Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Everyone else is already calling BS, and I agree. The companies colluded voluntarily, whether it was to preserve contracts or not; greed's not a reason to break the law.
I'll also point out that the only way you'll ever be able to ensure that the government won't be able to do this again, at least so easily, is to crucify the companies who helped them do it and didn't call foul loudly and publicly. Set that sort of precedent, and they won't have willing accomplices again. Moreover, it'll be for -business- reasons, the only universal ones in a capitalist society.
It's not even the constitution they need to understand. It's the laws themselves.
What's interesting is that not only was the entire program illegal, but they had the AG sign off on it claiming it was legal, every 45 days, so they could claim they were following the law. The law actually only allows the AG to sign of on wiretapping if the AG asserts that no Americans will be tapped, like they're bugging the Chinese embassy or something. But the AG illegal signed off on the tapping anyway, giving himself quite a lot of civil liability. This was, of course, still illegal, it's not 'The AG signs off on any wiretapping, then it's legal', it's 'The AG signs off on wiretapping and make a specific claim, under threat of perjury, that X is true, then it's legal.', which he did not.
But the telecoms could at least pretend they were following the law. If anyone asked, the had the AG on record that the law was being followed, and anyone asking would just assume that by that they meant the specific exception under the law, not the words 'Do it.' and a signature. They got that every 45 days.
But then Comey, acting AG, refused to sign off on it. There's an interesting theory that Rumsfeld couldn't, for some reason, couldn't stop authorizing the program, (Perhaps blackmail?) so deliberately rendered himself unable to be AG during a time when the papers had to be signed. (Otherwise, it's hard to figure out why he didn't just re-authorize it in advance. It had to be every 45 days, but nothing stopped him from authorizing it at 40 or 35 days for another 45 days if he knew he'd be having surgery. He could have signed the papers right before he temporarily stepped aside as AG. It wasn't emergency surgery, and he knew Comey was opposed to it.)
Whatever the reason, the program was operated for at least 24 hours, maybe up to a week, starting on March 11, 2004, without even a pretend legal justification. The White House said to do it, the AG said no. This was flatly, completely, inarguably illegally. There is absolutely no legal question about it. (1)
That time period is for what the telecoms need immunity. All the other time, they can argue 'Oh, we had the AG's assurance this was legal.', even though they didn't actually, under statue, have it. (He must make specific assurances to them that were not made, and both they and him knew it. They have a damn form letter for it.)
They thought they could weasel out, but, then, at one point in March 2004, they asked for the pretend authorization and didn't get it, and let the government keep operating, thus totally blowing any claims they might have that they were operating legally.
1) And it's fucking insane that Congress hasn't already started impeachments over that specific incidence. Forget arguing the legality of the program when it was signed off on. The President can weasel out of the rest of the time by pointing to the AG's signature, and we can spend years arguing over who did what.
But during that specific time the White House, by itself, ordered the wiretapping, over the objections of the AG. Even if the wiretapping was on foreign nationals and even if that means the president has the inherent power to do it (Neither of which have been demonstrated.), he still has to follow the process laid out in law...if he disapproved of the AG he should have fired him.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.