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Bush trying to get immunity for telecom companies wiretapping
So our fearless leader is pulling hard to have our spineless Democratic majority Congress to give immunity to telecom companies for their part in illegally wiretapping all these years:
| quote: | Bush seeks to grant immunity
Verizon, AT&T face privacy suits for helping White House eavesdrop
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:35 p.m. CT Aug 31, 2007
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.
The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.
Republicans say immunity is necessary to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11. Yet some Democrats fear the administration’s proposal would do much more than advertised, potentially protecting anyone who gave broad categories of aid to the government as part of a spy program that monitors communications.
Because the administration does not want to identify which companies participated in the operations, it is asking Congress to let the attorney general intervene on behalf of any person or company accused of participating in the surveillance work, whether or not they actually did, two senior Justice Department officials said.
More than a dozen government officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition they not be identified because sensitive negotiations with Congress are ongoing.
Suits may bankrupt companies
One of the officials said the defendants in suits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union — Verizon and AT&T — would be the key beneficiaries of the proposed legislation. Both companies are a central part of the U.S. communications grid, running networks that transmit both telephone calls and e-mails.
There is a divide among Capitol Hill’s majority Democrats about whether the companies deserve any protection. Some believe they were operating in good faith, on orders that appeared to be lawful. Others believe lawyers at the companies had a responsibility to ensure the requests weren’t an abuse of presidential power.
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell considers the issue a key element of any legislation that Congress considers this fall to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.
Trying to make his point, McConnell recently confirmed that the private sector assisted with the surveillance work — and faces lawsuits. “If you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,” McConnell told the El Paso (Texas) Times in an interview posted online last week.
The companies could face civil penalties of at least $1,000 per customer, for a total that would reach well into the billions.
Democrats say McConnell’s first draft of the immunity proposal is far too murky. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an intelligence committee member, fears the language would go far beyond protecting private companies and their employees, also giving cover to any government officials who may have broken the law.
“I and others are going to make sure that anything that is done is done in a narrow, targeted way,” Wyden said.
Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, the intelligence committee’s top Republican, said, “The only question here is whether we should provide full liability protection to those companies that are alleged to have assisted the government in protecting the United States. The answer is a resounding ‘yes.”’
Legal battle brews
In the weeks after 9/11, the White House launched a new surveillance program that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor communications between people in the United States and others overseas when terrorism was suspected. With legal directives in hand, the government asked a narrow group of telecommunications carriers to participate in a program.
Conventional wisdom has long been that the bulk of the surveillance operations — groundbreaking because they lacked judicial oversight — involved primarily telephone calls. However, officials say the Bush administration’s program frequently went after e-mail and other Internet traffic, which al-Qaida has embraced as a key means of communication.
After the highly classified operations became public in 2005, a wave of lawsuits was filed, including cases against AT&T and Verizon, two telecommunications providers alleged to have participated. The legal battles gave the telecommunications industry pause, government officials said.
David S. Kris, former associate deputy attorney general for national security issues, said the debate over immunity raises a broad policy question: “To what extent is the private sector supposed to be a check on government power?”
Answering that question is difficult, he said, because lawmakers and the public don’t know exactly how the government crafted its request for cooperation. “If the attorney general says, ’Your country needs you to do this to save lives,’ that may generate some sympathy for a company that cooperates,” Kris said.
Congress to debate surveillance
How the government conducts surveillance during national security investigations is expected to be a leading issue when the Democratic-controlled Congress returns next week and contemplates changes to FISA.
Before leaving for an August recess lawmakers approved significant, but temporary, amendments to the law that governs when and how the government can conduct intelligence surveillance on U.S. soil. Many Democrats felt they were railroaded into a faulty law by Republicans who insisted on action because of heightened concerns about possible terror attacks.
Lawmakers will have to decide what, if any, changes to make permanent. The administration also plans to demand that telecommunications immunity is part of the debate.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who has been briefed on the NSA’s surveillance work, said she’s open to a provision that would protect those who in good faith believed they were complying with the law. But “just adding on more ways in which this administration can police itself and make good on whatever deals it has made with the private sector, I think will not be supported in Congress,” she said.
The temporary changes to FISA, which will remain in effect until February unless they are changed earlier, limits how often the government has to go to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get approvals for surveillance.
They say the government doesn’t need the court’s OK to monitor foreign suspects in national security investigations when the suspects are talking to Americans. Nor does the government need a court warrant to monitor conversations between two foreigners when the eavesdropping is done on communications that use U.S. networks.
A valid security purpose?
Republicans and the Bush administration continue to argue that the changes were necessary because the law wasn’t keeping up with technology, the Justice Department was wasting precious hours on paperwork, and the secretive FISA court that oversees the law was overworked.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who presided over the 11-member FISA court from 1995 to 2002, believes judges play an important part of the process.
The value added by having judges in the process “is that we recognize the rights of the person who is not represented,” said Lamberth, who continues to follow FISA matters. “We’re ensuring there is some valid national security purpose. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want that value added.”
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20535385/ |
Unfortunately, this issue is a bit complicated. I mentioned here about a Democrat on the 9/11 Commission lobbying the Democrats in Congress hard as hell with her obvious ties to the telecom industries.
And it goes further down the rabbit hole than that. One of the telecom companies, Qwest, decided not to play ball with Bush on illegally wiretapping because, well, they believed it was illegal. So what did Qwest get in return?
Your typical retaliation by the well politicized DoJ:
| quote: | The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest.
The documents indicate that likely would have been at the heart of former CEO Joe Nacchio's so-called "classified information" defense at his insider trading trial, had he been allowed to present it.
The secret contracts - worth hundreds of millions of dollars - made Nacchio optimistic about Qwest's future, even as his staff was warning him the company might not make its numbers, Nacchio's defense attorneys have maintained. But Nacchio didn't present that argument at trial.
The documents suggest U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham refused to allow Nacchio to present the argument about retaliation. Nottingham also said Nacchio would have to take the stand to raise the classified defense.
Prosecutors have said they were prepared to poke holes in Nacchio's classified defense.
Nacchio was convicted last spring on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million of stock sales in April and May 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison. He's free pending appeal.
The partially redacted documents were filed under seal before, during and after Nacchio's trial. They were released Wednesday.
Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.
The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.
The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/dr...5719566,00.html |
Here's the kicker in case you missed it - all this bullshit occurred BEFORE 9/11.
That's right, kiddies. All that wonderful talk about "these wiretaps occurred because of 9/11", and "because we don't want to have another 9/11" is nothing shy of a fucking propaganda farce:
| quote: | Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...101202485.html? |
And if you think Qwest is the only company out there on the island depicting this shit happening before 9/11, well they weren't alone:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/20...-ceo-not-a.html
Our spineless Dems. capitulated once already back in August giving Bush everything he wanted because they have no backbone to stand up to his fearmongering bullshit:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20998206/site/newsweek/
It appears at least right now that they're showing signs of life by standing up to Bush this time around:
| quote: | I’m not for blanket immunity until we understand what the program has been about. The day will come, maybe in my lifetime or later, when we’ll finally figure out what the Bush administration has been up to these years with this secret program.
I don’t want the embarrassment of history coming back saying what were they thinking of in Congress to give blanket immunity when they didn’t even know the circumstances.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...5mVo&refer=home |
In all likelihood, they'll probably cave again because, let's face it, that's what they do best. But here's to hoping......
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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