The Telecom Amnesty Bill, or...

(... a nerd who should know better tries messaging.)

You probably know how a coupla telecoms have been caught putting themselves above the law by spying on people; if not, check out the good work being done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation here. (Also, please join up, okay?)

Looks like the telecom execs don't want to "go away for a while", so they're hoping to get immunity from prosecution. It recently occurred to me that the bill cited by that article is like when a library tells people they can return overdue books without penalties.

That is, seems most honest to refer to the bill as offering "telecom amnesty."

For that matter, remember that Reagan fought a much more dangerous enemy than al Qaeda without resorting to breaking the law like this. You might question other aspects of his presidency, but he really did fight the Communists without warrantless wiretapping. Perhaps we could do as well.

Comments

[LeftRight]

Hey, it's no worse than anything else that the admin has done since being appointed in 2000. Read Robert Heinlein's "Past Through Tomorrow", you should be able to find it at a second hand book store. One of the short stories that is in the book is surprisingly accurate, just 12 years early (Dictator elected in America in 2012, no election in 2016)

[Not Blind]

The Bush administration acknowledged that telecommunications companies assisted the government's warrantless surveillance program from as early as February, 2001.
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Clean Air Act that allows more air pollution. No Child Left Behind Act that leaves more children behind teaching them to memorize test answers. The Patriot Act that has nothing to do with being a patriot but spits in the face of what makes us patriots. Also even if we take "the Terrorist Surveillance Act" at face value, look at some examples of who the Bush regime considers terrorists, Cat Stevens, Ted Kennedy, etc.
Combine this with the fact the Bush regime has refused to reveal who they have been spying on and anyone with an IQ above 80 can figure out that we cannot sit back and accept the legitimacy of an act based on the name alone.
Firefighters are being asked by the Department of Homeland Security to spy inside people’s homes and businesses while in the line of duty of putting out fires.
Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as American icons and infringing on people's privacy.
Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel don't need warrants to access hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, putting them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.
When going to private residences, for example, they are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Just call it Big Brother, Inc., LLC, and
drop the pretense. Will 'they' at least give
you a courtesy spell-check of your email
while they're reading it? What ELSE could
you put in someone's email? What else could
be taken out? Who gets how many copies?
What precedents will be established, what
will they lead to? Digital police state?
Why does the police department have your
credit record? Hmmm...que­stions...m­any questions....power, knowledge is, yeeesss... ../

[DrPaulProteus]

Craig makes a good point about how "The Terrorists" are now feared as much as a global superpower was a couple decades ago.

The Cold War made a lot of defense people rich, but The War on Terror is little more than a grand privatization scheme. Read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", and you'll see the extent of what has been sold off in the name of "fighting the terrorists" both at home and abroad. The con is on.

Have a look at your tax dollars at work:

Post-War Contractors Ranked by Total Contract Value in Iraq and Afghanistan
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/resources.aspx?act=total

[elkabong]

When it comes to crime, our Power Elite and Government's position is "Do as we say not as we do". That's called something and I think it begins with a "T" or an "F".

[freespeach]

Good post Mr. Newmark.

Frontline did a good show on this last night.
No way in hell should there be immunity for Telcoms or our government.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/

[frappe]

Yes, I do remember that Reagan, and his predecessors, fought a much more dangerous enemy than what we face today. The Soviet Union had the ability to annihilate the USA in an instantaneous moment of insanity, and their political influence extended far beyond its own borders to millions of people across the globe.

Today, the supposed "dire threat" to Western civilization, Al Qaeda, originally consisted of no more than a few thousand desert bandits with very limited means and influence. Don't people realize this? If it wasn't so sad to see how much Americans have sacrificed for "security", I'd say this "war on terror" was a farcical argument or premise. Instead it has become monumentally tragic in proportion.

The "war on terror" has become a "war on our Constitution", on our way of life. Yes, of course terrorists should be hunted down and prosecuted -- but as "criminals". Everyone would be wholly supportive of such an effort. But to try to frame it as some sort of diabolically powerful world plot that demands immediate and exotic cultural change is a gross overreaction to what amounts to, at its essence, a false threat in terms of its size and political and cultural dimension.

Get a grip, everyone! Al Qaeda, by "cold war" standards, is a mere fly in the ointment of democracy -- a gnat on a great bison that simply needs to be swatted and terminated with "force and extreme prejudice".

Bush and Cheney, on the other hand, seemed to have done everything that they can to politically legitimize and expand the power and influence of Al Qaeda, despite their protestations to the opposite. Their actions have only served to give Al Qaeda "life" and sustenance.

The cynic in me suspects that Bush, Cheney, and their allies, see Al Qaeda as a means to some other political end -- perhaps the transformation of America into some fascist police state that is more compatible with their particular vision of the world and what they perceive as our place in it.

What a sorry tragedy this has turned out to be.

[DavidJames]

The Electronic Freedom Foundation(EFF) is a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization. Your donation is tax deductible to the full extent provided by law.

Any donations that you make to a tax exempt charitable organization like the EFF are essentially donations from pretax income. 100% of your donation goes to the charitable organization and none of it goes to BushCo though taxes.

[Danny]

Yes. Kudos to you for highlighting the tenacious work done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I have joined, and urge smart HuffPo-ers to do the same.