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Telco Immunity Goes To Full Debate
Dr. Eggman notes an Ars Technica analysis of the firefight that is the current Congressional debate over granting retrospective immunity to telecoms that helped the NSA spy on citizens without warrants. A Republican cloture motion, which would have blocked any further attempts to remove the retroactive immunity provision, has failed. This controversial portion of the Senate intelligence committee surveillance bill may now be examined in full debate. At the same time, a second cloture motion — filed by Congressional Democrats in an effort to force immediate vote on a 30 day extension to the Protect America Act — also failed to pass. The Protect America Act has been criticized for broadly expanding federal surveillance powers while diminishing judicial oversight. While the failure of this second cloture motion means the Protect America Act might expire, a vote tomorrow on a similar motion in the House will likely bring the issue back into the Senate in time. It seems, according to the article, that both parties feel that imminent expiration of the Protect America Act is a disaster for intelligence gathering, and each side blames the other as progress grinds to a halt."
If it passes I wish that I had enough money to hire a lawyer and take this law to the Supreme Court as I do believe that somewhere in some old document called the Constitution it say something about not passing laws ex post facto. It's not like it'd be hard to win either, it's pretty clear about that in the Constitution, unless everything is truly corrupted and there's just no hope left.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I really wish they would start giving honest descriptive names to Bills, rather than marketing names. Seriously, just like the new 'Economic Stimulus' bill, that should be 'It's an Election Year, here's a handout that won't really affect the economy much'. Bills to impose new taxes should have names like 'Bend over for us please' or 'Yeah, we're screwing you again.'
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, stop calling it a peacock. Yes, I know it will never happen. One can fantasize.
More surveillance and less oversight?
Who could vote no?
And after it takes effect, who would dare to vote no?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Now we can't retract the retrospective immunity they were granted without possibly undermining the US government's promises even further... not that the telcos should have necessarily been granted it in the first place, but now there is another thing that is catching us up.
Belongs in the same category as retroactive prosecution and bills of attainder - things your Constitution bars, doesn't it?.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Immunity for the mercennaires, immunity for the snitches, -- leaves no room to hide for the real criminals - me and you buddy.
As those cowardly French say: eqality, liberty, and fraternity...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Just remember, when you are reading about the fall of the American constitution that it's not because any person involved is inherently bad. Quite the opposite. Most of them are good. They love America generally speaking and want the best for their people. They have to. Power only works when you respect the people you control. When you approach each person involved in this situation and ask them just what the fuck are they thinking, they would probably tell you, and honestly at that, that they are doing the best they can for the people they represent.
I'm not saying stupidity is an excuse. I'm just saying that the supposed "inherent evil" that people want to believe politicians all possess isn't the problem. The problem is political ignorance and an extreme distance from reality that accompanies the higher eschelons of power.
This is also, I would imagine, why the fore-fathers imagined a country run by the stronger states, not controlled by a stronger federal government. Keep the power closer to the people, at lower levels, and the reality is much harder to miss.
With the US going in the opposite direction of China, Iran, North Korea etc they will in a short timeframe meet halfways. We will have a world where the western world inches towards the banana republics and opressors while they go slowly towards democracy. This is interesting times to live in. One cant stop wondering if it will stop halfways or if a time down the road we westerners will be the new "muslims".
HTTP/1.1 400
Was thinking along the same lines myself. It's scary stuff though. Take the PATRIOT act. It contains a lot of nasty, freedom stealing measures, extensions of government power etc etc.
But it got through. Why? Because in a time of national panic (9/11) you wouldn't vote against an act called the Patriot act would you? You are a patriot aren't you?
Jingoism and marketing need to die.
Granting pardons is the duty of the President or head of the executive branch.
Granting immunity is the domain of the Judicial branch.
Nowhere in here is the Legislative branch involved.
It's never to late to add retroactive immunity!
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I liked the comment by Sen. Bond (R-Mo.) that failure to give telecom providers retroactive immunity for any crimes they may have committed would be
He is saying -- he is actually saying -- that Congress has to prevent its own laws from being applied to a corporation, because if the courts are allowed to proceed with civil lawsuits, angry mobs of disaffected citizens will storm the corporate headquarters of AT&T and Verizon and burn them to the ground because they oppose intelligence gathering. We must circumvent the legal process to soothe the hordes of Americans who are furious at the NSA. This is surely the most bizarre panem-et-circenses ever.
Or maybe he's saying Al Qaeda sleeper cells will launch attacks on key NOCs for our internet backbone... the only thing holding them back is they're waiting for word to come that a civil lawsuit has been filed against the owning corporation and depositions have been submitted and discovery is proceeding, Allahu Akbar!
Make the tools available, for crying out loud.
Would you rather have a shovel, or a backhoe with busted hydraulics? I don't give a damn what tools they want if they can't figure out how to use the ones they currently have.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
AT&T -- Your world. Delivered. To the NSA.
I want the tools, a toolbox, a mechanic to fix the busted tools, and people who are ready, able and willing to use them.
And use them in a way that still protects the legitimate privacy interests of citizens, while allowing intervention and interdiction of terrorist activities.
Again, BOTH can and must be done. I don't care who it is that takes up residence or gets "hired" to work on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, it still has to be done.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Uncle Sam may not care about your personal business, but the individuals who are doing the wiretaps may. The point is that without oversight there is plenty of chance of abuse; that abuse comes in the form of individuals using the wiretaps for personal gain. (Remember Watergate?)
Strictly speaking, if you have no at bats, your batting average is .000, not 1.000.
They have reduced us to craven cowards willing to give up our birthright for the illusion of security.
Ask anyone who was brought up on the wrong side of the iron curtain. When you have a government with that much power, lots of innocent people suffer and even die.
In any event, the government will use the 'information' any way they see fit. That includes lying about things like weapons of mass destruction. No matter what else happens, the increased power will feed the bureaucracy and bork the economy.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." often attributed to Ben Franklin.
But the thing is that Congress-critters are a lot smarter than you think. Like most people (not all), they have their own self interest at heart. They may want to protect their business constituents, that's all. And gosh, you don't want someone with all that money to be donating it to someone that may not be able to help in the next election, do you?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
That's a wonderful post with completely valid points. Unfortunately you overlooked the fact that had anybody bothered to connect the dots, 9/11 could have been stopped using the existing laws on the books with the powers that the Government already had.
All the wiretapping in the World isn't going to help you if the President gets a memo saying "[SOMEBODY] determined to attack US" and ignores it. All the wiretapping in the World won't help you if FBI agents in the field are being ignored by headquarters when they attempt to report suspicious activity.
Maybe we should be asking why all of those failures happened instead of bending over backwards to give the Government sweeping new powers to monitor our daily lives.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And remember what happened in the aftermath of Watergate?
Those who carried out the "abuses"... did they not get caught? I recall that even a sitting President had to step down, the offenses were so bad.
What would be so different now?
Obviously some reasonable controls would have to be put in place. Common-sense and all...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Republican Senators are right now stonewalling and trying to prevent a one-month extension of the same legislation they insisted last year was vital, urgent, and necessary to prevent terrorist attacks in "days, not weeks." The President has said he would veto a one-month extension of this legislation that, last year, we supposedly needed to stop the terrorists from attacking America.
They are protesting a one-month extension so that people who aren't paying attention will pressure Democrats to cave in and give Republicans what they want. The Republicans are literally -- if you believe their own words -- exposing America to danger of terrorist attack as a political tactic to pass the legislation they want.
And what they want is retroactive immunity for corporations so that we, the people, have no legal recourse to discover whether those corporations cooperated with the Bush administration in breaking the law.
The tools are already available. They allow the NSA to spy, and they allow American corporations to assist that spying. It's just that the laws must be followed. They are not difficult to follow. And corporations already are immune from both civil and criminal consequences if they can just demonstrate that, even though they broke the law, they acted on a good-faith belief at the time that what they did was legal.
If you think this about whether we can monitor what the terrorists are talking about, you're wrong.
So, you want to join the debate about this bill but you don't care what anyone thinks about the bill? Won't that sort of hinder your ability to engage in rational discourse?
See? The discussion is over the attempt to rid the bill of a provision protecting telecoms from the consequences of their past criminal activity. This has nothing whatsoever to do with monitoring terrorist activities, apart from the fact that certain members of congress (Jeff Sessions, for example) led by VP Cheney are willing to scuttle the bill if they can't get their friends a "get out of jial free" card.
Uh, what attacks would that be? And how does that have anything to do with the PAA which, as I just pointed out, has little or nothing to do with the telecom immunity? As far as I recall, all of the so-called "threats" that have been thwarted have turned out to be bogus, and none of them--none of them were found using the powers under PAA. So what's the connection?
Perhaps. But even if, as you say, "SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE" a minute's thought leads to the conclusion that giving big corporations a blank check to violate our nations laws probably isn't it.
--MarkusQ
If the Fuck, er, ah, Protect America Act expires, the old FISA law is still in effect. The key difference is oversight. The Democrats in the Senate will pretend to put up a brave fight then give Bush everything he wants. We got screwed when Congress rammed the PATRIOT Act I down our throats. Everything else since then has been gravy for them. Makes you wish you were a big fat corporation. After the telecoms get their immunity, other corporations will want the same deal. I hope I'm wrong. I really do.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Private communication is a key factor in a democratic society. Without it, a powerful opposition is not possible. And an opposition is very necessary, even though the current US regime/government tries to label it 'unpatriotic'. But then, I'm an ignorant European treehugger who undersands nothing about the dangers USA is facing. There is also a nice quote from one of the great minds that America has produced. "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
"wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
The PAA and the attempt to include retroactive immunity is a sham to destroy the constitution. If passed, then it would set a precedent that would allow any corporation to get immunity for their actions. Pure fascism.
Examples would be pollution cleanup, consumer poisoning, and investment fraud. The mess that would result would actually destroy the corporations in the long run, along with the population.
It's a losing game, but short-sighted greed can not see that.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
That's the POINT. Reasonable controls would be requiring a warrant (which is as simple as presenting a basic reason to an impartial judge). The government can already perform these taps with a warrant using the secret and expedited FISA court. This law guts the warrant necessity eliminating any reasonable control. It's already been shown that the FBI has abused these sorts of wiretaps with bogus National Security Letters. We're not saying don't wiretap, we're saying require a review (as required by the Constitution). And, so what if the President got caught in Watergate? It was by accident that the unlocked door was found. How many more similar incidents have happened that we haven't heard about? We'll never know without auditable control.
And people say the system doesn't work! ;-)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Unless you think that warrantless wiretaps are a good idea, the rest of this bill is pretty damn bad as well.
Maybe we should look at it the other way around. George Bush has been the only president in the 20th century to allow such a devastating foreign attack on our soil.
It might just be that the threat of terrorism isn't as serious as you seem to think.
But the most important argument against creating a "total surveillance society" in order to prevent terrorism is that there already is a very good legal system for allowing the kind of surveillance against terrorists that you seem to believe we need. It is called the FISA court and gives our government plenty of tools for fighting terrorism.
Finally, for me it comes down to this: Yesterday, we heard one GOP senator after another say that the telecoms did nothing wrong in allowing the government to eavesdrop, and the program is completely legal. Well then, why do they need immunity? Why not leave it up to our legal system and a jury of citizens to decide whether any laws were broken.
blcamp, I live in the shadow of Sears Tower. I'm as concerned about my wife and daughter as you are about your family. But as I've said before, I will take my chances with the terrorists, but leave my liberties intact.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt = "Where are those who were before us?"
OK. I'm all for making the tools available, once the make sure that they safeguard our everyday civil liberties and that their continued use is based on regular and accurate validations their efficacy.
Seriously: Safeguard our liberties first then worry about security.
Security in the United States today is Security Theater. It's operatic in it's grandeur and stupidity.
5 Year olds and US senators on 'No Fly Lists'? Falafel stakeouts in San Fran looking for Iranian sleeper cells? The Secret Service strong-arming high school students for anti-war anti-bush speech? Calling the Bomb Squad on hot chilies, LED cartoon advertisements, and state owned traffic monitors? Arresting, Beating, Nearly Shooting & Killing innocent people because they act or look different?
There is no way I'm willing to give up any of *anyone's* liberties for that sort of buffoonery.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Go ahead, mod me down. With pleasure. People like you are who's ruining this country for the rest of us.
Retrospective doesn't mean what the author thinks it means. Perhaps the author meant 'retroactive'?
Do you honestly think that "terrorists" are communicating over plain text? Are you fucking nuts?
www.isoHunt.com
Those tools are already being abused. The FBI has admitted to using warrentless wire tap provisions intended to fight terrorism on non-terrorism related cases. Not once, not a few times, thousands of times. Agents were either improperly trained on how to use the powers, or deliberately abused their powers. In either case, a bit scary, no? We have freedom and liberty for a reason, to sacrifice them for a very nebulous degree of safety (after all, point out one major terrorist plot that was stopped by these new powers) is foolishness of the highest order. I don't want to live in a country that is safe for "FREEDOM", but has no freedom.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Utter Nonsense:
First World Trade Center Attack in 1993. President: Bill Clinton.
Pearl Harbor, 1941. President: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Yes, even then Hawaii was "our soil".)
Those were both a "foreign attack on our soil."
As I have said before, and I'll say again: BOTH can be done - both protecting our civil liberties AND preventing terrorist attacks. They are NOT mutually exclusive.
If you sacrifice either one without the other (EITHER WAY), we're in trouble.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
The trick to terror prevention is ensuring your safety without causing more damage than the terrorists could have. Alienating people is rarely a good idea because that only gets more people motivated to join the terrorists. Alienating entire countries is just as bad because they might not want to do business with you anymore (yes, that's possible; China is a viable alternative) and your economy suffers. Alienating your own people is even wore because it creates unrest and might even get som of them to help the terrorists out of the belief that the current government needs to be replaced.
Just finding terror suspects and killing them at any cost is quite likely to get the country into more trouble than just dealing with them like one did before the whole War on Terror(TM) started. The correct approach lies somewhere in the middle. One needs to be careful enough not to upset everyone but thorough enough to actually catch the dangerous plots. That requires more deliberation than zealotry.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Retroactive, not retrospective
Enough of this chiseling around. Someone should introduce a bill making GWB above the law, and law as well as in fact. We should spell out the super-capabilities of the Executive, essentially pointing out that we have an elected, term-limited King.
We've just been pussy-footing around for the past 7 years. GWB is very nearly a King already, between Signing Statements and Executive Privilege. The mechanisms of tyranny are in place. The checks and balances of government are broken. So the question becomes, "Do you trust GWB?" as well as, "Do you trust the next President?"
Name a spade a spade, and maybe people will finally wake up to the slippery slope we've been sliding down.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The hypocrisy of Congress cannot by overestimated. Without the moral compass that principles provide, there will always be situations where expediency is unclear.
How about stop pissing "them" off so that they don't want to do this "to us" in the first place?
You do know that because of the American meddling in their affairs over the last few decades that all of this is going on.
Yup. You done did this to yourselves.
Now replace "Islamic terrorist" with "African American".
9/11 wasn't a good thing. But face it: Big deal.
;).
:). I can tell you for sure that many passengers will look at each other and have a go at the hijackers.
Nobody else is going to easily do it again even without all the "Patriot" bullshit. The 9/11 hijackers "ruined the market" for future hijackers.
Before 9/11 the "unwritten protocol" was - hijack announced, everyone meekly stays in their seats, nobody (mostly) gets hurt, negotiations start, hijackers get something, passengers get to go. Unless of course the hijackers were crazy enough to do El Al
After 9/11 hijackers WILL have a more difficult time with passengers and air crew, the cockpit doors are reinforced. Enough passengers will think "If I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to make sure that hijacker suffers first". If everyone just threw their shoes and stuff at the hijackers at the same time it will really hurt
In fact even _DURING_ 9/11, passengers on board one of those planes figured out what was happening, and one of the planes didn't hit the target.
You think most hijackers haven't figured that out? Only a few stupid ones (or mentally ill) have tried since 9/11. They have to move on to other methods if they want to crash into towers - charter/steal private planes etc.
The bulk of the new procedures like banning liquids and checking shoes is just to make the stupid sheeple feel safe.
The fact that the US Gov lies to its citizens regularly, and puts in laws that don't actually address the problem shows to me that the US Gov is a greater danger to US citizens than the "evil terrorists" are.
The 9/11 killed like 3K? And cost the USA how much?
In comparison the US Gov started a war in Iraq (based on _deceit_ ) and got how many killed? And cost the USA how much?
Not to mention the US Gov has been trampling over the "precious" US constitution which so many US citizens _allegedly_ value so much. They don't even bother to amend the constitution, they just ignore it or twist the interpretation so much.
The US people should serious consider who really is their biggest enemy.
The tools are available. They've been available. FISA requires that there is judicial oversight. If the surveillance is warranted, this should be no problem. And I don't buy the bullshit line that it takes too long. FISA allows warrants to be issued up to 3 days after surveillance starts, so the "we can't wait for oversight" argument is pretty lame.
The bigger problem is that as the US intelligence services have been allowed to indiscriminately accumulate vast amounts of data, they have become unable to process it all. This hasn't helped thwart terrorist plots so much as it has diverted resources away from productive intelligence work and wasted it trying to analyze reams of useless information and investigate countless dead-end leads produced from it. Is this really making anyone safer?
you were just aching to prove to the world what they already knew when it comes to the notion of what "average american" stands for, eh?
bravo, you've left no doubt...
here's a hint: guns are phallic symbols...
The problem is 90% of the stuff they do isn't designed to catch terrorists. It'd designed to look like they are doing something to catch terrorists. According to the latest penetration tests against the airports we are probably less safe than prior to 9/11. The mass influx of tech and new recruits to the screening process has dropped the catch rate from 85+% to as low as 65% in some places. You have a bunch of new people who don't know how to do anything but watch the system & wait for the beep. You look safer because there is all the security. You want to feel safer because otherwise it's so much wasted time, but the reality is that nothing has changed in how safe you actually are.
It absolutely wouldn't have. Nor would this whole realID plan that the government is pushing. Everyone involved was in the US legally & had legally valid ID. A fact that the govt conveniently ignores every time they push that Real ID will make us safer.
Define trampled on....
From where I am looking, the expansion of foreign wiretap rules to include US citizens appears to be a clear trampling of the 4th amendment, but hey I agreed with Nitke that laws designed to -as SCOTUS stated - 'have a chilling effect on expression' were unconstitutional under the first amendment.
Having listened to a lot of the discussion on prevention etc, the one thing proven to work - actually having enough local cops doing real cop work - just doesn't spark enough political interest to get the kind of money that a proposal to install the latest gizmo at every airport does.
Good for the gander.
If the government wants to be able to listen in on all my communications, then I want to listen in on all of theirs. I want to know what my employees are doing.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If you want to be that pedantic, don't forget that FDR was president during the only time since the War of 1812 when a foreign power occupied United States soil (the capture of two Aleutian islands, Attu and Kiska, by the Japanese).
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
All the wiretapping in the World isn't going to help you
It's even worse than that. All the wiretapping in the World is going to hurt you if the problem is that it's already too hard to pick signal out of noise in the intelligence we currently gather. If you start also sifting through conversations between people so unsuspicious that you can't even get an after-the-fact FISA warrant to spy on either of them, does that add to the signal or does it add to the noise?
So the Protect America Act will expire, huh? OK, so what will happen? I think what the congress-people and the potus are afraid of is that if it does expire, nothing will happen. Before the act was in place, the security agencies has enough powers and enough information about an impending strike (that happened on a certain day); they just weren't co-ordinated enough, or agile enough to prevent it.
Why do we have to bear the burden of someone else's disorganization by incursions into our freedoms?
Especially with these "1984"-style naming of legislations - "Patriot" act, "Help America Vote Act", "Protect America Act."
If more people like you who care about privacy issues get out there and put pressure on those wavering Democratic senators who can't quite recall who they answer to, we might actually be able to stop things like this. It's the only way it ever happens.
> We've been damned fortunate and thwarted every single planned attack since 9/11... we've batted 1.000 so far.
But what does Bush, or congress, or any of the laws they have passed have to do with it?
The reason we haven't been attacked is because after 9/11, I started shaving my crotch, and have kept it shaved ever since then.
Yes, I'm willing to do this to save American lives. I'm that cool.
Leaning on Ds won't work very much. They're just counting votes. Likewise the Rs. Without pricinples, all is expediency.
Uhm...
I said "retroactive". But I'm not sure what the difference is. Both seem to mean applying to events in the past.
blcampy, you don't read carefully enough. I said that George Bush was the first President to allow such a devastating attack on our soil. There's plenty evidence that 9/11 was the most devastating attack on US soil in the 20th century.
And yes, being 100% safe from terrorist attacks IS mutually exclusive with protecting our civil liberties.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Technically, the 9/11 attacks were int eh 21st century. But regardless, the Telco's were really between a rock and a hard place. Even recently as 18 months ago, they were handing over private information to the NSA by request. Except Qwest, I believe. I don't support blanket immunity, but I do support some immunity. We should be looking at specifics on a case by case basis.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
I'm not expecting this to fail. There's a lot of lobbying and a lot of money involved. As an employee of one of the telecoms, I can say there's a lot of push from the executive branch (White House) to push this, because a lot of these illegal orders came from them. And before 9/11 even. At least one of ours came in February of '01
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
I think a more accurate description of the situation would be you see someone who has the same color skin as what you picture when you think of a terrorist. The democrat walks on by. The republican follows him to his home, thinks "maybe he has a knife in there", and attacks him without provocation.
I don't think there was a large population of American in Iraq under immediate threat from terrorists. we went there for Christ's sake.
"Go ahead, mod me down."
I'd love to, but no mod points. Perhaps someone else will oblige you.
Come to think of it, there's no "-1: fucking moron" category anyway, so it's moot.
Republicans!
Romney wins by 5 points over McCain. Rudy a distant third. Huckabee right behind him.
Democrats!
Clinton wins by 10 points. Edwards a very distant third.
Are you willing to pay for all that, including the "oversight" part (which would be the first thing that someone is likely to try and cut when the budgets get tight)? Or are you one of those "I want the government to protect me, but I don't want to pay for it" whiners? Or maybe you believe we can just keep printing more money to pay for everything?
Except Qwest, I believe. I don't support blanket immunity, but I do support some immunity. We should be looking at specifics on a case by case basis.
Then you shouldn't support any immunity. If you want to look at by a case by case basis then haul each company into court, if they are found no guilty, they did no wrong, if they are then they should face the consequences. The reason they are asking for immunity, because they know what they did was illegal, but the people in these companies don't want to face jail time or other punishments.
the current sitting president hasn't stepped down and he broke the law. FISA is one of the "reasonable controls" your talking about and FISA is being circumvented. the telecoms in performing the wiretaps were acting as agents of the us government. waving the warrant requirement and Bypassing FISA is a criminal breach of federal law. granting immunity to one of the conspirators is like paying a witness not to talk.
you know a blame ford for all of this mess if it weren't for him granting Nixon a pardon baby bush would have thought better about breaking the law.
My keyboads not woking popely.
I guess I should clarify. In some cases, these companies did things which may have been illegal. However, if there were threats or other excessive coercion, I think that should be taken into effect. Furthermore, anything legal, whether obvious or not, should be covered. Some things may look illegal on the outside, but may not have been. And there are issues of national security (In some cases. I personally think the executive branch overuses the privilege)
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
"here's a hint: guns are phallic symbols..."
You sir, must have a very strange looking phallus. Tell me, is your penis semi-automatic or a revolver? And do you really have pearl-handled balls?
"But this one goes to 11!"
"as long as my constituional rights don't get outright trampled on, I REALLY DON'T CARE HOW THEY FIND TERRORISTS... just as long as they catch and kill every goddamn one of them."
What the hell is wrong with this country? Why is it that congress, and the populace aren't trying to solve the freakin' problem?
Why don't people ever stop and ask the question: Why are they so pissed off at us? What have we done to deserve this? If they did, people might actually discover that the terrorist, as well as much of the Middle East, are angry for legitimate reasons.
They're pissed off because of 60 years of brutal US foreign policy in the Middle East. We've overthrown democratic governments. We've installed bloody dictators. We've supported terrorism, and even had proxy wars fought by our "puppets". The Shah of Iran, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein were all funded and supported by the US. We turned a blind eye or even supported their atrocities as long as they were serving US purposes.
This isn't conspiracy theory. It's well documented. Several former CIA experts have written multiple books on this, and the blowback we've been seeing (like 9/11). Our foreign policy there basically amounts to an "the ends justify the means" campaign. It definitely puts all of this in a quite different light once you start researching our history in the region.
What's really sad is that we have not learned our lessons either, as once again we are supporting yet another military dictator to achieve our goals.
They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we've been screwing them over for the better part of a century. Terrorist attacks are a symptom of the problem, and that problem is our aggression and foreign policy.
If you want the threat of terrorism to go down, it's simple. Get out. Leave them alone. Get our bases out the region. Stop supporting murderous dictators like Saddam and the Shah. Stop trying to overthrow their governments. Let them try to figure it out themselves, and stop trying to shove our ideas down their throats. Stop terrorizing them with threats of embargoes and bombings.
Seriously, if another country did half the crap to us as we have done to the Middle East we'd be pretty damned pissed off too.
~X~
~X~
Yeah, what were we think! Intervening in the affairs of mass-murders, invasions, genocide, and other atrocities. We should be so ashamed!
Another thing to tack on to reasons to support international politeness is that it allows elected political leaders in other countries to do things that benefit you. You don't run into situations like we have in Iraq, where many developed nations can't help us even if they wanted to, because the people in charge of sending money or troops would get voted out of office. Notice, for instance, the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, because we were polite with the rest of the world when invading (and making the case to do so), greater than half of it's nation building costs are payed by the EU. That's a pretty stark contrast to Iraq. So their ability to send supporting money and troops is another reason to play nice with other countries.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
>>In comparison the US Gov started a war in Iraq (based on _deceit_ ) and got how many killed? And cost the USA how much?
/caps. Don't bring it up, because your argument is not "fuck Bush," it's that it's foolish to trade away liberty for no additional security towards something that isn't particularly dangerous in the first place. When you start just throwing crap on at the end about how much the Bush Administration sucks, it starts to look like you don't entirely know what your point really is or what you're really talking about. As someone who argues with Bush fans all the time, let me tell you, this is a crippling mistake. It's called diluting your argument - don't do it.
Argh this is something I hate when people do. The fact that the Iraq war was started on the basis of dishonest evidence has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING RELEVANT TO YOUR ARGUMENT
Relax I just want some peanuts.
I don't get it. Slashdot seems like great group of thinkers, a strong percentage of whom share a pro-science, pro freedom of speech and habeas corpus, and "global warming is real and we should start doing something" agenda (all anti-bush). But over the last 7 years, as a group, you seem to rant and make jokes, but very few say they're doing anything about it. Cmon, here's some simple petitions that take a freakin minute to fill out with google auto-form.
How many Slashdotters are there anyway? You really think we couldn't make a difference if everyone contributed 5 min to call their reps?
I was finishing my EE degree in 2000, and noticed in EETimes that Gore's responses to their questions sounded OK, but Bush's were non-existent! The biggest engineering periodical in the country, while EE/CS people were leading the nation's longest period of economic prosperity since just after WWII (even minus the bubble, we were leading the world in increasing productivity, which does make America more successful relative the world). Easy no-brainer right? Yeah, I voted Gore, but to my surprise, none of my nerd friends did! Why? "Oh, my vote wont mean anything anyway" Cmon. I bet Floridians thought the same way. If every slashdotter spent 5min a day bothering our congressman, or spreading a little word, or donating a few dollars, I'm sure we could have impeached the ahole after he lied to us to start Vietnam II. I dont care if he wins the war this year - he could have avoided it, raised CAFE and just stop buying gas from impotent Saddam. Would have saved (hundreds of?) thousands of lives, global goodwill, and trillions of dollars of debt (which coincidentally is part of the reason Bush I's economy was shaky when handing it off to Clinton, and now coincidentally our economy is shaky again, hmmmm).
Oh, here's a fun comparison Nixon to Bush
It is very relevant. Go read my post again. One of my arguments was people are in greater danger from the US Gov than the "evil terrorists".
Crude formula:
risk = impact * probability.
danger = badness * power.
You could be very bad (incompetent or evil) but if you have zero power, you're no danger.
You could be very powerful, but if you aren't bad, you're no danger to most people either (you might be a danger to the bad people...).
The US Gov has far far more power to ruin your life (and the life of any random person somewhere in the world) than the terrorists.
Thus how deceitful the US Gov is (or how sucky they are), is very relevant to how safe you actually are today.
The US Gov has shown that it is willing AND able to deceive its citizens rather blatantly in serious matters.
What are the US citizens going to do about it? If they keep putting crappy governments in power (or allowing them to diebold themselves into power) then things are going to be pretty bad.
There's plenty evidence that 9/11 was the most devastating attack on US soil in the 20th century.
Hell, I'd like to see some evidence that 9/11 was a devastating attack on US soil in the 20th century. Sorry, but I just don't buy into your calendar-manufacturer conspiracy theories.