Slashdot Mirror
Government May Help Bells Defend Against Wiretap Suits
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "As lawsuits mount against phone companies from plaintiffs who allege their call records were handed over to the National Security Agency illegally, the companies' defense may get help from the U.S. government, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'The plaintiffs, who accuse Bell phone companies of privacy violations and are seeking billions of dollars in damages, would need to delve into the depths of the NSA's surveillance program to make their cases. But the government considers such information top secret, and legal experts expect the Bush administration to assert the "state secrets" privilege in the 20 or more lawsuits filed by privacy advocates in recent weeks. If judges accept the claim, as has been the case in nearly every instance in which it has been asserted since the early 1950s, the suits will dissolve.'"
Do you care to back up any of the lofty claims you just made (George Bush crimes and 9/11 conspiracies)? No, I suspect not. I'm guessing you'll just make an immature profane rant of a reply. Grow up little kid, your crap is getting old.
For the record, I am not a G.W. fan by any means, but there is plenty of real evidence to be used to bash Bush without resorting to hysterical fabrications.
WHY IS NO ONE IN THE MEDIA ASKING THESE QUESTIONS?
No one in the mainstream media is asking these questions because if they did they would lose their jobs. More than 95% of all the media we see (radio, newspapers, tv & movies) comes from one of five media corporations. These corporations are interested in maintaining and gaining power. They do not want the general population to start asking these questions, so they rarely allow any dissenting viewpoints to enter the mainstream media.
If you want to hear these and other questions being asked, you need to go to independent media sources.
1 voice in a sea of voices
I know that people are a bit disillusioned right now with the going-ons in government, and feel waiting until Nov 2006 or 2008 to vote is not enough to deal with the immediate threats and violations of the constitution. A unoffical poll of Slashdot posters would demonstrate a near-unanimous discomfort with the wiretapping, but some of the same people would not be willing to vote out the perpetrators. I ask that everyone here put their money where there mouth is. In this particular matter, there is one party that is thrilled to be spying on Americans and questioning our patriotism, the party of "with us or against us": the Republicans. Though it seems almost certain that the violation of the bill of rights offends most republicans (just look at gun-control attempts), in this case the mob mentality has overruled just about any one Republican's personal moral choices. The solution is to not vote Republican: if you are truly uncomfortable with the way the country is headed, it is necessary to realize that the neo-con movement has usurped the moral authority the Republicans once had.
"WHY IS NO ONE IN THE MEDIA ASKING THESE QUESTIONS?"
After 9/11 the Bush Administration was extremely successful in their "You are either with us or you are against us" strategy which painted anyone who questioned the Bush administration's actions, including journalists, as unpatriotic, or practically terrorists themselves. This is a classic propaganda and nationalism card and they played it very well. This campaign along with the general mood after 9/11 completely terrified journalists out of questioning anything the Bush administration did. Its just now starting to wear off because a few journalists are realizing they were played for complete suckers by the Bush administration.
Rupert Murdoch built Fox News to completely destroy the liberal media and independence in the news room and it worked. He single handedly turned news networks in to sensationalist propaganda tools for the executive branch, witness Fox's Tony Snow is now the press secretary. The fact Fox sky rocketed to #1 news network after 9/11 made all the other networks try to emulate them, not refute them. CNN is now an embarrassing Fox News parody, they aren't even good at it, so they are tanking. I can't stand watching CNN anymore. One liberal media outlet down. The Daily Show is the only liberal news outlet left and its a comedy show, parody. The best thing that could happen to American media right now would be for Time-Warner to sell CNN back to Ted Turner so he could rebuild a news network to challenge the Fox propaganda machine.
TV journalists are hired and rise through the network ranks based on how photogenic they are and on how much of a sycophant they are to both corprate executives, and politicians, not based on their ability as investigative journalists. The networks White House Correspondents and the Pentagon correspondents are just regurgitating the stuff the White House and the Pentagon want them to say on the TV that night. They are thinly veiled propaganda tools of the government. They don't do ANY independent investigation.
Most media outlets are now owned by large corporations thanks to consolidation, and most large corporations have no interest in investigative journalists who attack the government or stoke controversy that might cost them revenue or political good will.
One of the more disturbing invocations of state-secret privilege by George W. Bush was on November 1, 2001, when he signed Executive Order 13233. This order allows George W. to unilaterally prevent any access to his presidential papers for 12 years after he leaves office, unless he and only he authorizes it. Even if the sitting president authorizes it, he can still veto the release.
If its upheld, this should prevent future Congresses or courts from even seeing incriminating executive branch documents to investigate or charge him with illegal or unconstitutional acts, until 2020. Future Presidents can see them but can't release or act on them unless George W. authorizes it. You have to figure that a few weeks after 9/11, George W. was about to sign some orders to do some things that future governments might consider criminal or unconstitutional and his lawyers created this executive order so he could unilaterally obstruct any future investigations, even when he is no longer President. What might those acts be? Massive domestic spying on Americans without court approval, a prison on Gitmo outside the jurisdiction of any court, arresting American citizens without due process, authorization of torture by the military and CIA, secret prisons, launching an illegal war in Iraq based on a web of lies, dramatic expansion of the Rendition program to snatch people anywhere in the world, in violation of other nation's sovereignty to send people to secret prisons to be tortured?
Rendition is particularly apt in a discussion of state-secret privilege. It was used to kill a case brought by
@de_machina