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Wiretapping Lawsuit Against AT&T Dismissed
BalanceOfJudgement writes "A major victory by the federal government was won today when a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against AT&T for providing phone records to the federal government. From the article: 'The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities'" Not to be confused with the EFF case, this case was filed by the ACLU on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who argued that their constitutional rights had been violated by the actions of AT&T and the NSA.
RIP America, good things never last.
Vote with your dollars.
Admitting that our government spies on it's own citizens 'give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities'?
Propaganda levels are approaching Soviet era Moscow.
Ok, so someone sues AT&T for providing the government with data, and the judge rules that by even revealing whether this is the case or not would give away information about how the government gets it's data. Does anyone else think that's slighty worrying? Now this has happened, no-one can ever sue any firm that may or may not be involved with helping the government out with intelligence, because the information resulting from such a case would lead to information becoming public domain about how the government performs its intelligence ops. So we're all screwed.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Has this judge ever even read the constitution?
There's no out clause in the fourth amendment. It doesn't end with "Unless, the government wants to keep it secret."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There really is a fundamental flaw in this system.
I am doing something.
You ask what I'm doing.
You say it's illegal.
If I tell you, it will expose secrets.
I don't expose secrets.
You don't know what I am doing.
You can't tell me what I am doing is wrong, because you don't know what I am doing.
I am doing something. Too bad.
How exactly is it that the government can set up a system that is completely impervious to moral question? Keep in mind, this really is the NSA's wrongdoing, but it's more or less impossible to sue the government. Now, the government is saying you can't sue them either!?
What if the NSA was secretly executing suspected terrorists without warrants, due process, etc? Oh hell, let's say they were hiring a private (non-government) corporation to do that for them. It would obviously be illegal, but how would stopping that be any different? Someone would say "you can't just kill people, it's illegal", and the NSA would say "you can't ask that question, it would expose state secrets". And the NSA would continue to kill "terrorists".
Shouldn't this program be immediately halted while the morality (oh hell, legality) of it is in question?
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
(1) Quote: "He also said Terkel and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which sought class-action status, had not shown that their own records had been provided to the government. As a result, they lacked standing to sue the government, he said."
Okay... this lawsuit is fundamentally about secret wiretapping, right? So how can the judge say "you don't KNOW that you were wiretapped, so you can't sue" with a straight face? _NO ONE_ knows whether or not they have been spied on. THAT'S THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT!
(2) How can the judge possibly say that "news reports amounted to speculation and in no way constituted official confirmation that phone records had been turned over." Isn't Bush getting in front of a podium and denouncing the liberal media for revealing state secrets enough of an "official confirmation"?
I'm partially bitching about the sorry state of affairs here in the USA, but I'm also asking a serious question: Is this shit for real? Is there anyone, anywhere, who wants to defend it? Seriously, I know there are some hard core conservatives here on slashdot. I'd actually like to see how some of you view this ruling... does ANYONE want to defend it?
There is a concept in our Constitution which is generally called "separation of powers." Each of our branches of government is supposed to have specific and limited powers which are used in in part to further the common good and in part to keep the other branches from destroying our republican system (not to be confused with the Republican party which seems intent on destroying our republican system. Newspeak anyone?).
Anyway, the question is whether allegiance to our current government ought to supercede our allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America which defines our system of civil liberty.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
That questsion is easy. The enemy of the coutry is terrorists.
Terrorists are amongst us, they are in our community, in our schools, our churches, they are our neighbors.
Terrorists could be sitting next to you right now packed full of explosives waiting to blow away your god given freedom.
You make someone scared enough of something and they will let you do anything to help them.
The really baffling thing about this case is that the government somehow made the argument that terrorists, given uncertainty about whether or not the government is snooping in this way, will assume that it isn't happening.
Any competent terrorist has almost certainly been operating under the assumption that this already happens for years. I mean, they're being hunted by the world's biggest military power, and we're supposed to think they don't even take basic precautions?
I remember once hearing the proud words of a US firefighter who was involved in the Ground Zero cleanup, saying something along the lines of "the terrorists will never take away our freedom".
And he was right. It took the Bush Administration to achieve that one.
Sits back and waits to modded down by neo-con fanatics.
If the Republicans had an ounce of integrity they'd impeach Bush and Cheney themeselves. But there's no fear the party of incompetent hypocrites would ever do the right thing for the country. They're too busy blaming other people for the ills of the nation.
Hey, maybe monitoring everyone's phone calls, they really have figured out the vast liberal conspiracy.
UnAmerican asshats.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Then you, my friend, are a fool.
There is no "short-term" to a never ending "war" on an ephemeral notion like terrorism.
Mark my words - when your liberties are gone, they're gone for good.
and other activists who argued that their constitutional rights had been violated
Have these people read the US Constitution? There may be a right to privacy, but it is not enumerated nor implied in that document. The closest you can get is the ninth and tenth ammendments, which are the two that are NEVER honored.
The core problem is that privacy is a vague (and very modern) concept. If I give someone a phonebook with your number in it, have I violated your privacy? How much worse is it if it's an unlisted number? Or if I give it to the government instead of to my neighbor? Or if I'm a phone company instead of an individual? Because privacy is such a nebulous property, the answers to these questions are anything but clear. The closest the courts have gotten to a definition (in the absence of anything in the Constitition itself) is the not-quite-so-vague concept of "expectation of privacy". But with the every changing technological landscape, expectations get pretty hard to pin down.
Senator Barbara Boxer regularly spams my inbox with junk. How did she get my address? Why isn't the local Registrar of Voters being sued for giving her my personal information? Why isn't Yahoo being sued for selling my account information to the highest bidder? Why isn't my old landlord being sued for telling my creditors where I moved? What makes that any of that different from what AT&T did?
AT&T didn't hand over any voice tapes of your private conversations. They might have handed over the times a call was place from your number to your mother's number, in aggregate with millions of other such records. To everyone the former is a privacy violation, to to many the latter is not. Simply because the line is very fuzzy and wide.
I'm not arguing that there isn't a right to privacy. Rather I am arguing that you're on very loose ground arguing over a constitutional right to privacy. If you think the situation is going to improve, you're sadly mistaken. I strongly suspect technology will make privacy obsolete.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
How could someone who considers him/herself to be a true conservative support such a radical attrition of civil rights? One is seriously tempted to quote from J. Scalia's dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld where he argues vehemently that the courts ought not to be the agents of silent attrition of deeply held Constitutional rights.
Just as Rome started out with the first Triumverate (of Julius Caesar, Cassius, and Mark Anthony) and ended up eventually with the depravity of Nero and Caligula, so too we are following down this path if we don't take sufficient corrective action now.
No true conservative could defend these trends. That is, unless that "conservative" upholds Caligula or Nero as a great example of good governance...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Ignoring the civil liberties aspect.
Ignoring the government secrecy aspect.
Ignoring that the NSA is legally bound not to conduct domestic surveillance.
Those are some pretty FUCKING big pills to swallow, but I'll pretend, hypothetically, that I can let those things go. *gulp*.
The government's argument is this:
1. We are not conducting such surveillance, nor have we done anything illegal.
2. The reason we have not done anything illegal is because you cannot demonstrate that AT&T provided records to the government.
3. Forcing the government to provide such evidence might alert the terrorists that this surveillance program, which does NOT exist, is watching them, making us less safe.
4. Therefore, this case should be dismissed.
These statements are not congruent. There's no defensible argument here. One of the government's position is that AT&T did not provide records to the government. If that didn't occur, then there is no potential security risk. The entire government "reponse" is that we aren't doing any surveillance, but proving that may, potentially, alert Terrorists to the surveillance we are doing.
Frankly, I'm depressed we have a Republican Congress, because this kind of outrageous, unconstitutional, illegal, dictatorial, fascist behavior, layered in hypocrisy, deserves impeachment .
We impeached a President because an intern blew him, and he was misleading about it in Congressional Hearings.
Bush has, and continues to, lie about the existing of a ubiquitous domestic surveillance program that is without a doubt illegal, and his justification is, "Because I'm the boss, you all are children, and you can't handle the truth"
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot protect the secrecy of an illegal surveillance program under the grounds that it "doesn't exist". I hope, Mr. Bush, that the Heaven and Hell you believe in are real, so that you may burn in the lowest levels of hell, that reserved for traitors.
I say this as a person who supports the war in Iraq, I say this as a staunch conservative. Rot in Hell, Mr. President.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Terrorists could be sitting next to you right now packed full of explosives waiting to blow away your god given freedom.
Just think. What if the terrorists become invisible? What if they already are? The scenario you point out might not be far from the truth. I'd better start waving my flag around and see if it hits any invisible terrorists.
My god. What if they're not even here? Those would be the worst, sneakiest terrorists of all!
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I don't think the bush admin or the right wing realize that the terrorists' goal is not to 'defeat us' but to spread confusion, fear, division, and dissarray. Getting us to give up our rights is a victory for them. If the rational for dismissing the lawsuit is that dismissing it denies the enemy even a partial victory or tool or them to use towards a some kind of advantage, such a dismissal does just the opposite. Dismissing the AT&T lawsuit hands one over to the terrorists. In a 'war on terror' where out enemy is not a nation, but an ideology, our only true weapon is how determined we are to adhere to our forefathers' vision of a nation based on the rights of its citizens. Even during an undeclared war.
Any dictator can reign bombs and bullets, but only the truly brave can dare to defend the rights of the people when borders are threatened, and stand by the conviction of the idea that it is the people that are more important, rather than the government. And, if we perish under such a cause, then liberty is a thing too beautiful for the world to grasp, freedom too nobel for humanity to possess. We deserve to fall under the hand of evil, if we can't stand up for what is right.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
You can't tell me what I am doing is wrong, because you don't know what I am doing.
No, this is not a fishing expedition.
In this case, we know what they are doing and that it's wrong. A credible witness has come forward and told us about wiretapping, which violates the fourth amendment by violating your right to be secure in your home and private papers. What's missing is proof of the extent of the crime. It's not if they were doing something wrong or what that wrong was, GWB has admitted it, it's how much wrong was done.
Shutting down the investigation for "security" is outrageous and disgusting. They might as well tell us, "if we have to get search warrents to violate you, the terrorists will win." There are laws against domestic spying and they are being violated.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin, 1759
ie. We Are Screwed... and thank you so much for doing it in broad daylight.
I'd rather take my chances of having a terrorist live next door than to sacrifice my constitutionally-protected liberties. Otherwise, what the hell makes America better than anywhere else? What good is it to "protect democracy" when we actually don't have our freedom any more?
Vote. Vote wisely. Vote out incumbents.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The US has seen worse times in the past, from concentration camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, to the two sedition acts, to the first and only use of nuclear weapons, deserved or not. The good news is that so far we've always managed to bounce back. It's possible that some day the masses will realize that we're heading the wrong direction... does anyone know of a way to hasten the coming of this day, or plan for what to do if it does not happen?
What's funny about this is that the White House wants to keep their activities private, but not ours. Did I say funny? Scary.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Bush has used this to challenge 750 laws so far, one of which includes the ban on the torture of detainees.
The word is "sidestep"..not "challenge".
Ole!
+&x
Bin Laden wanted America to live in fear. To understand we are not free. 9-11 brought this country together, under horrible circumstances. But then Bush stepped in and finished what Bin Laden was trying to do.
What is getting arrested compared to that?
Ineffective?
By no means do I intend to trivialize the sacrifice you're talking about, but the problem is that it was *effective*.
Being arrested, even for a crime you didn't commit or a non-crime, is and will always be seen as "punishment," not "sacrifice" by the drooling masses.
One of the worst days in human history was the day in 1849 when a U.S. Federal judge declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals.
Prior to that day, corporations were answerable to the government as to their purpose and behavior. On that day, they became free to be as unethical and irresponsible as your average Joe.
Problem is, your Average Joe doesn't have the ruthless efficiency of never sleeping, nor the power to destroy countless natural resources in the pursuit of 'profit.'
One of the worst days in human history...
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.