Slashdot Mirror
Senate Passes Telecom Immunity Bill
zehnra writes "The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act, broadly expanding the president's warrantless surveillance authority and unconstitutionally granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program. The House of Representatives passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly." The New York Times has a story, as does the Associated Press (carried here by Yahoo!). Reader Guppy points out the roll call for the vote.
While they might not miss the relatively few votes of those of us who cared about the Republic, at least we'll be able to say we made the attempt.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I'm thinking its time we start looking at the French Revolution for advice.
I wrote my senators. Fat lot of good that shit does. They don't care. This nation needs a serious shakeup NOW.
I have no words for how cheated I feel right now.
From CNN
In short: They aren't outright granted immunity, but instead a hearing will be held where they will undoubtedly be granted immunity. Bloody Democrats, they never have a spine when they need one.
PS: Hello to whatever TLA is currently monitoring this
"Change we can believe in" No change at all...
I feel so naive for thinking there was a candidate from one of the two major parties who actually stood for what's right.
Not that I doubt you (though I don't believe you, either), but the least you could do is provide citations. An admonishment to "wake up!" isn't terribly compelling if you don't provide proof that people are deluded in the first place.
I was donating fairly regularly to Mr. Obama for his quest for Presidency. I urge those that were doing the same to move their future donations from Mr. Obama and the DNC to the ACLU, which is vowing to fight FISA and the immunity in court.
I'm more concerned with the illegal, warrantless wiretapping they were asked to do (and complied with) BEFORE 9/11. Without immunity, most of these companies could be compelled to testify at hearings designed to bring to light what DID happen, and WHO was wiretapped, and be granted immunity when they were cooperative.
Now, there's no reason for them to comply with anything. Bush wins again.
The thing is, if they did nothing wrong, what have they got to hide? Right? Isn't that what they always tell us about the wiretapping? We don't even KNOW what they did that we are granting them immunity of -- but wow, are they spending billions to "convince" our legislators that there's "Nothing to see here, move along..."
They seem pretty desperate to make sure that nothing they did will even come to light.
Sure, Bush is a madman. I'm used to that by now, I no longer feel the rage so strongly.
What really gets to me is that the damn Congress keeps rolling over and letting him get away with this shit. Sure, they huff and puff but they have no effing backbone to stand up to him when it comes time to vote. It's unacceptable, but still amazes me every. freaking. time.
I know more than you drink.
Definitely Obama voting yea.
Anybody paying attention for the last four years knows that McCain has become a puppet to the exact same people that Bush works for, but some of us actually had some hope that Obama had some political backbone.
Yes, everybody who was telling me Obama was no different from any other politician may now gloat.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Indeed. The Republicans argue that FISA is critical to national security -- but the President says he'll veto it without telecom immunity attached. So what do the Democrats do? Pass it without immunity and dare him to veto it? No! They cave and give him most of what he wanted.
This party is fucking worthless. Here's a novel idea: Pass it without immunity and when GWB vetoes it start running ads pointing out how the Republicans are placing us all in danger by refusing to compromise on a critical national security issue. If FISA is truly that important (I have my doubts but let's assume it is for the sake of the argument) then let's have an honest debate about it.
No, instead they caved. On some level I can understand why Obama did it -- he doesn't want the Republicans beating him over the head with a national-security issue -- but WTF was Pelosi's reasoning? If you believe in party politics it's her job to take the heat off the nominee. Why the hell did she even let this come up?
They are fucking worthless spineless jackasses. What is the goddamn point? Really, what's the fucking point anymore?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Maybe this is why Congress has a below 10% approval rating? The lowest of any US government institution, EVER?
Hell, that must mean that FEMA had a higher approval rating during Katrina than Congress has now.
It's an illusion.
It's not that they don't have the backbone to stand up to Bush. They have no wish to. Rare moments like these let you know who the real master is. Money. Money and the people/corporations who have large piles of it. Like gigantic telcos in this particular instance.
The whole two party noise machine is just there to dull the wits of the masses and make them think they can change things.
They can't.
Remember how happy the Democrats were when the Congress became 51% Democratic? How's that working out so far? Fat lot of good it did, wouldn't you say?
Face it - we're bought and paid for. You might as well vote for Mickey Mouse for all fucking the good it does.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
And people wonder where the stereotype of Democrats being spineless cunts comes from.
They're getting what they want though (some $90b in domestic spending). They didn't roll over, they very enthusiastically sold us out.
A few years ago, when the whole warrantless wiretapping issue broke, Slashdot posted an article speculating on what was going on. The author looked at the public statements, developed a technical conjecture of what was probably happening, showed that the public statements correlated with the technical conjecture, and talked about the implications.
IIRC, the article suggested that a system called Echelon, that had been deployed outside the US, had been deployed inside the US. Echelon was rumored to contain technology that sampled all voice conversations in a telephone system for certain words/phrases and decided to listen more closely to ones that triggered certain criteria.
IIRC, the article then pointed out that if done within the US and thus requiring a warrant for each instance of listening, there were not enough personnel in the entire US judicial system to process all the warrants that would be needed.
That is likely to be the context for what this is all about. It may well be a very difficult call. Also, the entire debate has taken place without this information publicly on the table, even on a basis of taking the speculation as an assumption by those debating the issue.
If you think about the issue in these terms, the telecom immunity becomes somewhat of a sideshow and the imposition of judicial oversight on the criteria for further listening becomes the most critical aspect. An important purpose of the telecom immunity lawsuits was to find out what was happening. I think the article provides us an educated guess, and that the debate can become an informed one and not just an argument in the dark about principles without an understanding of the underlying technology.
Wanna know who didn't?
Clinton (D-NY), Nay
That /.'s consensus analysis of this bill is completely incorrect. The immunity portion of the bill doesn't change anything other than preventing a bunch of lawyers from getting rich, since the telecoms would have won any lawsuits anyway. I know that this is going to be wildly unpopular, but the truth is, if the government tells a business to do something, and tells the business that they have legal authorization to do it, and in fact threaten the company if they don't comply, the business is going to be off the hook in court. Who should be held responsible? The government agencies that did the bullying and misleading in the first place.
So what does change? Going forward, there will be stiffer penalties for groups that violate FISA requirements, either knowingly or through a lack of due diligence.
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Crudely Drawn Games