Telecom Immunity Showdown in the Senate Today

CPeanutG writes "A make-or-break moment for telecom immunity has arrived — after months of back-room committee-meetings, the FISA bill will finally reach the Senate floor on Monday! Unfortunately, a previously-reported version of the bill that grants telecom immunity will be presented to the Senate on Monday morning. The clock is ticking. Write your Senators now."

Comments

Re:Nice exclamation point

[Elemenope]

IIRC, if the gov't asks them to eavesdrop on a citizen, they become an agent of the state, and as such cannot legally abridge 4th amendment protections. The Government cannot end-run the protections by asking someone else to do it for them. If they could, the Constitution wouldn't be worth the paper its printed upon.

If on the other hand, the telco volunteered without prompting such information, then yes, there would be no violation. That is soooooooo not the case here.

Re:no immunity?

[russ1337]

I think that not granting immunity would be unfair to those telco employees who would be convicted. I do think that any immunity granted should be only to the telco employees, and should only be for past incidents. Big brother should be slapped down, but those he coerced should be let off the hook this time and this time only.

Yes, but it was THOSE telco employees who had the authority to act for the Company in these matters and handed over the information WITHOUT A WARRANT. The people approached for the information would have known what the rules were, and decided to (or were coerced into) providing the information without a warrant. If they were unsure on the legalities (while being coerced), then then company Legal should have been bought in.

Only by these individuals being held accountable in some way, will it send a message to business that individuals acting on behalf of the organization have to act within the law. If they were 'coerced' using illegal threats, then the individuals within the Govt agency responsible should ALSO be held accountable. And this may weigh into the severity of the punishment the company reps receive.

Until INDIVIDUALS are held accountable, then Companies and large corporations will continue to break the law, presumably hoping the fine isn't too severe when/if they eventually get caught.

Re:There must be some industry protections

[Foobar of Borg]

Knocking out communications infrastructure is something invading forces do. It's not something that governments are supposed to let happen.

There are some executives who need to have their heads on pikes, but the industry itself needs protection.

Why? Why should the government bail out yet another set of mega-corporations? AT&T, Verizon and South Central Bell all going bankrupt at once will have an effect on the economy, but those are the breaks. Or do you think big corporations should be immune from prosecution just because of the financial effect it might have on some people?

Also, making these bastards answer for their crimes won't knock out the communications infrastructure. It will still be there, but AT&T, Verizon and South Central Bell will have to sell theirs for pennies on the dollar to telcos that didn't violate the law. And, if there is some disruption in communications, maybe people will for once stop watching staring at the tv all the time and actually pay attention to who is running things. It's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned.