Effort To Scuttle Telecom Immunity Push FailsAT&T, Verizon: 1 Senator Chris Dodd: 0 ( old news - 03:03PM Monday Dec 17 2007) tags: legal · business · Op/Ed · privacy · Politics · AT&T DSL Service · Verizon Online DSLPhone giants AT&T and Verizon purchased won a major victory in Washington today, taking another step toward getting legal immunity for their participation in the government's highly controversial warrantless wiretapping program. The companies are attempting to squash lawsuits that could force them to cough up billions for delivering customer phone & data records to the NSA without judicial oversight of any kind. Both companies have been spending top dollar on K Street for months in the hopes of getting immunity provisions passed. Over the weekend there was ample hope placed in an effort by Senator Chris Dodd to derail the immunity quest, but the New York Times notes that Dodd's effort was easily scuttled. Dodd, who says he'll filibuster, urged fellow lawmakers to fight the ongoing immunity push: "For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers," Mr. Dodd said. "Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope. I have seen six presidents — six in the White House — and I have never seen a contempt for the rule of law equal to this," Mr. Dodd asserted. A flurry of possible final bills still remain possible. Some provide immunity and some do not; one possible amendment proposed by Senator Arlen Specter could use the American government (read: the same taxpayers already having their data sniffed, sorted and cataloged) as a firewall for any potential legal damages.
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morbo
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December 17th, @03:14PM
| Re: Cut off the head... go after the ones that GAVE THE DATA WITHOUT A WARRANT: AT&T and VERZION.
this "excuse" is favored by the telco lobbyists fighting for immunity. AT&T and Verizon had a choice. they decided to break the law. period. | |
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DotMac
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Huntington Beach, CA | Re: Cut off the head... How their legal departments didn't see this coming from miles away is baffling
But if Verizon and AT&T are liable, so are those in gov't who took the information. Those people responsible should be sent to jail. | |
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morbo
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| Re: Cut off the head... i'm sure there was an extensive discussion in the legal departments of these two companies, just like there was at Qwest.
agreed- AT&T and Verzion aren't the only ones that are guilty of breaking the law. However, good luck with tracing it into the bowels of the NSA... | |
| | | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| said by morbo  :this "excuse" is favored by the telco lobbyists fighting for immunity. AT&T and Verizon had a choice. they decided to break the law. period. This "excuse" is favored by those who can't prove a law was broken. They aren't going to criminal court, but instead to that civil court. The same place you go when you spill hot coffee on yourself and it just *has* to be someone else's fault.
Can you guys quote the founders for that high-minded principle?
Mark | |
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ropeguru
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by amigo_boy :said by morbo :this "excuse" is favored by the telco lobbyists fighting for immunity. AT&T and Verizon had a choice. they decided to break the law. period. This "excuse" is favored by those who can't prove a law was broken. They aren't going to criminal court, but instead to that civil court. The same place you go when you spill hot coffee on yourself and it just *has* to be someone else's fault. Can you guys quote the founders for that high-minded principle? Mark But if they are never taken to ANY court because they are given immunity, then we will never know. Now will we??
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| | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by ropeguru :But if they are never taken to ANY court because they are given immunity, then we will never know. Now will we?? Is that an argument for trying all crimes in a civil court just because "it's easier?" We don't do that when other crimes have been committed. We're only doing it in this case because those who insist a crime occured can't rise to the level required to prove the crime (court of impeachment). They can't even prove it by taking telcos to criminal court.
Instead of sucking it up, and focusing on changing the government, they're simply resorting to civil court -- while quoting the founders to make it sound like they're the true, pure defenders of freedom and Constitutionality.
To me, it's as disgusting as what they accuse the telcos of. I wouldn't be proud of it. And, it's why the EFF doesn't speak for me.
Mark | |
| | | | | | wierdo
join:2001-02-16
Tulsa, OK | Re: Cut off the head... Civil court is where you sue a company for violating its stated privacy policy. It's also where you recover damages for violation of the wiretap act. Yell at Congress if you don't like it, they wrote the laws allowing such suits. | |
| | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by wierdo :Civil court is where you sue a company for violating its stated privacy policy. It's also where you recover damages for violation of the wiretap act. Yell at Congress if you don't like it, they wrote the laws allowing such suits. I wish you guys would get your stories straight. All we hear about is how a "crime" was committed, and the telcos should be held responsible for their "criminal acts." When it's pointed out that "criminal" court is the place to prove such a claim, not "civil" court, suddenly it's about contractual violations and "damages." The same lower standards that to hot coffee to being banned.
But, all the while we're to remember that self-styled freedom fighters are pure, following the Constitution, and saving us from the pragmatists. (wink).
Mark | |
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ieolus
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Duluth, GA | Re: Cut off the head... Violation of Civil Rights (4th Amendment perhaps?) is adjucated in civil court, no?
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| | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by ieolus :Violation of Civil Rights (4th Amendment perhaps?) is adjucated in civil court, no? If your 4th amendment rights are being violated, you file a claim with the Department of Justice who can pursue criminal statutes if it involves a criminal conspiracy to deprive you of your rights. Since the alleged conspiracy was led by the President, you would presumably seek articles of impeachment, thus making conviction of the remaining/lessor conspirators easier.
Mark | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by wierdo :Some criminal laws even go so far as to create a private cause of civil action, like many environmental laws This one doesn't. You're right that you can go to civil court for damages arising from a criminal action. But, normally people first try to prove their claim of criminal action. The Constitution provides for impeachment. And, the Justice Department is the place to go if your rights have been criminally violated. Self-styled freedom fighters can't rise to either of those standards. So, they're just skipping it. Resorting to the same court where awards are handed out like the lottery.
Telco customers will face higher costs. Self-styled freedom fighters will feel vindicated. But, in the end the original claim that "a crime was committed" won't be proven.
Mark | |
| | | | | | | | | | wierdo
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by amigo_boy : Resorting to the same court where awards are handed out like the lottery. Telco customers will face higher costs. Self-styled freedom fighters will feel vindicated. But, in the end the original claim that "a crime was committed" won't be proven. Mark You seem unaware that often the result of civil cases is not an award of damages but an injunction against further commission of the same acts.
For someone who doesn't even believe the telcos did anything wrong, you seem awfully obsessed with someone proving they committed a crime. Listen to too much Rush lately?
Given that you continue making demonstrably false claims like "awards are handed out like the lottery," I think I'm about done with you. Thanks for playing. If you'd like to continue this conversation, please bring a factual basis to your next response.  | |
| | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by wierdo :You seem unaware that often the result of civil cases is not an award of damages but an injunction against further commission of the same acts. If an AT&T customer wants to go to court to seek an injunction, go ahead. My guess is that a court would dismiss it on the basis that you can "vote with your feet." It doesn't take the EFF to do this for any individual customer.
Again, I wish you guys would get your stories straight. Others are talking about "hitting the telcos where they'll feel it" (monetarily, which you'd think "voting with your feet" would have accomplished already.).
Mark | |
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morbo
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| Re: Cut off the head... any billion dollar judgement against AT&T = higher costs, lower stock price, etc.
that must be passed along to their customers.
that means higher prices.
that means their competitors get more market share.
that results in less money for AT&T.
that = justice. | |
| | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by morbo :any billion dollar judgement against AT&T = higher costs, lower stock price, etc. that must be passed along to their customers. that means higher prices. that means their competitors get more market share. that results in less money for AT&T. that = justice. If AT&T customers cared, wouldn't they just leave? Why the contorted means to an end? First we hear how the President committed a crime. But, you can't prove that in a court of impeachment. The telcos committed a crime. But, you can't get the AG to file criminal charges. You'll sink to civil court to impact the telcos financially. You blame the telcos sinking to payola to buy legislation in response to your own lowered standards. And, you want to speak for AT&T customers (in a class action suit) to impact AT&T in ways customers won't.
Why don't you just admit it, you have no more principles than the people you claim to be fighting against.
Mark | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | TechGuy99
join:2003-09-15
Flushing, NY
edit:
December 17th, @09:07PM
| said by amigo_boy :If an AT&T customer wants to go to court to seek an injunction, go ahead. My guess is that a court would dismiss it on the basis that you can "vote with your feet." AT&T and Verizon are MAJOR operators of both ILEC and internet switches. By giving access to their networks and peering points they not only gave access to their own traffic but the traffic of EVERYONE who uses their network. THAT'S MOST OF THE VOICE AND A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF THE ENTIRE INTERNET TRAFFIC OF THE UNITED STATES! And yes, that includes any data/voice from Qwest that just happened to take a single hop into/out of their networks. There is no opting out. There is no walking away. There can’t be. There are no competitors!
And before you say that this is a private matter, the extensive rights of way needed to form a new major telco are an extremely limited commodity. It is impossible for any modern company to acquire them. Unless you wish to go back to the robber baron days of yore, or would prefer to see the government claim eminent domain so that a private party can dig up your backyard to lay fiber, there will never be another true competitor.
This was an extreme abuse of power and trust.
The matter of those in the government attempting to, and succeeding in, garnering such information is a separate issue. A company entrusted with such an incredible amount of power, when it would not have received that power without the help of the government, and therefore the people of the United States of America, must be held liable when it violates that trust!
They must not be allowed to commit such abuses no matter who is in office! | |
| | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by TechGuy99 :AT&T and Verizon are MAJOR operators of both ILEC and internet switches. By giving access to their networks and peering points they not only gave access to their own traffic but the traffic of EVERYONE who uses their network. Which tends to prove my point about how ridiculous it is for someone to use the Internet and claim a privacy expectation. Especially if they don't use encryption. Their communications will travel through companies with whom they have no contractual relationship. Wasn't this the primary basis for developing SSL, SSH, sftp, etc?
Mark | |
| | | | | | | | | | TechGuy99
join:2003-09-15
Flushing, NY
| Re: Cut off the head... said by amigo_boy :Which tends to prove my point about how ridiculous it is for someone to use the Internet and claim a privacy expectation. Especially if they don't use encryption. Their communications will travel through companies with whom they have no contractual relationship. Wasn't this the primary basis for developing SSL, SSH, sftp, etc? Mark Of course there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Just because a phone line crosses over a neighbor's yard does not mean they have the right to listen in on your private phone calls. The telcos have no right to hand over your private calls and/or data to a third party without EXPLICIT notification or unless ordered to do so by a legal warrant. And in the case of a warrant only the voice and data that is explicitly requested is allowed to be transferred. | |
| | | | | | | | | | wierdo
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| I see, so if I lease a line from my ISP who in turn leases it from AT&T, it's OK for them to dump my traffic because it happens to be muxed onto a fiber that also carries some of their Internet traffic?
Or more apropos, say I lease a line to connect my locations in (for example) Arizona and Alabama. These days, that's mostly done by using the network provider's IP circuits, on which they run MPLS to essentially tag each packet with the ID of the virtual circuit it belongs to. So here I am paying for a private circuit, yet when AT&T decides to hand off all their traffic, mine goes through also.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not just the Internet anymore, as essentially every national network provider transports every circuit, private and otherwise, over the same fiber, using technology like MPLS to separate out the various services. In many cases (say if Level3 is participating in this or a similar scheme, as it's widely known they do this), voice traffic is also affected, since many providers now use VoIP internally on MPLS virtual circuits to transport the voice traffic.
So yes, services on which one, by law has an expectation of privacy are also being monitored. Hell, if you bothered to read the ECPA (1986), you'd know that by law you have an expectation of privacy with data services as well. E-Mail, for one, is specifically named.
Encryption was primarily about hiding your sensitive information from the government, it was (and remains) hiding it from ne'er do wells who would intercept your sensitive information in transit. Thieves, that is.
Do some research before you mouth off. | |
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morbo
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clubs: | well said. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by morbo :but the reality is that it is another forum for justice when the other forum is more difficult, for the time being... If the police and state AGs used civil court because "it's easier" (to get around those annoying hurdles criminal court imposes), self-styled freedom fighters would be screaming!
Pot, kettle, black.
Mark | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | amigo_boy
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by morbo :if no law has been broken, enlighten us as to why AT&T is spending millions of dollars on lobbying to get immunity? If a law was broken, why are self-styled freedom fighters resorting to *civil* court?
If I had a bunch of people seeking to bypass criminal court, relying on ambulance chasers and the nearly non-existent standard of civil court, I'd be nervous too. Just the cost of litigation under those lower standards could be enormous.
They're facing the same thing you are. You can't rise to the standards of criminal court. So, you lower yourself to civil court. Why should the fact that telcos are trying to defend themselves from *that* cheap shot be indicative of their guilt? Don't you have the burden of rising to the standard of criminal court? It seems like you're blaming the telcos for your own diminished standards.
Mark | |
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morbo
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edit:
December 17th, @05:15PM
| Re: Cut off the head... nice attempt to change the focus, but you didn't answer the question:
if no law has been broken, enlighten us as to why AT&T is spending millions of dollars on lobbying to get immunity? if they haven't committed any crime, they wouldn't need immunity from criminal OR civil court. | |
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| | | xrobertcmx
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clubs: | The hot coffee was from a broken machine that was boiling the coffee and the McDonalds in question had been warned many times prior to it becoming a civil matter.
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LilYoda
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Mountains
| Re: Cut off the head... And as a side note, every other citizen of the world knows that coffee is made with boiling water, and that boiling water scalds in seconds. My 3 year old kid knows that.
A Mexican, english or indian person would have said "awwww cr@p! that hurts!!"
But in the USA, no... the government has to legislate to protect its citizens against their own stupidity.
I can't wait to see the first case when someone is going to burn himself with its stove, and sue cause the plate was too hot... Will we then regulate all stoves, and therefore make it impossible for a whole country to sear meat and boil water on the stove?
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| | | | | | wierdo
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edit:
December 18th, @04:17PM
| Re: Cut off the head... said by LilYoda :And as a side note, every other citizen of the world knows that coffee is made with boiling water, and that boiling water scalds in seconds. My 3 year old kid knows that. And most coffee drinkers in America know that the coffee that comes out of their coffee makers won't scald them nearly instantly, since they don't boil water, since boiling the water makes for nasty coffee.
McDonald's was in fact keeping their coffee hotter than any other restaurant, arguably so that it would stay hot longer.
Right wing smear radio did an excellent job of blaming the victim in this particular instance, so that they could advance their idiotic "tort reform" agenda. I believed it for a long time, until someone pointed out that I would do well to learn more about the lawsuit rather than shooting my mouth off without knowing what I was talking about.
Not that it has anything to do with the topic at hand, other than it being used by people who would have an irrational hatred of civil lawsuits.
Edited to remove erroneous temperature reference | |
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LilYoda
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edit:
December 18th, @05:07PM
| Re: Cut off the head... First of all boiling water makes excellent coffee, that's how expresso pressure machines work 
»www.boyds.com/coffee/brewingguide.html
quote:
A second requirement of water for good coffee brewing is the water temperature as it passes over the coffee grounds. Ideal brewing temperature is 200°F, plus or minus 5°F (at sea level).
If you read about the lawsuit here: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_coffee_case
You will see that McDo's coffee IS made with near-boiling water. What they had to do is reduce the temperature at which it is served to the customers. So basically, they have to reduce the temperature of an inherently scalding hot product so that careless people don't hurt themselves.
The same lawsuit was rejected in the UK by the way, the court recognising that
quote:
If this submission be right, McDonald’s should not have served drinks at any temperature which would have caused a bad scalding injury. The evidence is that tea or coffee served at a temperature of 65 °C (149 °F) will cause a deep thickness burn if it is in contact with the skin for just two seconds. Thus, if McDonald’s were going to avoid the risk of injury by a deep thickness burn they would have had to have served tea and coffee at between 55–60 °C (131–140 °F). But tea ought to be brewed with boiling water if it is to give its best flavour and coffee ought to be brewed at between 85–95 °C (185–203 °F)
IIRC, the maximum allowed serving temperature for coffee was lowered in the US in the aftermath of the McDo's coffee lawsuit
Secondly, I'm no rightwing smear radio listenner, nor do I have an agenda. Just pointing out that some civil lawsuits, including the coffee one, tend to go overboard and lead to legislation to protect people from their own stupidity.
Anyway, as you said this is off topic, I was just responding to yet another claim that McDo was right and the plaintiff was the most innocent people on earth. In this specific case, she was stupid or careless enough to burn herself with a product she should have been careful about, if she had an ounce of common sense...
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| | | | | | xrobertcmx
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Sterling, VA
clubs: | I think you missed the point. In normal circumstances I would agree with you, I even used to until I had to review the case.
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Rob 23
@alltel.net
| What head ? AT&T merged with comcast in nov 2002, All the (dirty deed doers) Now work for AT&T/COMCAST, broadband and circuit switched phone moved to AT&T/comcast. The CEO of AT&T took over as the head of AT&T/COMCAST until he retired in 2004. verizon is in this because of the MCI merger and that CEO is history. | |
| | | | Cod
join:2000-07-05
Greensboro, NC
| Re: Cut off the head... said by Rob 23 :
What head ? AT&T merged with comcast in nov 2002, All the (dirty deed doers) Now work for AT&T/COMCAST, broadband and circuit switched phone moved to AT&T/comcast. The CEO of AT&T took over as the head of AT&T/COMCAST until he retired in 2004. verizon is in this because of the MCI merger and that CEO is history.
Please tell me you are joking, right? Everything you stated above is incorrect.
Here's what really happened:
-AT&T bought Mediaone Cable back in 2000.
-Less than 2 years later AT&T sells off its cable division (old mediaone) to Comcast. There was NO merger or partnership between Comcast or AT&T.
-AT&T is purchased by Southwest Bell (SBC) in 2005. The newly combined company is managed and run by SBC, but because of the well established AT&T brand, they decide to keep AT&T as the name. | |
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Rob 23
@alltel.net
| Re: Cut off the head... HI COD. Can you take a look at this? »www.corp.att.com/news/2001/12/19-4135 and this »www.comcast.com/about/pressrelea···prid=291 IT was a 72 BILLION dollar merger. sbc merger was for att long distance network,it was for 16 billion So if you look at the dollar value ATT/COMCAST is 80% of the old AT&T. SO comcast received att broadband customers and local circuit switch voice customers.and the att ceo cio and others moved to att/comcast. | |
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TK Junk Mail
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Margate City, NJ
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| Re: Cut off the head... said by Rob 23 : HI COD. Can you take a look at this? » www.corp.att.com/news/2001/12/19-4135 and this » www.comcast.com/about/pressrelea···prid=291 IT was a 72 BILLION dollar merger. sbc merger was for att long distance network,it was for 16 billion So if you look at the dollar value ATT/COMCAST is 80% of the old AT&T. SO comcast received att broadband customers and local circuit switch voice customers.and the att ceo cio and others moved to att/comcast. The merger was between Comcast and AT&T Broadband. There were no voice circuits included in the merger. You have no idea what you are talking about as COD pointed out.
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