Senator Slaps Down FISA Telecom Immunity

cleetus writes "Today Senator Chris Dodd decided to put a hold on the FISA bill, one of the provisions of which would have granted immunity to any telecom which, if found to have acted in good faith, violated U.S. laws in turning over customer data to the government. According to TPM Election Central, "By doing this, Dodd can effectively hold up the telecom immunity bill, because bills are supposed to have unanimous consent in the Senate before going forward. One Senator can make it very difficult to bring a bill to the floor by objecting to allowing it to go to a vote." This throws a fairly big roadblock in front of this bill, covered by Slashdot earlier today."

Nice to know...

[Eric Smith]

that out of 100 Senators, there is ONE that thinks that telecom carriers should not be above the law.

Re:Nice to know...

[LiquidCoooled]

Maybe he is the first politician who has realised he is under the microscope himself.

One Senator Can Stop a Bill?

[GlitchCog]

It seems to me that if that were really the case, it would mean no bill would ever work unless it had 100% support.

Proxy war...

[nebaz]

This whole thing seems to be a proxy war between the Legislative and Executive branches over the entire concept of FISA and illegality. It kind of puts the telco's in a bind. What do you do when first the Executive branch tells you to do something which is probably illegal, and which if you don't do you'll likely lose money (see QWEST), and if you do do you will face Congressional hearings, and possibly be punished for illegal activity. While I don't agree with what the telco's did, they are not the real law breakers here.

If You Want the FISA Bill to Fail . . .

[unamiccia]

. . . consider sending some money [chrisdodd.com] Chris Dodd's way. I just did this afternoon (my first political contribution this election cycle) and it felt good. He's still not my first choice for the Democratic nomination, but the other candidates will be interested to see how bravery is rewarded. I would sure the hell like Chris Dodd's voice to be louder in the next days and weeks.

Re:Nice to know...

[SpaceLifeForm]

No, he just cares about the Constitution and the Rule of Law. He is running for President, but even if he does not make it, he still wants the Constitution and the Rule of Law to be front and center in the world of political discussion.

Link [salon.com]

Since most of the Net goes thru the US

[WillAffleckUW]

It isn't just US citizens who are impacted by this - it's the whole world.

Re:Proxy war...

[shawnmchorse]

Well first you talk to your lawyer if you have one (I suspect the telcos do). And then you don't do it.

Re:Nice to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to help the FBI track down people you know are up to no good, it's another thing to just willfully comply with a program that has no oversight so no one knows exactly who is being spied on and for what purpose. Best of luck to you.

Re:Nice to know...

[evanbd]

And I'd really rather you hadn't given them my receipt, if I was among the customers. Just because you meant well doesn't mean you did the right thing. (On the flip side, our legal system is rather screwed up, and it seems entirely possible you'll get hit with far more than you deserve. Well intentioned minor problems should get minor punishments, and you certainly don't deserve to face the potential for complete financial ruin that any lawsuit carries these days.)

You've got multiple different trusts to society you need to keep in mind -- both your customer's privacy and your nation's security are part of that. Asking the cops for a warrant, or at least asking them which names they were looking for, would have been entirely reasonable. Open-ended fishing expeditions are just bad all around.

Re:Nice to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have told them you would be happy to help them, but they will need to get a warrant first. It's that simple.

Re:One Senator Can Stop a Bill?

[VeteranNoob]

Okay, haha! That was actually pretty funny.

You almost had me for a second there.

Oh ....... OH!

Re:Thank You!

[jfern]

This does have a damn thing to do with Osama.

Bush started this illegal spying 6 months [washingtonpost.com] before he ignored the August 6th, 2001 memo titled Bin Laden determined to Strike in US [wikipedia.org].

Re:looks like Reid might ignore the hold

[Dunbal]

It is simply unfathomable to be why so many Democrats don't take a firm stand against NSA wiretapping, the Iraq war, etc.

      Unfathomable? No it isn't. Simply put - they are too busy "looking after number one" to deal with petty things like the "United States".

Re:Nice to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I told the FBI those guys came in on Tuesday and that I had a credit card reciepts from that day - but I'm not sure which of the dozen receipts from that day belonged to these two guys.

Hint: the receipt that has a large quantity of fertilizer on it. Extra hint: If the police already knew about the guys, they likely already had their names and you could have just given them the receipt with the matching name. Extra-extra hint: the police could have gotten a warrant for the receipts.

Why are you coming up with absurd analogies that don't work in order to justify warrantless spying on American citizens?

Re:Proxy war...

[Dunbal]

What do you do when first the Executive branch tells you to do something which is probably illegal, and which if you don't do you'll likely lose money (see QWEST), and if you do do you will face Congressional hearings, and possibly be punished for illegal activity.

      You're supposed to do what's RIGHT. That's what people voted you into office for. That's why "I was only following orders" wasn't a valid defense at Nuremburg, and it's not a valid defense today.

Re:looks like Reid might ignore the hold

[Anonymous Coward]

It is simply unfathomable to be why so many Democrats don't take a firm stand against NSA wiretapping, the Iraq war, etc.

You must be new. All of the so-called "Patriot" Act was proposed (and fought for by) the Clinton administration although in separate smaller pieces.

Birds of a feather flock together and the US Democrats and US Republicans are basically the same party. Same shit, different party. But really not so different.

Re:See?

[Gideon Fubar]

Don't fool yourself. There are no good guys in politics.

Re:Nice to know...

[Nikker]

You must sell allot of fertilizer, 12 people place orders that day all for large quantities of fertilizer? Maybe if you were servicing farming community but then you would likely know them cause they would buy every year. Again most farmers wouldn't order a quantity that they would carry out by hand, they would get a shipment. So you could likely figure out who placed an order for fertilizer but not enough to cover the type of farm land in the area, that should narrow it down, unless you sell like this all the time.

I guess the theme here is pass the buck, you are apparently a small business owner who has access to very large amounts of farming supply how could you know? Right? Well you mentioned that after the first time you realized that it might be a good idea to tread lightly next time confronted. Lets take a look at the telecom industry, they are likely at least 100 fold larger then your business and have that much more 'fertilizer', which is a lot more fertilizer to lose. You think if they were in your shoes they wouldn't have their legal department involved? Don't you think its funny that they never gave the 'FBI'(judges) any information? Remember now that these are judges not customers, if they came to you being an honest person wouldn't you do the right thing and give them the information of who made them do what? Isn't it funny that they clammed up from the beginning? It's not like one company spilled the beans and got their hand caught like you apparently did. They have armies of lawyers, you don't, they deal with legal problems daily, you likely not as much. You think they don't really try to cover their asses.

immunity needs to be off the table

[crayz]

Here's the EFF describing what the telcoms were doing [salon.com]:

We have evidence of an NSA-controlled room in the Folsom Street AT&T facilities in San Francisco. We have evidence that AT&T diverted copies of everyone's Internet traffic into that room. And we know that there's very sophisticated equipment in that room that is capable of doing real-time analysis analysis of the Internet traffic that is getting routed into there.

Re:One Senator Can Stop a Bill?

[Rich0]

For once I'd like to see a Filibuster threat actually called.

Right now nobody actually opens a bill for debate if a filibuster is threatened and there isn't a sufficient majority to invoke cloture. I'd like to see the filibuster bluff actually called. Make the minority actually stand up and talk 24x7 straight for a few weeks until they're all carted off to the hospital, and then call for a vote. My understanding is that a sentor only gets one opportunity to speak in a debate, so while they can speak for as long as they'd like they can't take a break (other than adjournments, which the majority can in theory not grant - and the majority doesn't have to all be in the room at the same time). You'd see a lot fewer filibuster threats if people actually had to lose their voices to accomplish them.

Personally I find the whole concept repugnant. Essentially we're watching a bunch of well-paid elected officials act like little children manipulating the rules to avoid the democratic process (ie the majority actually getting what it wants). I don't understand why limited debate wasn't put in place one hundred years ago in the Senate. Ditto for all the parliamentary games that get played with rules and committees. I'm not a big fan of direct democracy but at least it looks like democracy...

Re:Nice to know...

[chriso11]

Poor Rush. He got caught with his big mouth flapping. And I'll bet you were incensed about the disrespect to General Betray-Us. But hey, that's different. Sorry, I have no respect or compassion for the fat windbag. He is now trapped by his own hypocrisy.

I'll bet if Rush were caught molesting a 3 year-old his defense would be it was taken out of context.

Re:Nice to know...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'd really rather not have to go bankrupt defending myself so I think that, since I was clearly acting in good faith, I need to get immunity.

"Good faith" IS NOT SUFFICIENT. The phrase that comes to mind is, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

All kinds of people do dangerous things because they don't know any better. That doesn't make what they did any less dangerous. This attitude of giving the government anything it asks for because of it's own self-justifiying fear-mongering is probably the most dangerous thing to happen in the US since 9/11.

How many fertilizer bombings of any significance has there been in this country? What, two over the last 20 years?

Do you really think that such a small number of actual cases deserves the massive level of invasion of privacy that has been committed since then? Aren't there better things to be spending our resources on than undermining the founding principles of our country to try to stop such rare events? 40,000 people die each year in car accidents. Averaged out over the last two decades, less than 10 people have died per year because of fertilizer bombings.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Nice to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

he just wants to disestablish too much of government. No FBI, no CIA, no standing military, and on and on

Wow - I didn't like him because (like all libertarians) he believes in the "invisible-hand-of-the-market fairy", and hence that the free market can solve all problems.

But if he's really in favour of dismantling the FBI and CIA, maybe I'll have to rethink - because I had no idea he was smart enough to realize that the whole 'national security' sham is just a money sink to keep the populace in a state of fear.

Re:Proxy war...

[Belial6]

Then you quit your job and get one that won't require you to commit a crime. This whole idea that just because these CEOs are stinking rich and making tons of money, they shouldn't have to obey the law is ridiculous.

Re:If You Want the FISA Bill to Fail . . .

[Jtheletter]

consider sending some money Chris Dodd's way.

Now I'm not knocking your right to support a candidate or vote with your wallet. But honestly, what you basically just suggested was that if we want a law to pass (or not) we should pay someone directly for it. That's what this country has come to. Just outright admitting that vote-buying and influence peddling are the only way for the rule of law to prevail. It's not enough that retroactive immunity is forbidden by the Constitution, no, we have to SEND SOMEONE MONEY to see that the founding tenant of the law is upheld.

Where is the outrage?

Re:Proxy war...

[The Master Control P]

The Bush administration is like all corrupt organizations: The capital offenses are snitching, refusal to be complicit in their crimes, and getting caught.

That is to say, it'd be terrible if something were to happen. I'm not saying it will, but just hypothetically, we in the Bush administration would be terribly saddened if all your contracts with the government were to abruptly be cancelled, and if your CEO were to be arrested after the SEC found evidence of "insider trading."

Re:looks like Reid might ignore the hold

[Cro Magnon]

Better to work to improve a party that is 50% rotten than 100% rotten

I wish we HAD a party that was only 50% rotten. Right now our choices are 99% vs 100%. And if the Dems actually win, those percentages will flip.