Wiretap Ruling Threatens Telecoms

ches_grin writes "Yesterday's ruling on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program could mean that businesses that assisted in the program are in for some serious legal problems. The judge's decision clearly dismissed out of hand the arguments of the telecoms, saying that the protections due journalists and lawyers was a clear matter of the public's best interests." From the article: "Businesses accused of aiding the Bush administration in wiretapping could also be in for a legal bruising, say civil liberties groups that have sued telecom providers AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth for allegedly helping the NSA. The ruling could set a precedent other courts can't ignore. 'Every phone company that is assisting the government in its illegal surveillance would want to think long and hard before it continues that agreement,' says Ann Beeson, the ACLU's lead attorney in the case. 'There are already lawsuits claiming that their cooperation for the past several years is illegal and now that the judge has declared it is illegal, their liability increases. The risk is much greater from a business perspective.'"

Comments

What a Novel Concept!

[eldavojohn]

Businesses accused of aiding the Bush administration in wiretapping could also be in for a legal bruising, say civil liberties groups that have sued telecom providers AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth for allegedly helping the NSA. The ruling could set a precedent other courts can't ignore. 'Every phone company that is assisting the government in its illegal surveillance would want to think long and hard before it continues that agreement,' says Ann Beeson, the ACLU's lead attorney in the case. 'There are already lawsuits claiming that their cooperation for the past several years is illegal and now that the judge has declared it is illegal, their liability increases. The risk is much greater from a business perspective.

Wait, you mean that a company that wronged me and my fellow countrymen might be under legal penalty? You mean I might have as much right to my privacy as my government?

What a novel concept!

Let's try this: Let's conspire with a telecom provider to monitor government employee's communications and try to figure out what the government is thinking and what they're doing. Then, we'll blow the story all over the media and claim immunity based on something we just made up. We can claim that we were just making sure the federal government wasn't doing anything wrong and that if they weren't doing anything wrong, they shouldn't have to worry or press charges. I wonder if the telecom provider and those involved would be prosecuted.

Oh, and we'll use a recent event to justify our actions. Like the war in Iraq. Yeah, uh, we need to make sure no one in the government is conspiring to start another war based on false information. That's it, that's why we need to monitor your communications.

If the government is taking actions like these that are illegal for us to take ourselves, it's starts to sound less like we're on equal footing with the government and more like the government is demanding we "do what they say not what they do." Does anyone else remember back in the day when the United States was a government of the people, by the people and for the people? None of these recent NSA actions sound "for" the people. More like "against" with what should be serious legal repercussions. What the hell ever happened to a weak federal government with strong local governments? That was the basic idea for our government I thought. Instead we have some backwards beltway insiders pushing everyone around while my local county and city governments try to figure out what the hell "PC Load Letter" means.

I say we jail those responsible (government directors and telecom CEOs who oversaw it) just as any citizen who tried the same thing would be jailed.

Re:What a Novel Concept!

[owlnation]

Nixon resigned under the shadow of impeachment for illegally wiretapping a hotel. One single place. This administration basically wrietapped the entire country. I can't understand why their wasn't more outrage. It saddens me.

I totally agree. Despite the many articles on Slashdot and other sources such as The Daily Show etc, our rights and freedoms have been eroded to a level previously unheard of in the West. The so-called "War on Terror" has been a gift to extremists in US and EU governments to begin implementing types of controls similar to those of the Nazis in the 1930s. (I live in Berlin, I know the history here pretty well - and I use the comparison carefully, the Nazis did things small step, by small step, by small step). We seem perilously close to being under the complete control of dictatorships here. The war on Terror is clearly being won by both the terrorists and the extremists in Western governments. You, I, and everyone else are losing this War. Which makes me wonder when the terms like "regime change" were being bandied about, which regimes did they actually mean?

I am shocked, saddened and disgusted by the news each day. Obviously many of us would like to see our present governments replaced with more democratic and accountable institutions. But how? Protesting seems not to work, and so many are apathetic to any kind of truth. There really does need to be more public outcry, perhaps we need to see more anti-Vietnam types of scenes? What do we need to do to convert raised awareness into actions that will get Bush and Blair etc voted out of office?

Or perhaps I just need to move to Cuba where the government might allow me some more freedom, and at least the weather's nice.