EFF to court: Don't shield telecoms from illegal-spying suits
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users, is expected to argue in court on Tuesday that it's unconstitutional to prevent Americans from suing the telecom companies that allegedly helped the federal government unlawfully spy on them.
The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) gives telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for opening their networks to the National Security Agency. The telecoms can walk away from lawsuits as long as the government claims the request was "lawful" and authorized by the president. Before the law was passed, EFF had brought a lawsuit against AT&T that is before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
"The flawed (statute) improperly attempts to take away Americans' claims arising out of the First and Fourth Amendments," EFF wrote on its Web site. "(The law) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution, and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law."
Opponents have said that the law is an endorsement by both major political parties of illegal surveillance conducted by the Bush administration. Among the U.S. senators who supported the law was President-elect Barack Obama.
Under the law, no lawsuit may proceed against any "electronic communication service provider" if either one of two conditions is met. The first is that the company provided assistance "in connection with an intelligence activity" authorized by the president between September 11, 2001 and January 17, 2007, when the wiretap program was altered to include more judicial oversight.
The second condition involves a company that received a "written request" from the U.S. Justice Department saying the activity was lawful and authorized by the president.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
As one official said, "You're on you're own here. Defend your own freedoms."
Now, huge numbers of highly sophisticated prisons designed with advanced mathematical concepts such as MODULAR FORMS are obviously intended to be capable of containing intelligent prisoners.
Since around 1970 everyone IS persuaded to join one or more on-line groups which almost always require identification of their clients. The claims these groups will protect identities is specious; their
servers can be seized by repressive government action. By now everyone is inured to being over-identified.
Extravagant preparations such as these are designed for widely varying futures. They are designed to make the government essentially omnipotent no matter what happens. Sometimes bad things happen. In the last century, Germany began attempting global conquest.
One terrible scene is, the United States is led to bring an extremely common government into power, and gradually finds ways to classify the population for selective control, say of intellectuals as happened in Cambodia. After all, intellectuals are one of democratic society's main protections against "monarchy", whether totalitarian dictator, or royalist moderate. Fat chance.
No matter what we do, all those powerful repressive tools of political control and repression are there now waiting for use. Like all dangerous systems, errors are likely to be exceedingly costly.
Just as we have come to accept runaway crime in our neighborhoods, looking the other way as people die, will we learn to live with these terrorists crawling amongst us like rats invading our house? And come to accept it? And they know this is how we will react.
I say go after these people, find them and eliminate them. Push back.
To much weakness from people toward Gov. lately, all the Muslim Fanatics will get us has so many people saying "its ok do what ever you want."
Write to your Representative, don't have time oh well again, you get what you don't fight for. I for one think that the problem is not enough good people in politics, kind of the same problem that we are having in the states with Creationism. Of course lately a lot of scientist and people have gotten involve. Same thing with stuff like this.
I do write to my Representatives and Senators...... however a lot of times they do not listen to me or the rest of America because we do not have a DIRECT democracy or an ability, like in Britain, to dissolve our government and call for a 'no-confidence' vote at any time.
I would want protection from lawsuits, too.
I believe that QWEST said , 'NO'.
http://www.thankyouqwest.org/
- by Vurk December 15, 2008 10:09 PM PST
- As nocatz said, Qwest said no. Then their CEO was brought up on federal charges for insider trading.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(14 Comments)After all, reluctant executives must be taught not to refuse a government "request". As the quotation goes, "to encourage the others."
(For those who dont know, if you "teach a lesson" to one person in a group, the others in that group will go along so as not to be "taught" the same lesson.)