NID Admits ATT/Verizon Help With Wiretaps

Unlikely_Hero writes "National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has confirmed in an interview with the El Paso Times that AT&T and Verizon have both been helping the Bush Administration conduct wiretaps. He also claims that only 100 Americans are under surveilance, that it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a telephone number and suggests that companies like AT&T and Verizon that "cooperate" with the Administration should be granted immunity from the lawsuits they currently face regarding the issue."

Comments

Re:what do you do about searching without a warran

[Saint Aardvark]

I'm stealing this from training I went to at LISA last year: you tell the LEO (law enforcement officer) politely, but firmly, that as company policy you're happy to help, but all such requests must be directed to the legal department.

The legal dep't will look at it and decide what to do, and then you do it. They know their job, you know yours; they don't make decisions about storage capacity or OS support, and you and I don't make decisions about constitutionality or legality. And if/when you've got the information they're looking for, you pass it back to the lawyers and they hand it over to the LEO.

This covers your ass, your company's ass, and the LEO's ass (assuming you or your friends aren't being socially engineered). Any LEO should be happy to talk to the lawyers.

Now, all that said...I realize that this leaves out questions of conscience. If Mark Klein hadn't had spilled the beans, we'd have been a lot longer finding out about this problem. But as a rule, I think those situations are rare; most law enforcement stuff is <handwave>your garden variety stuff -- robbery, fraud, yadda yadda</handwave> (sorry, no citation to back that up) -- and the odds of being involved in something truly offensive is pretty slim. I hope it stays that way.

Re:Unless

[spikedvodka]

No company should surrender private communications to the government without a warrant. And if they do, the public can sued them.

So if the Japanese had discussed the attack on Pearl Harbor amongst themselves but over AT&T phone lines, you're arguing that AT&T should have conspired with the Japanese to keep the attack secret? There's no kind of warrant that applies to foreign enemy powers. Warrants are for criminal prosecutions. Also warrants are issued by judges, and judges are constitutionally excluded from issues involving the waging of war. no, that's not what the GP is saying. There would be no conspiring involved, because until the warrant was issued (and served) AT&T would have no way of knowing what was being said over their lines.

Re:100 americans denied due process

[spikedvodka]

It didn't say 100 Americans. It said 100 people living in this country. They are most probably not citizens and they are not entitled to the same rights as citizens.

Generally, I find fellow citizens are less likely to try to kill us. Cut me off in traffic, sure, destroy the local water plant, no.

Funny... I don't remembering anything in the constitution that says that "civil rights are only for citizens" my understanding was that the laws applied equally to everybody in the country, Citizen, visitor, illegal alien.

I find the concept that "They are not entitled to the same rights as citizens" a very common, and disturbing concept.

That being said, there are some very specific rights, that are explicitly awarded to citizens (see the 26th amendment), for example the right to vote. the fact that other rights don't explicitly state that they are for citizens, would very strongly imply that they are for all people in the country

Re:The unanswered question...

[Jtheletter]

(For example, in what you said, the courts do NOT have the legitimate power to arbitrarily strike down a law.)

The parent poster never used the term arbitrary, nor implied it, you added that to support your own argument. The courts do indeed have the power to strike down a law if it is unconstitutional or overly broad, etc.; however it must be brought before the court by someone with proper standing, i.e. someone who has been harmed by or prosecuted under said law. To claim that the courts do not have this power is not only wrong, but easily refuted by over a century of case law.
The problem at hand with the FISA issue is that the wiretaps are being used on Americans, located in America. It is not the cases of purely foreign wiretaps that people have issue with, it is the unsupervised use of them against NON-foreigners that is the problem. And the fact that the administration knowingly and willingly sidestepped mandatory FISA regulations early on in the process? Are they to be left completely unaccountable for that? You seem like a reasonable person who accepts the rule of law, however you also seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the very laws and checks you are advocating and believe in have already been breached. Also, the justification for expansion of powers along the lines of "we've stopped/will stop lots of crimes but we can't tell you about any of them" is hardly an acceptable reason for a government supposedly of and for the people. Do you disagree that a system of checks and balances cannot properly function if one side is completely cloaked in secrecy?