Fight for their lives? Come on. The US government isn’t going to allow a judgment that dismantles our telecom industry (or effectively does so with damages). Also, the point isn’t just prove the Bush administration is rotten so we can sit around and go, “Yep, we were right.” It’s to punish those responsible. It’s called accountability.
Wait a minute… you’re seriously going to argue that the telcos didn’t know they were violating the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution by handing over private information to law enforcement without being served a warrant? Because some government stooge said it was ok? What, did they miss that day of high school civics class? This isn’t freaking rocket science.
I’m sorry, but neither ignorance of the law or stupidity is a defense. I can claim I didn’t know the speed limit was 25 in a residential zone. And hypothetically, let’s say some douchebag cop told me I could do 90 in front of an elementary school. Does that mean I shouldn’t get a ticket? No, it does not. Hell, a 30-year-old guy from Arkansas who goes to California and bangs a 16-year-old is going to go to jail whether or not he knew the age of consent in CA is 18. It is your responsibility to know the law and to follow it.
And I for one don’t give a damn about a “public perception of crisis.” If our laws don’t protect us in a time of crisis, what good are they? By your logic, the government should be able to lock us all up for spreading dissent the next time a bomb goes off somewhere. It’s ok! It’s an emergency! Do you really think the Bill of Rights was written and ratified so that it could be disregarded in an emergency? Come on.
Yes, why punish the getaway driver when it was the bank robber who committed the crime? You punish both, dammit. The telcoms are accomplices to the administration’s crimes, so we need to punish the President so that future presidents know they can’t get away with this shit, and punish the telcoms so that they know they can’t get away with helping future presidents pull this shit.
No, the idea is that in addition to punishing our telcos for selling us out and ensuring they won’t do it again if they know what’s good for them, we need to extract evidence to be used against the Bush administration, because they sure as hell aren’t going to volunteer it.
And the argument that “Oh, he’s just got 6 months left in office, just let him go and get over it” is such infuriating bullshit I don’t even know where to begin. How can we have rule of law in this country if you let the President ignore it whenever he sees fit with no consequences whatsoever? What’s the next president’s incentive to respect the law? How can we impeach the next guy when he can sit up there and say “Hey, I’m just doing what the last guy did, and you didn’t care about that”? This is setting an extremely dangerous and damaging precedent for presidential accountability. We have a criminal for a president, and no one seems to give a shit if he gets away with it because he’s going to leave office soon. Hey, can I rob your house if I promise to leave town afterwards?
If the government just didn’t want them hurt, they could be indemnified. Damages could be limited. Barriers to judgments could be created (e.g. an actual malice requirement). None of this was done because the object was silence, not protecting the patriots of private industry.
I’m not clear on your position on responsibility. You don’t want to hold the telecoms responsible for their deeds, or even determine if they were legal, because you feel they are the wrong target, and the misdeeds are by the government. You also don’t want to hold the government people accountable because it’s not worth the fuss since they will soon be out of office anyway. Maybe you just think this issue isn’t important enough to bother holding someone accountable over?
There is also the not unlikely situation where McCain wins in November and the people who thought up and implemented this plan remain in their appointed posts. We won’t know who they are, of course, since the documents will remain secret.
Do you really think the Bill of Rights was written and ratified so that it could be disregarded in an emergency? Come on
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The Alien and Sedition Acts were held as unconstitutional by Thomas Jefferson and he pardoned and released everyone convicted of violating them. I didn’t say unconstitutional crap hasn’t happened before, I’m saying we shouldn’t tolerate it now.
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Suspending Habeus Corpus is legal under the Constitution, as described in Article One, Section Nine: “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
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See #1
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See #2
Oh I don’t agree with it at all, I’m saying that the precedent is there. Also I love the fact that Jefferson denounced the Alien and Sedition Acts mainly on Anti-Federalist grounds, as opposed to free speech.
Where’s that thread about how the founding fathers wanted us to live in no-party harmony?
This is a good example of you ignoring the primary arguments on the other side, as neither of the causes you state is the primary reason to oppose this law. The primary reason is that it allows the government to effectively twist telecoms’ arms into compliance, and completely shields the government from any external inquiry.
Your continued and pedantic insistence the primary effect is to limit telecom liability is naive, and is precisely why I continue to feel you ignore what those opposed to you are arguing.
I do have loose telecom industry ties but not any that would be impacted by immunity one way or another. None of the big domestic telecoms are clients or even potential clients. I also have no belief that telecoms are above the law. That’s your straw man, you go cuddle with it.
It’s not a straw man. This new provision lets telecoms effectively ignore standing laws about domestic surveillance – they can do as they like, and not be held accountable.
I believe, and have stated clearly, that the government in times of crisis needs to be able to approach private industry for help and not have those approaches rebuffed because private industry has a massive mistrust of government and is afraid that they might get hung out to dry if the political wind changes. Go look at the history of how the government and industry coordinated the abrupt changeover of the US economy into a war materials production juggernaut in WW2. I’d like to think that would happen again but if we start crucifying private industries for cooperating with government in ways that the government swears up down left and right are legal then it never will happen again.
For help? Asking companies to break the law, and abrogate the constitution goes rather beyond “asking for help”. This is a major step towards de facto big-F Fascism – the chilling effects will be enormous, and we just don’t need to go there. And frankly, your comparison to WW2 is ludicrous, so absurd it’s not worth further comment.
And again, I completely reject any argument that some “larger issue” is somehow a good reason to beat the shit out of the these companies in court. If there’s some larger issue at stake then congress has a right and responsibility to pass legislation that addresses that.
Sorry, not buying it. That is the primary effect. I’m sure it’s not the primary motivation for some of the parties pushing for it, but it’s the primary effect.
Quit being a drama queen. They didn’t get to ignore squat. They get a free pass for accepting the government interpretation on a grey area issue of law in a time of crisis.
Well we can’t have much of a discussion if you are going to wave off a valid argument as “ludicrous.” If you don’t feel me worth talking to, why are you bothering to reply?
So it’s all right for AT&T to let the NSA construct a secret listening post inside of their main switchboard in San Francisco? That’s bullshit. Every piece of communication that went through that office went through the NSA’s hands. If that doesn’t terrify you, then I don’t know what will.
Unfortunately, since no one in our government is willing to do anything about this, I’m going to vote with my dollars and check into switching our services to Qwest.
Fixed that for you.
Your fix contains inaccuracies.
Yeah, that’s ok. Remember, it’s legal for the NSA to spy on foreign communications. Well guess what, a lot of the main hubs of internet traffic are in the US. So if the US wants to intercept emails between a guy in Dubai and a guy in Saudi Arabia, they may need to catch the traffic between two US backbone points.
Or maybe the people in our goverment are a little more in touch with the realities of the situation.
Hahahaha. I can’t believe you just said this. Surely there’s someone that is. However, given the blanket passing of the patriot act without even having their staff read it, weak willed democrats, and party first republicans, I’m not sure what congress is in touch with other than their own asses.
Yes, they may need to, which is why there exists a system wherein they can request a document from a judge, known as a “warrant,” allowing them to to so. This system prevents the inevitable abuse that will arise from an unsupervised governmental body with that kind of power.
I’m gonna side with Mordrak here - that’s a hell of a “maybe.” If the last six years have taught us absolutely nothing else, it’s that the people in our government are in touch with nothing but their own asses (or occasionally the asses of underage boys). You might as well say “Or maybe the people in our government have the ability to shoot lasers from their eyes and travel through time.”
I think we should find out if this is true, by having a court rule on whether it was appropriate.
And if you just happen to live in the western half of the United States and your domestic phone calls and emails get run through the system and get boxed up, ah well! The government knows what it’s doing!
It always amazes me when people are so willing to give up their hard-fought Constitutional rights. Especially when said rights were explicitly designed to protect us from the types of government actions that we’ve seen since 9/11.
Ding ding ding, there’s the big grey area that makes this such a mess. All the legislation dates back to times when it was very clear cut in each wiretapping incidence to say “this is a international call” or “this is an international telegram” before intercepting it. Nowadays they can’t do that, on the internet they have to do be tapped in to the main flow and able to basically bulk collect everything and filter out what they need.
This is why I can cut the telcos a little bit of slack when they were approached by govt in a time of crisis and asked to do some things that the government swore (in writing no less!) were legal.
I’m game as long as it doesn’t involve dragging private parties through the mud.
I believe the constitution has a very explicitly spelled out mechanism that congress can use when they suspect the president of high crimes or misdemeanors.
Why do you refuse to acknowledge that this all happened BEFORE 9/11? And why do you trust the idiots running the government so much that you think a company with a legion of lawyers who knew better should be forgiven for bowing to them when what they were asking was clearly illegal? A company that breaks the law needs to be punished, no matter who told them it was OK. But the government that betrayed their oaths to the public needs to be punished more.
Oh, no one’s arguing that Congress is competently executing their jobs. In fact, this whole thread is about how badly they’ve fucked it up.