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Bush Demands Amnesty for Spying Telecoms

Posted by kdawson on from the courtroom-battles-not-ended dept.

The Bush administration and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are poised to square off in front of a San Francisco federal judge Tuesday to litigate the constitutionality of legislation immunizing the nation's telecoms from lawsuits accusing them of helping the government spy on Americans without warrants. "'The legislation is an attempt to give the president the authority to terminate claims that the president has violated the people's Fourth Amendment rights,' the EFF's [Cindy] Cohn says. 'You can't do that.'"

12 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. You can't do that? by hedronist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure you can!

    Just have Poppy buy you into office so that the people that have the strings attached to important parts of your body can pull what they want, when the want.

    Seriously, we have just witnessed the greatest bald-faced rape of the Constitution since ... forever. The thing (or the most recent thing) that turns my stomach is that there is a very good chance they will get away with it.

    1. Re:You can't do that? by JackieBrown · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hoover and the Red scare?

      What we did to the Japanese under Roosevelt after Perl Harbor?

      Hell, what we did to the Germans during the first WW

      This isn't the first time we (Americans) looked and saw the enemy in every corner and it won't be the last.

      People that say Bush is the worst we ever had have no sense of history

    2. Re:You can't do that? by rlwhite · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually, Bush has a strong case for worst ever based on the combination of his catastrophes.

      Sure, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon each had a hand in a mismanaged war. John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR each violated civil liberties to stop alleged enemies of the state. Many presidents have overseen the causes of recessions and other economic maladies. How many have been through all 3? (I can't think of any.) How many have polled approval ratings in the low 20s? (Nixon and Harding since polling began almost 90 years ago.) It's pretty easy to objectively put Bush in the bottom 3 presidents now, without judging the extent of the current economic troubles.

      If the predictions that this is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression are at all accurate (and macro-economic predictions are often self-fulfilling for psychological reasons), and the many ethical allegations against Bush prove true, Bush would have a strong case as the worst president ever, on relatively objective grounds as far as the matter goes.

      That is to say nothing of how far he has departed from the philosophies and policies he and his party campaigned on.

    3. Re:You can't do that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In short: Fuck him.

      Fuck everyone involved.

      The immunity needs to be nullified, and nullified now. It's a blatant violation of the constitution. If a bunch of telecom execs and secretive politicians aren't in jail getting gang raped before this is all over, then we might as well just pull the constitution out of its glass case, grab every copy of it and the bill of rights, toss them in pile and toss in a lit match.

      Yes, I really think it's that bad, and fuck anyone that says otherwise. They obviously don't understand (or worse, simply don't care) what's at stake if the precedent of violating the Bill of Rights with absolutely no consequences manages to stand.

      Fuck them all. Take their immunity away and fuck them all like the money-grubbing, self-serving whores that they are.

    4. Re:You can't do that? by neomunk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm sorry, I didn't realize that as civilians we were subject to any "orders" other than a proper court order, and even then we have the ability to disregard that court order, but at the expense of punishment. Doing whatever someone with a badge says is exactly how you go from democracy to totalitarianism.

  2. This isn't a criminal case. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... why doesn't [Bush] just issue a blanket pardon?

    Perhaps because pardons apply to criminal cases (government vs. person-to-be-punished-for-wrongdoing) while these are civil cases (wronged people demanding damages be paid by those who wronged them). I think the pardon power only applies to the former.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  3. Not just Bush's fight by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Obama voted for it too you know.

    If he were really against it as some of the more delusion supporters claim, then he would issue a statement at this time supporting making it unconstitutional. Expect no statement.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. Government secrets AKA covering their asses by LockeOnLogic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The administration also says the immunity is warranted because the lawsuits threaten to expose government secrets.

    This was why immunity should NOT be warranted! And before you start screaming national security, exactly what kind of information that could be brought out in a civil case which would damage national security? Methods? Competent terrorists aren't going to be caught by dragnet style filtering anyway unless its technical prowess is far beyond what most experts agree is currently possible.

    This is either protecting corporate cronies, protecting themselves, or most likely both.

  5. Re:What would John McClane do? by TechWrite · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And as long as he filed his paperwork no later than 72 hours after starting surveillance, there would be no problem under FISA. This "we need every power imaginable with no oversight or you're a pot smoking terrorist loving liberal commie bastard" false dichotomy has just got to stop. FISA was more than enough as it was and this new legislation is a power grab, plain and simple.

  6. The fact that he did by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    has nothing to do with whether he can -- legally.

    And this is exactly that kind of case in point... this last Presidential administration -- and Congress, too -- have done quite a few things lately that they probably can't do... legally. The fact that they did do them has no bearing on the law.

  7. Re:The tense is wrong... by kilgortrout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If he did it, he didn't do it by himself. He did it with the aid of a Democratic Congress in passing the requested retroactive immunity legislation and IIRC our president-elect voted for that law as well. Democrat or Republican, big money from big telcos talks very loud. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

  8. Re:Interesting timing by Skjellifetti · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Agents fighting terrorism will tell you they are not always available for those situations. People have died because no warrant was available in time.

    Those agents would be lying. FISA allowed for retroactive warrants to be issued 72 hours after the fact.

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    FreeSpeech.org