Telecom Companies Seek Retroactive Immunity 177
kidcharles writes "Newsweek reports that a secretive lobbying campaign has been launched by telecommunications companies who are seeking retroactive immunity from private lawsuits over their cooperation with the NSA in the so-called 'terrorist surveillance program.' Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has claimed that lawsuits could 'bankrupt these companies.' The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against AT&T over their cooperation in the domestic spying program. EFF legal director Cindy Cohen said of the lobbying campaign, 'They are trying to completely immunize this [the surveillance program] from any kind of judicial review. I find it a little shocking that Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on.'"
Why shocking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why shocking? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why shocking? (Score:4, Insightful)
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So, yeah, going according to plan.
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Uhh, excuse me but exactly what are you smoking, and can I have some?
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Judging by history, how does a couple thousand sound?
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But, they were pumping oil out of Iraq until a few years ago. You don't need to have a violence-free paradise to pump oil, you just need a level of stability.
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Quick - someone tell the Chinese that Bush called them all a bunch of slit-eyed Japs!
Damocles (Score:3)
OK, the US Congress can protect him from American prosecution for war crimes, but would they alone be able to protect him from international war crimes, say, at the Hague?
No, not alone. They'd need some kind of gigantic standing army or something, at their disposal, if they wanted to do that.
Possibly even some kind of deterrent to keep foreign powers at bay. Something big and scary... perhaps an arsenal of scary things might be enough to make sure no one even seriously talks of making a move.
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No country would seriously enforce this international court indictment because they would fear what would happen to their diplomats. Diplomats are given immunity from prosecution under foreign laws. Currently the worst that would happen is they would be deported to their native country and then that native country would pursue charges on whatever is
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Congress: "OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY"
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Qwest not a coward (Score:2)
Of course, it's all part of the conspiracy, what with a large convicted monopoly based there.
Why has the bush administration kept pressing so hard for the retroactive immunity for the telcos, but has not expended the effort to get Qwest involved?
Maybe it's because they don't want the NSA to actually figure out that the terrorists are based in Redmond.
Note for astromods: Before you mod this down, ask yourself if you really are thinking outside the box, or if you are just part of the problem.
Corperate responsibility (Score:5, Informative)
Why should corperations be free from punishment for committing crimes, especially if it is in association with a branch of the government?
Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
What actually happened was King George II told AT&T and other companies: Let us into your networks. We say so. We have the guns. If you don't comply, then you'll be branded as terrorists.
And yes, you can say that AT&T and such should not have complied, but nobody outside of the top brass at AT&T know what they were threatened with. Maybe they were given payment, maybe they weren't. Of course, the government won't release any of that information, so nobody will ever know.
Re:Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, you can say that AT&T and such should not have complied, but nobody outside of the top brass at AT&T know what they were threatened with.
Isn't this the kind of thing that once upon a time the Free Press leaked, Congress investigated, and the Justice Department prosecuted? Maybe it time people stopped mumbling the mindless incantation that "everything changed after 9/11" and using it as an excuse to abdicate their responsibilities and justify not upholding the law.
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d00d, upholding the law is sooooo pre-9/11. Everything changed, you know. And, by "everything" I mean EVERYTHING.
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Exactly: the terrorists won.
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And yes, you can say that AT&T and such should not have complied, but nobody outside of the top brass at AT&T know what they were threatened with. Maybe they were given payment, maybe they weren't. Of course, the government won't release any of that information, so nobody will ever know.
And there's the problem. All Americans should know, and a proper trial in criminal and civil court would bring the facts out. Everyone willingly involved should be held collectively and individually responsable i
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Setting them up WAS legal. However, each use requires assistance from within the carrier.
That is, SOMEONE within the carrier has to recieve the request, determine that it should be followed, and send orders down the foodchain to the techs who can do the work. Those someones knowingly cooperated with an illegal procedure. Other someones probably ordered them to do so. Given that large corporations seem to frown on sneezing without consulting legal, they would have known the requests were questionable.
The
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I mean you said that the companies helping them would have had a chance to know it was illegal, the people doing it would have too.
What happened, and
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Since you clearly know what I think better than I do, I'll just let you argue with me in your head :-)
Re:Corperate responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
The real issue is the ability of the executive branch to create programs not founded in law (Congress) nor ruled by law (the courts) under the guise of national security. If Bush is allowed to prevent the courts from reviewing this program then the separation of powers has failed - they're all wielded by the executive branch. "Law" is created by executive order, they operate it and noone reviews it. If they really want the NSA to spy on everyone, put it in law. What's sad is that if they named it something like the Anti-Terrorism Investigation Powers Act it'd probably get passed, too.
the government is special. (Score:2)
If my ISP recieves a legitimate order to hand over information (warrant) or spy on me (wiretap) they'd do it and what would be a crime if they did it for anyone else is accepted as legal because the investigative power of the government trumphs normal privacy law.
Yes, the government is special, it is governed in what it can do by the Constitution of the USA! Seeing as how there was no judicial review what the Bush admin did was unconstitutional. They should all be taken out and treated like the enemie
Shocking??? Get real (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? (Score:2)
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Ex Post Facto laws unconstituional? (Score:5, Informative)
Article 1, Section 9 [wikisource.org]:
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So? They'll just redefine the meaning of the word "past".
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Re:Ex Post Facto laws unconstituional? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush already introduced a retrospective amnesty act in the form of the Military Commissions Act which exempted Bush and those working for him from prosecution under the War Crimes Act for acts committed before the commencement of the MCA.
As for bills of attainder (legislation outlawing a person or organisation rather than their actions), try declaring yourself a member of Al-Qaeda in the USA and see how long it takes before you are detained (or carted off to Guantanamo Bay).
Keep up. Your head of state declared two years ago that "[the U.S. Constitution]'s just a goddamned piece of paper!"
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Not quite [findlaw.com].
try declaring yourself a member of Al-Qaeda in the USA and see how long it takes before you are detained (or carted off to Guantanamo Bay).
Sort of like disclosing yourself as a Gestapo agent during WW2? Who would have thought that might be a problem? I see what you mean though, look at what happened to this Hezbollah supporter [pressandguide.com] just a couple of weeks ago, just before anniversary of 9/11. It does
Re:Ex Post Facto laws unconstitutional? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ex Post Facto laws unconstituional? (Score:4, Informative)
There is also the little problem of the Fifth Amendment: "no person shall...be deprived of...property without due process of law". The government are depriving the EFF of their potential property (court damages) retroactively after their case has been filed by declaring the defendant immune from suit. I don't call that "due process of law".
Here is the bill [fas.org] that the Bush administration and telcos are demanding be passed. It retroactively bans any court from hearing any criminal or civil case (including those pending) against "any person" if the Attorney General (or anyone to whom he delegates such power) declares that the defendant's action "is, was, would be, or would have been intended to protect the United States from a terrorist attack".
This effectively gives the Executive the power to halt any court case.
How about a trade... (Score:2)
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God forbid... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Then either you don't live in the US, or you are under the age of 12. Congress is as crooked as any major corporation, and anytime they want to do something like this they just duplicate The Bush Maneuver..."its for National Security".
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http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/15/0316118044/index.html [hachettebookgroupusa.com]
I haven't fully read it yet, but an interview with him on the radio persuaded me to buy it.
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I've noticed that many people on Slashdot are too "sophisticated" to be "taken in" by the idea that monitoring communications with known terrorists* has anything to do with national security.
* That is terrorists of the "blow up people with bombs" variety.
Darn... (Score:2, Interesting)
But these guys were just following cues from the NSA. They should be given immunity, and the people in charge who allowed the NSA to solicit these companies into doing illegal wiretapping should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law -- and if it's not very illegal, the law should be changed and they should be prosecuted above and beyond the full extent of the current law.
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And we damn sure don't want to cross that line and start outlawing things retroactively because the consequences would be far too great to make up for any gains in THIS situation.
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If not, then I think you don't need to be talking about this.
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In scale, certainly, but it's the millions of banal acts such as this which add up.
By not saying "Fuck Off", AT&T gave the Bush Administration just a LITTLE BIT more validation for their totally criminal acts.
Ending up, I suppose in the hallucination that the fifth amendment says "Citizen" or some such shit, and the torture of someone
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when an officer of the law comes knocking with a an official-looking document, legal or not, how can any individual (and you know that corporations are viewed in the eyes of the law as individuals, right?)
Big corporations have their own law departments. However that totally overlooks the facts the Constitution of the USA requires a judge's ok unless law enforcement has a reasonable suspicion. However with any blanket request whoever should be able to figure out there is no reasonable suspicion.
if the
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But more importantly, the telcos could have thought the president was complying with the FISA laws because it allows unrestricted monitoring of non citizens. So were exactly is the intent
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You raise some good points but the telcos, as you would imagine, have the very best lawyers on wiretapping issues. I find it very hard to believe they didn't know they were breaking FISA laws. Which makes me wonder why they went along with scheme. Maybe it was a simple as some misguided sense of patriotism. Maybe it was something more. I think we deserve to know and the law suits are a means to that end.
I don't care for the telcos behavior in this but I don't think they are the real villians. But sq
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They knew exactly what they were doing and that it was illegal.
Re:Darn... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not even the constitution they need to understand. It's the laws themselves.
What's interesting is that not only was the entire program illegal, but they had the AG sign off on it claiming it was legal, every 45 days, so they could claim they were following the law. The law actually only allows the AG to sign of on wiretapping if the AG asserts that no Americans will be tapped, like they're bugging the Chinese embassy or something. But the AG illegal signed off on the tapping anyway, giving himself quite a lot of civil liability. This was, of course, still illegal, it's not 'The AG signs off on any wiretapping, then it's legal', it's 'The AG signs off on wiretapping and make a specific claim, under threat of perjury, that X is true, then it's legal.', which he did not.
But the telecoms could at least pretend they were following the law. If anyone asked, the had the AG on record that the law was being followed, and anyone asking would just assume that by that they meant the specific exception under the law, not the words 'Do it.' and a signature. They got that every 45 days.
But then Comey, acting AG, refused to sign off on it. There's an interesting theory that Rumsfeld couldn't, for some reason, couldn't stop authorizing the program, (Perhaps blackmail?) so deliberately rendered himself unable to be AG during a time when the papers had to be signed. (Otherwise, it's hard to figure out why he didn't just re-authorize it in advance. It had to be every 45 days, but nothing stopped him from authorizing it at 40 or 35 days for another 45 days if he knew he'd be having surgery. He could have signed the papers right before he temporarily stepped aside as AG. It wasn't emergency surgery, and he knew Comey was opposed to it.)
Whatever the reason, the program was operated for at least 24 hours, maybe up to a week, starting on March 11, 2004, without even a pretend legal justification. The White House said to do it, the AG said no. This was flatly, completely, inarguably illegally. There is absolutely no legal question about it. (1)
That time period is for what the telecoms need immunity. All the other time, they can argue 'Oh, we had the AG's assurance this was legal.', even though they didn't actually, under statue, have it. (He must make specific assurances to them that were not made, and both they and him knew it. They have a damn form letter for it.)
They thought they could weasel out, but, then, at one point in March 2004, they asked for the pretend authorization and didn't get it, and let the government keep operating, thus totally blowing any claims they might have that they were operating legally.
1) And it's fucking insane that Congress hasn't already started impeachments over that specific incidence. Forget arguing the legality of the program when it was signed off on. The President can weasel out of the rest of the time by pointing to the AG's signature, and we can spend years arguing over who did what.
But during that specific time the White House, by itself, ordered the wiretapping, over the objections of the AG. Even if the wiretapping was on foreign nationals and even if that means the president has the inherent power to do it (Neither of which have been demonstrated.), he still has to follow the process laid out in law...if he disapproved of the AG he should have fired him.
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There is no right to privacy.
BS! As early as the early 1800s the USSC ruled there is he right to privacy, specifically anonymity. Among other's the right to privacy is grounded in the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause. In one case, the 1960 case of TALLEY v. CALIFORNIA, 362 U.S. [findlaw.com], the US Supreme Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. An MIT page [mit.edu], describes this ruling and another, McIntyre v. Ohio Election Commission, wherein the
Re:Darn... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll also point out that the only way you'll ever be able to ensure that the government won't be able to do this again, at least so easily, is to crucify the companies who helped them do it and didn't call foul loudly and publicly. Set that sort of precedent, and they won't have willing accomplices again. Moreover, it'll be for -business- reasons, the only universal ones in a capitalist society.
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If the government official says says "This is secret. Divulge this to the public, and you'll be prosecuted. The president has authorised wiretapping on the following people. Don't comply and you'll be prosecuted."
That seems like entrapment to me.
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It seems like a fundamental concept of leadership; Don't give orders that oppose each other. If you're in a position to send people with guns in to enforce your orders, make sure that y
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"Come back with a warrant" isn't just a way of defending yourself, it's a way of ensuring that our system works for everyone.
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Basically, if you've got a government telling you to do illegal things on one hand, and a government punishing you for breaking the law on the other, you've got what appears to me as entrapment; It's an unethical situation where the same entity which demanded you do something is now punishing you for doing it.
That's why I'm saying we should harshly punish the people in government who created this sit
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The nation is built upon the rule of law [wikipedia.org], not the rule of men.
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Only if these companies testify openly in court about the illegal wiretapping they were encouraged or pressured to do, with names of who talked to who.
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Seriously, if you've got to hire lawyers just to make sure the government is asking you to do things that are legal, maybe it's time to start harshly punishing government officials for making requests that are illegal?
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If the plant manager sends an order through the chain of command for me to do something that'll get me fired. It is he who should be fired, for abusing his power, not I for simply following directions from a source that SHOULD have been trustworthy and ethical.
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I mean, if every person who followed the Nazis was just as liable, then the Americans should've just nuked all of Germany and Japan, but they obviously didn't.
Not entirely a Bad Thing (Score:3)
Not a ray of sunshine, put at least it's the crack of dawn...
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how can there be immunity? (Score:2)
trim our constitutional rights, much, congress? oh right - its a quaint old doc, isn't it.
a law suit would be meant to show that the public does NOT approve of this. we can't get this on a voting initiative, we can't get our congress people to REALLY represent us, we really have NO ONE to speak for us! this is ver
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command and control (Score:5, Insightful)
This just enables a form of government interference in corporations that is even worse than regulatory laws. Regulations get made in the open and are subject to lobbying and court rulings. Whereas the NSA warrantless spying amounts to the commandeering of the corporate assets and procedures and is enforced by secret laws that (apparently) cannot be challenged in court in any reasonable way.
Even with recompensation that returns a profit on investment, this is a bad deal for corporate independence.
I have always disliked bullies (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine playing a game where if the other side is losing they get to rewrite the rules of the game in their favour - retroactively if necessary. They have done it before, and they will do it again. The terrorists have already won. Our own governments have destroyed our freedom on their behalf, and it doesn't matter anymore who wins "the war". John Q. Public loses either way.
How many times.... (Score:2, Interesting)
We can't say anything about what we're doing because it will help the bad guys. Oh and by the way *we* (Can we say conflict of interest??!) reviewed all 50 or so lawsuites pending and believe none of them have any merit... Regardless we desperatly need to grant retroactive immunity to all those telephone companies that have helped us. Doi
This is the end (Score:2)
There, I said it. Words cannot adequately describe how disgusting I think this is.
Call the Democratic Leadership on this (Score:4, Informative)
But they're making the same mistake again. They think no-one cares about immunity. They think it's just a business-as-usual deal.
Please call Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and let them know that you're angry at the idea of giving retroactive immunity to the telcos, and by extension, participating in a cover-up of the warrantless wiretapping project. It's not that they're wedded to this idea, it's that they don't think their base or independents care about telco immunity.
Call Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- 202-225-4965
Call Sen. Harry Reid -- 202-224-3542
If you want more facts and arguments, EFF has them here [stopthespying.org].
A couple more notes, for those who like the grubby details. The telcos are pushing for complete retroactive immunity, or alternatively "substitition", by which the government takes the place of the telcos as the defendant in the case. The government has a lot more power to evade the cases by dint of its own in-built immunity to some kinds of prosecution and thus end the cases. A few other groups are suggesting financial caps of penalties, so that the cases could go forward, but if the courts found the telcos guilty, they wouldn't suffer the "crushing liability" they say the cases would cause. (Note that the only way the telcos would *actually* be fined a large amount of money by our case would be if they were guilty of blanket, system-wide surveillance of all their subscribers [eff.org].)
Thanks.
Different day, same old stuff (Score:2)
So our clueless administration is following in the footsteps of Tricky Dick Nixon; cover up, cover up, oops...
It didn't work very well back then, and it's not going to work very well today either. Too many people know about what they're trying to hide.
I hadn't thought about this before, but I'm now wondering if GW is going to finish his second term. History is repeating itself...
What are you afraid of? (Score:2)
This argument seems to have lost a great deal of lustre. While it never held any water with me, it seems the whole country was under the spell of "support the president, or else!" from 2002-2006.
You can make constitutional arguments, political arguments, national security arguments, etc. but the whole issue comes down to this - how much privacy should the average citizen consider reasonable?
Somehow in the last few years the expectation of privacy h
Ahem... (Score:2)
Not any more.
How About This For Shocking??? (Score:3, Informative)
I find it a little shocking that a Democratic Congress would participate in the covering up of what has been going on.
Were you on a different planet for a few decades? (Score:2)
A strong central government can keep the public morally-emaciated and demurely-obedient to spin-history which supports fraud-dogma/myth.
The Corporatist States of America (CSA) must protect and defend the corporate-soul against all enemies foreign and domestic. Net-Nepotism, Corporate farm subsidies, "Let them eat cake" economics, affordable sovereign-immunity justice
!HAVEFUN! I am so very god-damn