Posted by D. Cupples | Senate Republicans and a few Democrats seem to be gearing up to defecate all over our privacy rights. Top Judiciary Committee members, Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republican Arlen Specter, are not part of this soil-fest. WaPo reported:
"Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program....
"The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States."
In other words, immunity would wipe out current lawsuits against telecom companies that (illegally) gave the Bush Administration customers' phone/email records without seeing a warrant. Two days ago, we learned that....
Verizon repeatedly gave customers' records to Bush Administration officials without a warrant -- meaning laws were likely broken. (BN-Politics-1)
A day before that, we learned of evidence that the Administration had asked Qwest Communications (maybe other telecoms) to help spy on Americans before 9/11, though officials claim that warrantless wiretapping grew out of the September 11, 2001 attacks.(BN-Politics-2)
President Bush threatened to veto any surveillance bill that didn't include immunity for telecoms. I understand why he wants free passes for telecom companies: if privacy lawsuits are blocked, evidence of the Administration's legal violations won't come to light.
But why would any senator agree to immunity for law-breaking telecoms? Attorney and columnist Glenn Greenwald offers a plausible answer:
"Congress -- led by Senators, such as Jay Rockefeller, who have received huge payments from the telecom industry, and by privatized intelligence pioneer Mike McConnell, former Chairman of the secretive intelligence industry association that has been demanding telecom amnesty -- is going to intervene directly in the pending lawsuits against AT&T and other telecoms and declare them the winners on the ground that they did nothing wrong. Because of their vast ties to the telecoms, neither Rockefeller nor McConnell could ever appropriately serve as an actual judge in those lawsuits.
"Yet here they are, meeting and reviewing secret documents and deciding amongst themselves to end all pending lawsuits in favor of their benefactors -- AT&T, Verizon and others." (links in original).
Basically, telecoms facing lawsuits claim that they acted in "good faith," because the government asked them to (perhaps illegally) spy on customers. According to Greenwald, Republican-appointed federal judge Vaughn Walker has already rejected AT&T's claim that its case should be dismissed based on the "good faith" argument. [Greenwald refers us to the court opinion, page 68.]
Big telecom companies do have big teams of lawyers capable of advising on such matters. Qwest, for example, refused to help with some Administration wirteapping efforts because its lawyers said the efforts seemed illegal.
Why didn't other telecoms exercise such caution? I'm not sure, but evidence suggests that the federal government refused to give Qwest a huge contract after Qwest refused to engage in legally questionable data gathering.
If you' want to follow the money, visit this page at the Center for Responsive Politics: after typing in a politicians' name and hitting return, you can click "top contributors" or "top industries" in the left sidebar to get some breakdowns.
Memeorandum has a good blogger round up.
Related BN-Politics Posts:
* U.S. Intel Chief Made False Statements re: Domestic Spying
* Senate Passes Bush's Domestic Spying Bill
* Connecting Some Domestic-Spying Dots
* Qwest: Domestic Spying Started Before 9/11
* Nixon's Version of Domestic Spying: Quick Facts about Watergate
I just saw on TPM that Dodd has put a hold on this bill. Where it will lead, I can't say but on the comments at TPM, Dodd is sure getting a lot of love, while Obama and HRC's lack of leadership on this issue is being noted. Obama has finally come out with a statement, but as Josh Marshall blogs, "A dollar late and..." Good for Dodd. I hope the rest of the Democrats wake up and push back.
Posted by: tokyo ex-pat | October 18, 2007 at 11:40 PM