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Lawmakers Delay Telco Immunity Vote
eweekhickins writes "The US Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a scheduled vote on whether telecommunications carriers should be granted immunity for cooperating with the White House's domestic spying program of telephone wiretapping and e-mail surveillance. The panel hopes to vote on the provision as soon as next week. Senator Pat Leahy said that immunity would make it impossible for Americans to seek redress for 'illegal' violations of their privacy." The article points out the confused state of the immunity measure: the House is considering a version of FISA renewal that has no immunity; in the Senate, two committees are working on different versions, one with immunity, one without.
Enabling the government to listen to people talking to other people outside the country after a terrorist attack killed almost 3000 people inside the country and having some notion to suspect that at least one of the caller might be a terrorist or someone giving aid to them when the government cal listen to the foreign part of the conversation all they want without reproach as long as they aren't US citizens is entirely different from killing people just because they practice a religion.
The just following orders in this situation didn't lead to anyone dieing and is order of magnitude different. Just following orders and following orders under the pain of imprisonment for a non life threatening action could be considered acceptable. And before you start blowing things out of portion, no one is suggesting that wire taps were anything other then listening to the other end of suspected terrorist accept the politically motivated people who see this as a downfall for the administration. No one with the knowledge of what was going on which includes several democrats (even senators) has made any statements to suggest anything else was happening.