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EFF Sues To Overturn Telecom Immunity
Mike writes "The title says it all — The EFF is suing to have the unconstitutional telecom immunity overturned. 'In a brief filed in the US District Court [PDF] in San Francisco, the EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. [...] "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."'"
Help us continue this fight: http://secure.eff.org/wiretapping
We've just opened a new page for student rates: http://www.eff.org/students
Third-party details on how EFF compares to other non-profit groups: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7576
(Unlike many groups, the vast majority of EFF's funding comes from individual donations: it's directly due to personal contributions that we can fight these and civil liberty cases.)
This administration does what it wants, without repercussions. They've already done several things that go against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They don't care, won't care, and have never cared about trifles like the founding documents of the country.
Pop Quiz:
Which Presidential aspirant voted for the FISA Amendments Act:
A) John McCain
B) Barack Obama
C) A & B
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
McCain voted for the FISA bill. And Barack also voted for the FISA bill.
Meanwhile, McCain supports your 2nd Amendment rights. Barack says he supports them but has voted and advocated against them several times in the past.
Qwest stood up for our rights and turned down the requests.
They also paid the price in the form of losing some lucrative government contracts that had previously been a lock.
Not all of the telco's cooperated.
"Quest Communications... refused the NSA's request for its customers phone records based on the advice of legal counsel, the former CEO said in a statement released on Friday. "
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/208
> And your gun will do what, exactly, against tanks and choppers?
You might want to ask a veteran of the Russian adventure in Afganistan how he feels about it. Yes, small arms vs a modern mechanized army will be a very asmetrical affair but as others have posted ya can't sit in a tank forever. And with a few small arms you have a much better chance of getting yer hands on some more fun toys.
But more important is the mental attitude. Armed men are citizens, disarmed ones are subjects. There is a reason every oppressive government makes removing arms from the civilian population it's first order of business from Stalin all the way back to ancient China.
Democrat delenda est
no, but they would fear a million people all with shotguns.
When most people have small arms, invading forces have a few choices no matter how good of armor or weapons the invaders:
1) take out the leader, and politically convince the followers
2) convince the leader, and hope the followers follow
3) Kill everyone
4) Lose
We see (again) in IRAQ that prolific small arms cannot be overcome be force alone, unless you decide to just kill everyone, and destroy most everything in the process.
IE technically we can kill everyone with superior fire power, but most of the things of value goes with them. Having a government over no people means no government.
It doesn't matter, if everyone has a shotgun, or a sub machine gun. If you can't take them alive one by one, then your going to need majority support. Without a decent projectile weapon, all they would need to enforce a entire population is a means of keeping a separation.
Pardon the long sentence... but from reading the brief:
They are asserting that congress does not have the authority to give the executive branch the power to prevent the judiciary from deciding upon the legality of the role that telecom companies had in the warrantless surveillance program.
In other words, its your basic separation of powers argument.
The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto.
If you read the whole thing (I skimmed quickly, and I'm pretty sure I came up empty), you will find that it does not expand responsibilities beyond this (the rest of it deals with organization of the NSA). At inception, the responsibilities pertained exclusively to foreign governments; they didn't even pertain to foreign civilian communication. I worked for the NSA for a short period; the rules drilled into us were a bit more lax as far as purely foreign surveillance went, but listening in on communications by U.S. citizens was a strict no-no.
See my links below, but basically, both voted for it - McCain the first time around, Obama the second time around.
Looking at the amendments, however, is interesting:
On the amendment to entirely strike Title II (the part about immunity), however, Obama voted yay, and McCain didn't vote. It failed 32-66, by the way.
Same for the amendment to limit immunity, which failed 37-61.
And the one to suspend retroactive immunity cases for 90 days, which failed 42-56.
So the answer is C), but Obama voted against immunity a heck of a lot more than McCain did.
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
.
That is what western Pennsylvanians thought before Washington ordered in 12,000 troops during the Whiskey Rebellion.
It didn't take long for the Old South to discover that Lincoln was not Buchanan - that whatever the costs and whatever the difficulties he would find the forces he needed to get the job done.
In 1957 Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock.