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EFF Interviewed About Their Case Against AT&T
ntk writes "Glenn Greenwald from Salon has a long, informative interview with Cindy Cohn, the EFF attorney leading the suit against AT&T over their warrantless wiretapping of their customers. It talks about why the White House is pushing for retroactive immunity against the telco, what the suit has revealed so far, and how little Congressfolk appear to know about how Internet traffic is being monitored."
In particular, QWest and Verizon. Has nobody noticed the 100 Billion+ telcom award that went to the 3? Think that the FCC award it to them for their high bids (they were the TOP bidder).
The public needs to understand and accept the fact that neither telecos nor governments are trustworthy. Privacy is up to end users and they are free to secure their own traffic by wrapping it in real crypto. GPG, OpenSSL and OpenVPN are just a few free open-source toolkits available to provide secure ways to communicate without having to worry about the trustworthiness of the pipe between here and there.
It's just naive to wait for some politician to protect your privacy when you have the tools to insure this yourself. As a matter of practice, stick your letters in an envelope instead of waiting for the postmaster general to outlaw literacy of postal employees.
I see a lot of criticism about these telecoms cooperating without warrants with the government. I don't think it is as bad as ISP's cooperating with private agencies like RIAA without a warrant. One might argue that the government could at least have some shadow of the public good in what they do. The RIAA is completely self serving. If the government is called into question for these activities, then maybe it will cascade down to privacy concerns that don't get as much press.
The principle is that there are laws, and none should be above the law (something Bush doesn't seem to get either).
Change that and you change justice. Full stop.
Required reading here.
Look at how gleefully they advertise exploiting their trusted thiry-party (SSL Certificate Authority) status.
I think we need to consider switching all our browsers to a more trustworthy CA.
GG: John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, was on Fox News on Sunday arguing for telecom immunity, and this is one of the things he said in explaining why he believed in amnesty: "I believe that they deserve immunity from lawsuits out there from typical trial lawyers trying to find a way to get into the pockets of the American companies."
I have no doubt that Congressman Boehner is aware of the EFF's true motivations and is deliberately spinning them. His motivation for doing so can only be to defend the Bush Administration. Most importantly, He is absolutely aware that what has happened and is still happening is illegal and he is willing to lie on national tv to defend this. In board rooms, on conference calls, in the break room, at the pool hall down the street, people can't get away with this shit and they know they'll be called out for lying. We really need the people who interviewing these traitors to be more aggressive. Fuck politeness, just once I want some anchorman to say "Wo, hold the fuck on John, we all know that's bullshit."Our elected officials (all of them) lie and spout meaningless rhetoric with impunity everyday and that needs to change. They need to be put on the spot and grilled once in a while.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Accessing the article, all I get is: Salon cannot set a cookie on your browser. This for an article on protecting privacy.
The Constitution allows the President to suspend civil liberties (even habeas corpus) in cases of warfare, or for national defense. And the interesting thing is that the determination of national defense purposes lies with the executive branch.
Can you provide a citation on that? Article I, Section 9 states "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." -- but that is in Article I, which lays out the powers and limitations of Congress, not the President. Article II describes the role of the President, and I honestly can't see anything there that backs up your claim. (Not to mention that the US is neither in a state of rebellion nor being invaded at the moment.)
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
* This is not a war. Constitutionally, Congress reserves the right to declare war, and they have not. the "AUMF" is not a formal declaration of war. No other circumstances stipulated in the Constitution authorize the suspension of Habeas Corpus.
* The 2000 and 2004 elections both elected the Democratic candidates, and were overturned by electoral fraud favoring Republicans. If you want to imply that we get the government we deserve, then you only have the rather weak form of the argument that says we elected a government prior to those elections that didn't care to pursue and remedy electoral fraud.
Don't get me wrong; there is a frighteningly significant number of Americans who still support "mister 26%". Indeed, the only reason that electoral fraud is a viable tactic is that the country was so evenly split in previous elections. But what if the election were held today, after almost 3 years of a unitary executive who is almost completely unaccountable to the People or it's Congress? If the People were voting for anything, it was what was apparent to them from the first four years of the Bush presidency, before Gonzales' USA firings, before the exposure of warrantless wiretaps, before the Plame outing, before the "surge", before Katrina, before the Military Commissions Act, and before the SCHIP veto. I could go on, obviously.
Just because our previous elections have been contentious doe not mean that the system is not broken, or that it has not been compromised by corrupt interests. The Rovean Culture War is not a sign of a healthy democratic republic.
Even though Congress hasn't officially declared war, the mantra in Washington is that we are at war. With a noun. And this stretched definition of war ("We are constantly under threat of invasion by terrorists!") is sufficient to convince the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the Executive branch that the suspension of liberties is not illegal, per se. Yes, it is probably against the spirit of the Constitution, but that's hard to prove. Even so, you'll have people who would argue that if the founding fathers could have forseen Islamic terrorism, they would have included it in the Constitution as well.
The interesting thing, though, is that Clinton was impeached for lying about having "sex" with an intern, while GW has misinformed the Congress and the whole United States about WMD, and Congress does nothing.
So, IOW, we've elected a bunch of spineless Senators. While you might be able to claim election fraud wrt to Presidential elections, it would be a quite a stretch to claim the same for the Senate, especially considering the majority party is the Democrat Party.
So where is the voter outrage? Why hasn't GW been called on the carpet in the same way as Clinton? Do you really expect us to believe that the Democrats are part of the conspiracy as well?
It just might be that America is getting the government they deserve. The system of checks and balances is either completely broken, or our current situation is the result of indifference, or perhaps even support for, the "illegal" spying program. (As IANAL, I don't know if the program is legal or not, but I do know that I certainly don't like it.)
And it should be taken for granted that corrupt and partial interests are trying to control government. But we as the voters have the responsibility to root out corruption. Sadly, it appears that all too many Americans are content to endorse the Bush interpretation of the Constitution. Even the Democrats.
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