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Senate Meets Today On Telco Immunity
Telcos working hard to dodge liability for privacy invasion
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be meeting today to discuss giving AT&T and Verizon retroactive immunity from prosecution for their involvement in the NSA's warrantless wiretap program. The EFF is spearheading a case against AT&T for funneling Internet data from multiple carriers directly to the NSA with no judicial oversight. From the EFF:
quote:
"Granting immunity to the telecoms would make Congress complicit in the cover-up of illegal, wholesale warrantless spying," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "These amnesty proposals are aimed at blocking the courthouse door to millions of folks whose rights were violated by corporations that ignored both the law and their duty to keep everyday communications private and safe.
The EFF notes that Senator Russ Feingold is proposing an amendment that would remove blanket immunity from The "FISA Amendments Act." The baby bells, fearful of financial liability, have been spending millions in DC to try and convince lawmakers that they should be immune from prosecution.

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Texas Dave
@rr.com

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Texas Dave

Anon

My 2 cents

The constitution does allow for privacy. It's been determined through precedent that unusual search and seizure protections forbid doing routine checks to see if you're doing something wrong. The same protection that prohibits law enforcement from dropping by your house "just checking" prohibits them from monitoring your private communications.

The illegality of the telcos' actions stems from the whole-sale release of private communications. Unlike corporate e-mail which (in the US, not Canada, Europe, et al.) is provided for corporate use and wholly owned by the corporation, the e-mail provided by the telcos was for paying customers who then owned the content created. Sending that information to a third party to be scanned for key words is the digital equivalent of dropping by your house "just checking."

An important differentiator between this activity and warrant-based activity is that in the case of a warrant, a third party (a judge) has to know what's going on and decide a warrant is merited. This ostensibly protects us from police being able to act in secret without oversight - essentially this protects the citizens from the government. Once a warrant is determined to necessary, it is granted with only enough powers to cover the current investigation, once again eliminating the "just checking" scenario. In most cases, this eliminates the need for individuals to choose to resist authority on legal or humanitarian grounds.

As for telcos' protection, I offer a simile as an example. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib we told to break down prisoners to prepare them for questioning. These naive Midwestern kids were given outlines of techniques by agents "in authority" and left to their own devices. The result has been a human rights disaster that included prison times for the soldiers who were cooperating with these "authorities" and who, according to their testimonies, thought they were doing their jobs as assigned. The soldiers violated human rights under orders and were duly punished, as the telcos violated human rights under orders - what should be the result for the telcos?

The basis of this country is the inalienability of human rights for individuals. It was founded by men who were fighting against an oppressive government, who wanted to ensure the citizens had vital protection to resist the formation of next oppressive regime. As a citizen, when you are told you must comply with something that violates the rights of a human being as defined by the United States, it is your obligation to resist that order no matter how draconian the threats associated with non-compliance.

Violations of human rights by corporations must carry punishments just as they must and do for individuals, regardless of the role of "authority" in the situation. You cannot shirk your responsibility as an individual or corporation to hold the line against the ever-encroaching loss of freedom.

I leave you with two examples of the government and privacy.

In 1980 at the Colorado Springs branch, the FBI approached the Census Bureau with warrants allowing them to seize data that was not releasable to them. Under threat of legal repercussion, the office worker fended them off while the matter was resolved, ultimately protecting the privacy of the citizens who's data had been collected by the Census Bureau from this unconstitutional FBI search. (The nature of census data and the extent to which it is protected by the constitution is mandated by Congress and legal precedent, but the important issue is resisting an unmerited request from authority.)

On the flip side, in the early 1940's the Census Bureau appears to have cooperated with requests for data regarding Japanese Americans (independent of the congress-enabled unconstitutional suspension of census privacy from 1942 to 1943), which allowed them to be identified down to their block of residence. This facilitated the rounding up of these individuals to be shipped to internment camps or inappropriately monitored. For the most part, they didn't do anything, but they lost livelihoods and property permanently as a result. The US has apologized and paid reparations to the specific individuals affected, but that falls well short of the damage done.

Some other group could easily be targeted for search next for racial or other reasons. The media often addresses racial profiling, how would you like the federal government to monitor your private activity for other reasons? For example, because identity theft is a rampant problem and you are an e-mail administrator or some other technical admin with access to personal data, how would you like your private e-mail, phone and financial records monitored and mined on a continual basis? How would you like to find one day that you are defending yourself in a criminal court because a social networking analyzer determined that someone you know was involved in criminal behavior and though you weren't a suspect, your innocent dealings with this person have been mined for circumstantial evidence? Once collected, how what guarantee do you have how any data will be used? What if data mining unjustly ferreted you out as the bogey man of the week because you had read a political website that was found to be "subversive" or "pro-anti telco" or similar nonsense de jour?

Collectively, we have the power and responsibility to decide what our world is like through the friction of this telco case and similar issues. What do you chose? How will you act on your decision?