wentlancYou Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH | reply to amigo_boy
Re: Good luck.. But a Longshot... If it was lawful, then why do they need immunity?
cw |
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Reviews:
 ·magicjack.com
| said by wentlanc:If it was lawful, then why do they need immunity? Because personal-injury lawsuits can take years and billions of $$$ to conclude.
It wasn't really "immunity." It was just a fast-track of the discovery process which was already implied by 18 USC 2511.
That's why I call it "so-called immunity." It didn't grant the telcos anything they weren't already granted by 18 USC 2511. It even referred to 2511. And, it said telcos were only immune from prosecution if they could prove they received certification from the executive branch a warrant was not necessary (the exact requirement of 2511).
All the telcos received was a fast track to that judicial finding of whether they indeed received that certification. We know they did. So, it was just a formality to keep the details out of the public eye. The civil court judge ruled that the information had to be public because the government had discussed their data-mining operation publicly, and therefore had no credible argument that it would harm national security.
Congress essentially legislatively over ruled that trial judge's decision. Beyond that, there was nothing new in the so-called immunity deal.
Mark |
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wentlancYou Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH | Why do they need to keep the details private? This should be printed for every customer to understand how their privacy, or lack thereof, will be handled by a company. Seems like they did not want people to know what was happening to their calls and other data.... People with something to hide, will often try to hide it.
cw |
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Reviews:
·magicjack.com
| said by wentlanc:Why do they need to keep the details private? This should be printed for every customer to understand I believe it was the government who wanted to keep it secret due to national security reasons. Not the telcos.
I don't know why the government felt there was a national security issue involved. But, whether there should be is a different argument. It's not about whether the executive branch has always had this power. Nor whether Congress did anything drastic with so-called "immunity."
Mark |
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wentlancYou Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH | "National security reasons" Is now the defacto standard speak for "trust us... we promise we won't screw you in the ass". While I understand that spying and surveillance are necessary evils, the extent of which they have done it is potentially unconstitutional. If that is in question, they should be FORCED to provide the details to be scrutinized. Maybe not to the entire world, but there needs to be some investigation and oversight. |
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Reviews:
·magicjack.com
| said by wentlanc:While I understand that spying and surveillance are necessary evils, the extent of which they have done it is potentially unconstitutional. If that is in question, they should be FORCED to provide the details I understand. However, realistically, the so-called "immunity" only applies to a specific period of time. FISA was amended to better accommodate the Executive branch's activities. The fact that the law was amended tends to support the belief that the law was lacking, and the Executive branch's actions were justified considering the circumstances.
We've had other examples like this. Such as Roosevelt violating the Neutrality Act when he transferred ships to Britain in return for bases. A few months later Congress amended the law with the Lend-Lease act to make Roosevelt's actions legal.
Mark |
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 badtripI heart the East BayPremium
join:2004-03-20
Albany, CA | reply to amigo_boy
said by amigo_boy:I believe it was the government who wanted to keep it secret due to national security reasons. Not the telcos. So there was no lobbying done by the telcos to get this "so-called immunity" passed? Bullshit. The telcos wanted immunity even more so than the gov't. The telcos stand to lose billions of dollars in reparations and customer confidence.
To say the telcos don't want this kept secret is ridiculous. |
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Reviews:
·magicjack.com
2 edits | said by badtrip:To say the telcos don't want this kept secret is ridiculous. I never heard the telcos nor the government deny that the surveillance took place. Even the government admitted that it had. That's why the trial judge dismissed the government's motion that revealing the certification in public would compromise national security. (The trial judge said that, because the government had already discussed it publicly on news shows, they'd already compromised national security.).
Even the basis of the so-called "immunity" was that the telcos had to prove they received certification from the executive branch -- not that they had to prove it didn't happen.
The whole thing explicitly or implicitly admitted that it happened.
The reason the telcos lobbied for assistance was because they didn't want to go through the costly, time-consuming cost of a personal-injury trial. They didn't care whether the details of the "certification" was public or private. It was the government that wanted to keep those details private. The telcos participated in that when they didn't have to. They could have made it public, invoked 2511, and that would have been the end of the trial.
Mark |
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 Wills
join:2001-01-03
Port Charlotte, FL | reply to wentlanc
said by wentlanc:Why do they need to keep the details private? This should be printed for every customer to understand how their privacy, or lack thereof, will be handled by a company. Seems like they did not want people to know what was happening to their calls and other data.... People with something to hide, will often try to hide it. cw Plausable deniability. |
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