to a bank account in the Caymans. Hope you weren't saving money for college.
Do you think that the fear we're living under now is anything compared to the fear of the founders as the much larger, better equipped and trained Royal armies attacked?
Yet they believed freedom was more important than life itself. That belief is the foundation of our way of life, and this foundation is under attack. Once we lose these freedoms, they will be almost impossible to recoup without force.
What unmitigated cowards are the people who are willing to cede freedoms to terrorism. And furthermore, there is no proof that ceding these freedoms enables us to better fight terror.
To the founding fathers, we would look like a bunch of cowards and ingrates. They would be horrified to see the legacy they struggled and died to create collapsing under the comparatively tame threat of terrorism.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
To catch terrorists this way. By now, everyone, including the terrorists, have figured out that the phone lines are insecure. Those who have something to hide are already using different forms of communication.
The only possible effective use of this system today is to stifle the political dissent of law abiding citizens.
It has never been about catching terrorists or protecting children. Yes, occasionally such eavesdropping has helped solve criminal cases; but the primary purpose has always been the suppression of political dissent.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.