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Telecom Companies Seek Retroactive Immunity
kidcharles writes "Newsweek reports that a secretive lobbying campaign has been launched by telecommunications companies who are seeking retroactive immunity from private lawsuits over their cooperation with the NSA in the so-called 'terrorist surveillance program.' Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has claimed that lawsuits could 'bankrupt these companies.' The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against AT&T over their cooperation in the domestic spying program. EFF legal director Cindy Cohen said of the lobbying campaign, 'They are trying to completely immunize this [the surveillance program] from any kind of judicial review. I find it a little shocking that Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on.'"
Why is anyone surprised Congress would be hushing this up? If the companies get sued for huge sums, then where will they get money to bribe congressmen?
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
What would happen to any other group of people that committed large-scale spying on the people of the US?
Why should corperations be free from punishment for committing crimes, especially if it is in association with a branch of the government?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
First, ALL companies participated in this program. To not do so, would have jeopardized their gov contracts. A major reason why the gov spreads the wealth around is because then the companies are beholden to them. Imagine what would have happened to Verizon or QWest(yes, qwest did not par ticpate in a few minor parts) if they had not? Not only would they have been denied future contracts, but they would have lost major gov contracts and probably a number of other contracts dealing with companies who are very dependant on the feds. For QWest alone, they would have lost no less than 20% of their business. Verizon would have lost a great deal more. What is shocking is that this is in the open.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Article 1, Section 9: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. My understanding is that an ex post facto law works both ways: You can't make illegal activities that were legal in the past; nor can you make legal activities that were illegal in the past. In other words, you can't change the legal status of actions in the past.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You're not really understanding the situation. AT&T didn't say, "Hey, let's spy on our customers, and ask Bush if we can do it." That's not how his happened.
What actually happened was King George II told AT&T and other companies: Let us into your networks. We say so. We have the guns. If you don't comply, then you'll be branded as terrorists.
And yes, you can say that AT&T and such should not have complied, but nobody outside of the top brass at AT&T know what they were threatened with. Maybe they were given payment, maybe they weren't. Of course, the government won't release any of that information, so nobody will ever know.
I don't respond to AC's.
I find it a little shocking that Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on
Then either you don't live in the US, or you are under the age of 12. Congress is as crooked as any major corporation, and anytime they want to do something like this they just duplicate The Bush Maneuver..."its for National Security".
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
You know, I really really REALLY hate to say this...
But these guys were just following cues from the NSA. They should be given immunity, and the people in charge who allowed the NSA to solicit these companies into doing illegal wiretapping should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law -- and if it's not very illegal, the law should be changed and they should be prosecuted above and beyond the full extent of the current law.
It's been a long time.
It would be greatly satisfying to roast them over Congressional coals, but with immunity they're more likely to cooperate with agencies that have reason to investigate abuses of power.
Not a ray of sunshine, put at least it's the crack of dawn...
It's actually in the long-term best interests of all companies to *not* have this immunity.
This just enables a form of government interference in corporations that is even worse than regulatory laws. Regulations get made in the open and are subject to lobbying and court rulings. Whereas the NSA warrantless spying amounts to the commandeering of the corporate assets and procedures and is enforced by secret laws that (apparently) cannot be challenged in court in any reasonable way.
Even with recompensation that returns a profit on investment, this is a bad deal for corporate independence.
Besides, "going out of business", in this context, just means that some other large corporation will buy their assets and kick out the current management team. Heck, maybe Google could take out an option to pick up Verizon for ten cents on the dollar. In any event, it doesn't mean that the phone system will stop working all across the country (which is what these assholes are implying.) That's what this is all about: the people presently running the show don't want to find themselves out of a job. Now, that's just too bad ... they've earned jail sentences and are hardly entitled to their positions anymore.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And Government is the biggest bully of all.
Imagine playing a game where if the other side is losing they get to rewrite the rules of the game in their favour - retroactively if necessary. They have done it before, and they will do it again. The terrorists have already won. Our own governments have destroyed our freedom on their behalf, and it doesn't matter anymore who wins "the war". John Q. Public loses either way.
My rights don't need management.
Possibly even some kind of deterrent to keep foreign powers at bay. Something big and scary... perhaps an arsenal of scary things might be enough to make sure no one even seriously talks of making a move.
You can't take the sky from me...
Has McConnell et. Al brought up the issue of retroactive immunity before a congressional hearing? Its starting to get old and others seem to be catching this nasty meme.
...
We can't say anything about what we're doing because it will help the bad guys. Oh and by the way *we* (Can we say conflict of interest??!) reviewed all 50 or so lawsuites pending and believe none of them have any merit... Regardless we desperatly need to grant retroactive immunity to all those telephone companies that have helped us. Doing this is necessary to help ensure that none of our secrets come to light in unecessary court cases and prevent companies from thinking twice before helping us again.
WHAT IF
The government has illegally infringed on the privacy of Americans. Invoking "state secrets" and quashing legal challenges to its actions would seem to me to be an effective way of ever having the truth come to light.
On these grounds its imperative we don't grant any government institution the ability to design and explot loopholes allowing it to effectivly circumvent either the constitution or checks and balances regardless of what we may think about them or what they may honestly believe their intentions to be.
Those spouting that carriers had no choice is interesting.. Even the government has to get service from someone? Telcos do have leverage and lobbiests and communicate with each other on a regular basis.
Note carefully: this is not about declaring previous behavior to be retroactively legal, it is about passing a new law that would wipe out current lawsuits. This is different, and it has been done many times in the past. (After 9/11 a new law was passed to prevent thousands of expected lawsuits from being filed by victims' families.) This approach can serve a useful social purpose if used approriately, and the question is whether the tactic is appropriate to protect heavily-regulated companies who may have "over-cooperated" with government.
BTW it's good that you know the constitution because the 'ex post facto' thing is emphatically not dead, which probably led to the end run described in the article.
Cheers, Toliaro
The Democrats are rushing this through because they were shocked by the reaction to their passing the Protect America Act last session -- everyone slammed them for giving new surveillance powers to the White House, and so they're scrabbling to fix matters with a new bill.
But they're making the same mistake again. They think no-one cares about immunity. They think it's just a business-as-usual deal.
Please call Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and let them know that you're angry at the idea of giving retroactive immunity to the telcos, and by extension, participating in a cover-up of the warrantless wiretapping project. It's not that they're wedded to this idea, it's that they don't think their base or independents care about telco immunity.
Call Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- 202-225-4965
Call Sen. Harry Reid -- 202-224-3542
If you want more facts and arguments, EFF has them here.
A couple more notes, for those who like the grubby details. The telcos are pushing for complete retroactive immunity, or alternatively "substitition", by which the government takes the place of the telcos as the defendant in the case. The government has a lot more power to evade the cases by dint of its own in-built immunity to some kinds of prosecution and thus end the cases. A few other groups are suggesting financial caps of penalties, so that the cases could go forward, but if the courts found the telcos guilty, they wouldn't suffer the "crushing liability" they say the cases would cause. (Note that the only way the telcos would *actually* be fined a large amount of money by our case would be if they were guilty of blanket, system-wide surveillance of all their subscribers.)
Thanks.
I find it a little shocking that a Democratic Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."