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FISA Bill Vote Today, With Telco Immunity
Bimo_Dude writes "Today (June 20), Steny Hoyer is bringing to the House floor the latest FISA bill (PDF), which includes retroactive immunity for the telcos. The bill also is very weak on judicial review, allowing the telcos to use a letter from the president as a 'get out of liability free' card. Here are comments from the EFF. Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, describes the effect of the immunity clause this way: 'So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words — the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists — and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.'"
It's going to be fun using the lack of warrants to trick them into long stays in GITMO for some 24/7 waterboarding without trial ...
(don't think we won't do it)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think you hate America so much that you would think that.
Ok lets put the partisan insults aside, and think of the big picture. If the government ever needs help from private indrustry, Indrustry needs to know that it can trust the government, and if it goes wrong the same government that they tried to help will protect them. Otherwise the goverment will need to go threw a lot of extra red-tape, and the company will need to extra red tape just to say no (because they need to make sure they can say no legally). If companies cannot trust the word from our government then more business will not do work in our government, as it would be considered too risky to do work, because if they say yes you can do that and then after they have put huge amount of capital then the government says no the voters don't like that anymore so you loose it all. Is very risky and companies don't like risk.
Google said No and good for them however when they did their stock took a tumble and faced different problems, the telcos said yes and didn't face those problems. Being that the cort took some time to determine that the governments actions were indeed illegal shows that it was in the gray area of right and wrong, so the person who made the decision of Yes or No didn't have a clear ovious path. If the lawsuit turned the other way the companies that said No would be in a lot of trouble.
Businesses are orginizations and have to deal with a lot of conflecting moral choices and mistakes are much to common. However to go for blood against them could have more of a negitive effect then not.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.