Lawmakers Delay Telco Immunity Vote

eweekhickins writes "The US Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a scheduled vote on whether telecommunications carriers should be granted immunity for cooperating with the White House's domestic spying program of telephone wiretapping and e-mail surveillance. The panel hopes to vote on the provision as soon as next week. Senator Pat Leahy said that immunity would make it impossible for Americans to seek redress for 'illegal' violations of their privacy." The article points out the confused state of the immunity measure: the House is considering a version of FISA renewal that has no immunity; in the Senate, two committees are working on different versions, one with immunity, one without.

Judiciary Committees

[Presto Vivace]

For reference: Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee [senate.gov], House Judiciary Committee [house.gov]

Re:Other side

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the fault of people continuing to make excuses for them.

Re:Obvious reason

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean donations? http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/dem-pushing-spy.html [wired.com]

Wrong

[MillionthMonkey]

Why do people fall for this garbage? If telecoms are granted carte blanche immunity now it prevents a more reasonable immunity deal later which would have a chance of exposing what appears to be significant wrongdoing on the part of the government. The motivation behind telecom immunity isn't really to let telecoms off the hook as much as it is to prevent stuff from coming out in court about what the government did. There are many things we'll never find out about if Dianne Feinstein helps usher this crap through. (I phoned her office at 202-224-3841 to complain. That's 202-224-3841. If enough Californians call 202-224-3841 maybe she'll change her mind since her constituents are overwhelmingly against this. But probably not- Feinstein is really horrible and is probably not running for reelection when her term expires years from now.)

Telecoms don't go to prison like you or I would. At most they incur legal expenses- probably less than a day's operating expenses- it's the cost of doing business. And they could have easily told the government to screw themselves. They were cooperating with these patently illegal requests even before 9/11.

Telecom immunity is obstruction of justice enshrined into law.

Stupid

[phalse phace]

So far, it seems like it's either give the telcos immunity or have taxpayers pay for any legal expenses or damages awarded against the telcos [news.com].

Specter suggested granting "indemnification" to telephone companies who allegedly cooperated with the government's surveillance regimes in violation of federal privacy laws. That would mean lawsuits could go forward, but taxpayers would be responsible for covering any legal expenses or damage awards against the communications companies. Damages could run into the tens of billions of dollars if the suits are successful, according to Senate Intelligence committee estimates.

Doesn't really matter

[H3lldr0p]

what version is passed by the House or the Senate. It will come down to the conference committee [wikipedia.org] which creates the final bill that is sent to the president to sign. Whatever those people want is what we will get. As the reference says this is an ad-hoc committee so there is no telling who will be seated for it.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

...No one in a corporation is ever arrested... Give me a break! Corporate executives are arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison are a regular basis. Its government officials who skate. The UN oil for food scam by itself raked in orders of magnitude more cash for high UN and government officials around the world than Enron, Worldcomm and Global Crossing combined. Of course the head of the DNC made himself rich via Global Crossing so I'm not sure how to count that one, but, in any event no body in government went to jail or was even reprimanded :)