Telco Immunity Goes To Full Debate

Dr. Eggman notes an Ars Technica analysis of the firefight that is the current Congressional debate over granting retrospective immunity to telecoms that helped the NSA spy on citizens without warrants. A Republican cloture motion, which would have blocked any further attempts to remove the retroactive immunity provision, has failed. This controversial portion of the Senate intelligence committee surveillance bill may now be examined in full debate. At the same time, a second cloture motion — filed by Congressional Democrats in an effort to force immediate vote on a 30 day extension to the Protect America Act — also failed to pass. The Protect America Act has been criticized for broadly expanding federal surveillance powers while diminishing judicial oversight. While the failure of this second cloture motion means the Protect America Act might expire, a vote tomorrow on a similar motion in the House will likely bring the issue back into the Senate in time. It seems, according to the article, that both parties feel that imminent expiration of the Protect America Act is a disaster for intelligence gathering, and each side blames the other as progress grinds to a halt."

Hmm

[chuckymonkey]

If it passes I wish that I had enough money to hire a lawyer and take this law to the Supreme Court as I do believe that somewhere in some old document called the Constitution it say something about not passing laws ex post facto. It's not like it'd be hard to win either, it's pretty clear about that in the Constitution, unless everything is truly corrupted and there's just no hope left.

Protect America Act...

[dreamchaser]

I really wish they would start giving honest descriptive names to Bills, rather than marketing names. Seriously, just like the new 'Economic Stimulus' bill, that should be 'It's an Election Year, here's a handout that won't really affect the economy much'. Bills to impose new taxes should have names like 'Bend over for us please' or 'Yeah, we're screwing you again.'

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, stop calling it a peacock. Yes, I know it will never happen. One can fantasize.

Re:Hmm

[zappepcs]

Never mind ex post facto for a minute. The Protect America Act has been in place how long? What has it accomplished? What? For all these rights that have been trampled, what has been gained? What? Name one positive good outcome from it?

Perhaps it's time to remind your representatives that you want some ROI here. My constitutional rights are very expensive. If their abuse of my rights does not land bin laden in jail, or bolster the free world by some provably huge fscking margin, then I'm going to want to see rolling heads. So far... I'm thinking of rolling heads (figuratively speaking... say hello to the nice FBI agents)

It's not that each person is evil

[n3tcat]

Just remember, when you are reading about the fall of the American constitution that it's not because any person involved is inherently bad. Quite the opposite. Most of them are good. They love America generally speaking and want the best for their people. They have to. Power only works when you respect the people you control. When you approach each person involved in this situation and ask them just what the fuck are they thinking, they would probably tell you, and honestly at that, that they are doing the best they can for the people they represent.

I'm not saying stupidity is an excuse. I'm just saying that the supposed "inherent evil" that people want to believe politicians all possess isn't the problem. The problem is political ignorance and an extreme distance from reality that accompanies the higher eschelons of power.

This is also, I would imagine, why the fore-fathers imagined a country run by the stronger states, not controlled by a stronger federal government. Keep the power closer to the people, at lower levels, and the reality is much harder to miss.

Re:Hmm

[Shakrai]

it say something about not passing laws ex post facto

Umm, IANALOCLS (I am not a lawyer or Constitutional Law Scholar), but my understanding has always been that only prevents the Government from passing retroactive laws that criminalize events in the past... i.e: if alcohol prohibition is passed tomorrow they can't punish me for drinking today. It doesn't prevent them from retroactively decriminalizing something.

Granted, it's a load of shit that they are even considering immunity for these bastards, but I still think you'd lose if you tried to argue against it on the basis of ex post facto laws.

It's Orwellian is what it is

[Nursie]

Was thinking along the same lines myself. It's scary stuff though. Take the PATRIOT act. It contains a lot of nasty, freedom stealing measures, extensions of government power etc etc.

But it got through. Why? Because in a time of national panic (9/11) you wouldn't vote against an act called the Patriot act would you? You are a patriot aren't you?

Jingoism and marketing need to die.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[IndustrialComplex]

Make the tools available, for crying out loud.

Would you rather have a shovel, or a backhoe with busted hydraulics? I don't give a damn what tools they want if they can't figure out how to use the ones they currently have.

Re:Hmm

[vastabo]

You wouldn't have standing to sue unless you could prove: 1) That'd you'd been surveiled 2) That the surveillance had caused you harm--which, incidentally, is the point of the legislation in the first place.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[Shakrai]

That's a wonderful post with completely valid points. Unfortunately you overlooked the fact that had anybody bothered to connect the dots, 9/11 could have been stopped using the existing laws on the books with the powers that the Government already had.

All the wiretapping in the World isn't going to help you if the President gets a memo saying "[SOMEBODY] determined to attack US" and ignores it. All the wiretapping in the World won't help you if FBI agents in the field are being ignored by headquarters when they attempt to report suspicious activity.

Maybe we should be asking why all of those failures happened instead of bending over backwards to give the Government sweeping new powers to monitor our daily lives.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[jamie]

Republican Senators are right now stonewalling and trying to prevent a one-month extension of the same legislation they insisted last year was vital, urgent, and necessary to prevent terrorist attacks in "days, not weeks [salon.com]." The President has said he would veto a one-month extension of this legislation that, last year, we supposedly needed to stop the terrorists from attacking America.

They are protesting a one-month extension so that people who aren't paying attention will pressure Democrats to cave in and give Republicans what they want. The Republicans are literally -- if you believe their own words -- exposing America to danger of terrorist attack as a political tactic to pass the legislation they want.

And what they want is retroactive immunity for corporations so that we, the people, have no legal recourse to discover whether those corporations cooperated with the Bush administration in breaking the law.

The tools are already available. They allow the NSA to spy, and they allow American corporations to assist that spying. It's just that the laws must be followed. They are not difficult to follow. And corporations already are immune from both civil and criminal consequences if they can just demonstrate that, even though they broke the law, they acted on a good-faith belief at the time that what they did was legal.

If you think this about whether we can monitor what the terrorists are talking about, you're wrong.

What are you smoking?

[MarkusQ]

...it doesn't matter to me whether you think the law is good or bad,

So, you want to join the debate about this bill but you don't care what anyone thinks about the bill? Won't that sort of hinder your ability to engage in rational discourse?

Bottom line is: there needs to be a way to be able to monitor terrorist activity, criminal actvity... ANY KIND OF THREAT BEING PLANNED.

See? The discussion is over the attempt to rid the bill of a provision protecting telecoms from the consequences of their past criminal activity. This has nothing whatsoever to do with monitoring terrorist activities, apart from the fact that certain members of congress (Jeff Sessions, for example) led by VP Cheney are willing to scuttle the bill if they can't get their friends a "get out of jial free" card.

We've been damned fortunate and thwarted every single planned attack since 9/11... we've batted 1.000 so far. At some point, we're going to be nailed again unless a way is found to MONITOR future plans.

Uh, what attacks would that be? And how does that have anything to do with the PAA which, as I just pointed out, has little or nothing to do with the telecom immunity? As far as I recall, all of the so-called "threats" that have been thwarted have turned out to be bogus, and none of them--none of them were found using the powers under PAA. So what's the connection?

I'm not suggesting we totally roll over to the authorities and have Big Brother watch every single thing every American does. But Common Sense dictates that SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.

Perhaps. But even if, as you say, "SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE" a minute's thought leads to the conclusion that giving big corporations a blank check to violate our nations laws probably isn't it.

--MarkusQ

Re:It's Orwellian is what it is

[Malevolent Tester]

Equally, in Britain, who wouldn't support the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001?* There's something tragic about the way that on both sides of the Atlantic, our shared culture has lost or is losing all the things that made it great - individual liberty (and it's twin, responsibility), cultural confidence, distrust of authority and the same bullheaded stubbornness and refusal to submit that is the common factor from Hereward the Wake through to a few thousand men sitting shivering, starved and diseased in Valley Forge.

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt, indeed.

*Though at least our bills don't sound like something invented by 8 year old children.

Capitulation Happens

[Ranger]

If the Fuck, er, ah, Protect America Act expires, the old FISA law is still in effect. The key difference is oversight. The Democrats in the Senate will pretend to put up a brave fight then give Bush everything he wants. We got screwed when Congress rammed the PATRIOT Act I down our throats. Everything else since then has been gravy for them. Makes you wish you were a big fat corporation. After the telecoms get their immunity, other corporations will want the same deal. I hope I'm wrong. I really do.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[tpheiska]

Private communication is a key factor in a democratic society. Without it, a powerful opposition is not possible. And an opposition is very necessary, even though the current US regime/government tries to label it 'unpatriotic'. But then, I'm an ignorant European treehugger who undersands nothing about the dangers USA is facing. There is also a nice quote from one of the great minds that America has produced. "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[Quill345]

That's the POINT. Reasonable controls would be requiring a warrant (which is as simple as presenting a basic reason to an impartial judge). The government can already perform these taps with a warrant using the secret and expedited FISA court. This law guts the warrant necessity eliminating any reasonable control. It's already been shown that the FBI has abused these sorts of wiretaps with bogus National Security Letters. We're not saying don't wiretap, we're saying require a review (as required by the Constitution). And, so what if the President got caught in Watergate? It was by accident that the unlocked door was found. How many more similar incidents have happened that we haven't heard about? We'll never know without auditable control.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[PopeRatzo]

We've been damned fortunate and thwarted every single planned attack since 9/11... we've batted 1.000 so far.

By that weak standard, Bush should also get full credit for there not having been a single American city demolished by a meteor, and he's "batted 1.000" in keeping California from falling into the Pacific.

Maybe we should look at it the other way around. George Bush has been the only president in the 20th century to allow such a devastating foreign attack on our soil.

It might just be that the threat of terrorism isn't as serious as you seem to think.

But the most important argument against creating a "total surveillance society" in order to prevent terrorism is that there already is a very good legal system for allowing the kind of surveillance against terrorists that you seem to believe we need. It is called the FISA court and gives our government plenty of tools for fighting terrorism.

Finally, for me it comes down to this: Yesterday, we heard one GOP senator after another say that the telecoms did nothing wrong in allowing the government to eavesdrop, and the program is completely legal. Well then, why do they need immunity? Why not leave it up to our legal system and a jury of citizens to decide whether any laws were broken.

blcamp, I live in the shadow of Sears Tower. I'm as concerned about my wife and daughter as you are about your family. But as I've said before, I will take my chances with the terrorists, but leave my liberties intact.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[bhima]

OK. I'm all for making the tools available, once the make sure that they safeguard our everyday civil liberties and that their continued use is based on regular and accurate validations their efficacy.

Seriously: Safeguard our liberties first then worry about security.

Security in the United States today is Security Theater. It's operatic in it's grandeur and stupidity.

5 Year olds and US senators on 'No Fly Lists'? Falafel stakeouts in San Fran looking for Iranian sleeper cells? The Secret Service strong-arming high school students for anti-war anti-bush speech? Calling the Bomb Squad on hot chilies, LED cartoon advertisements, and state owned traffic monitors? Arresting, Beating, Nearly Shooting & Killing innocent people because they act or look different?

There is no way I'm willing to give up any of *anyone's* liberties for that sort of buffoonery.

Re:What are you smoking?

[MarkusQ]

Is your idea of debating a legitimate issue - intervening and interdicting terrorism - launching a straw man attack against politicians and "evil" big corportations... or private citizens who don't happen to agree with you?

No. But the topic is the telco immunity provision, not "intervening and interdicting terrorism" whatever that is.

This is why those on the left don't manage to get anything done. Their whole strategy is to bash others who propose solutions and come up with no solutions on their own.

First, I'm coming from the right (life long Republican and current Ron Paul supporter), so that jibe just plain misses the mark. But since when and on what basis is insisting that no one is above the law been "bashing others who propose solutions"?

Why not come up with an ACTUAL WORKING SOLUTION to the problem terrorism, as was the original topic of this discussion?

Sure thing. So long as you come up with a cure for cancer first.

Other lawbreaking (such as the allegations against telcos and whatnot) can still be dealt with - that is a separate issue. Leave out there, don't sweep it under the rug... but don't use it as a means of obstructing our national defense, either.

First, the whole point of this discussion is that, if they pass the immunity, it can't be dealt with later. That's what immunity means. Further, the people "obstructing the national defense" here as you construe it are mostly on the right, not the left. It's Cheney, Sessions, McConnel, etc. (all Republicans, I'm ashamed to admit) who are insisting that the PAA must die if they can't get immunity for their pals. So get your facts straight, OK?

--MarkusQ

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[Jesus_666]

as long as my constituional rights don't get outright trampled on, I REALLY DON'T CARE HOW THEY FIND TERRORISTS... just as long as they catch and kill every goddamn one of them.

Including ignoring the rights citizens of other countries have in their countries? Beware, slippery slope ahead. It leads to a PR disaster that would crush the last bit of goodwill the rest of the world has for the USA. Which would be very welcome to any terrorists.

The trick to terror prevention is ensuring your safety without causing more damage than the terrorists could have. Alienating people is rarely a good idea because that only gets more people motivated to join the terrorists. Alienating entire countries is just as bad because they might not want to do business with you anymore (yes, that's possible; China is a viable alternative) and your economy suffers. Alienating your own people is even wore because it creates unrest and might even get som of them to help the terrorists out of the belief that the current government needs to be replaced.

Just finding terror suspects and killing them at any cost is quite likely to get the country into more trouble than just dealing with them like one did before the whole War on Terror(TM) started. The correct approach lies somewhere in the middle. One needs to be careful enough not to upset everyone but thorough enough to actually catch the dangerous plots. That requires more deliberation than zealotry.

Fall on sword

[redelm]

Of course the Ds blame the Rs and vice-versa. They both want the spying, but know it's unpopular and cannot afford to be seen as supporting it in an e[rl]ection year. Yet they don't want to be seen/accused of doing anything to hamper the WOT.

The hypocrisy of Congress cannot by overestimated. Without the moral compass that principles provide, there will always be situations where expediency is unclear.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[TheLink]

9/11 wasn't a good thing. But face it: Big deal.

Nobody else is going to easily do it again even without all the "Patriot" bullshit. The 9/11 hijackers "ruined the market" for future hijackers.

Before 9/11 the "unwritten protocol" was - hijack announced, everyone meekly stays in their seats, nobody (mostly) gets hurt, negotiations start, hijackers get something, passengers get to go. Unless of course the hijackers were crazy enough to do El Al ;).

After 9/11 hijackers WILL have a more difficult time with passengers and air crew, the cockpit doors are reinforced. Enough passengers will think "If I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to make sure that hijacker suffers first". If everyone just threw their shoes and stuff at the hijackers at the same time it will really hurt :). I can tell you for sure that many passengers will look at each other and have a go at the hijackers.

In fact even _DURING_ 9/11, passengers on board one of those planes figured out what was happening, and one of the planes didn't hit the target.

You think most hijackers haven't figured that out? Only a few stupid ones (or mentally ill) have tried since 9/11. They have to move on to other methods if they want to crash into towers - charter/steal private planes etc.

The bulk of the new procedures like banning liquids and checking shoes is just to make the stupid sheeple feel safe.

The fact that the US Gov lies to its citizens regularly, and puts in laws that don't actually address the problem shows to me that the US Gov is a greater danger to US citizens than the "evil terrorists" are.

The 9/11 killed like 3K? And cost the USA how much?

In comparison the US Gov started a war in Iraq (based on _deceit_ ) and got how many killed? And cost the USA how much?

Not to mention the US Gov has been trampling over the "precious" US constitution which so many US citizens _allegedly_ value so much. They don't even bother to amend the constitution, they just ignore it or twist the interpretation so much.

The US people should serious consider who really is their biggest enemy.

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[Anonymous Coward]

The tools are available. They've been available. FISA requires that there is judicial oversight. If the surveillance is warranted, this should be no problem. And I don't buy the bullshit line that it takes too long. FISA allows warrants to be issued up to 3 days after surveillance starts, so the "we can't wait for oversight" argument is pretty lame.

The bigger problem is that as the US intelligence services have been allowed to indiscriminately accumulate vast amounts of data, they have become unable to process it all. This hasn't helped thwart terrorist plots so much as it has diverted resources away from productive intelligence work and wasted it trying to analyze reams of useless information and investigate countless dead-end leads produced from it. Is this really making anyone safer?

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[roystgnr]

All the wiretapping in the World isn't going to help you

It's even worse than that. All the wiretapping in the World is going to hurt you if the problem is that it's already too hard to pick signal out of noise in the intelligence we currently gather. If you start also sifting through conversations between people so unsuspicious that you can't even get an after-the-fact FISA warrant to spy on either of them, does that add to the signal or does it add to the noise?

Re:Not surprising

[NeutronCowboy]

Actually, it's liberty, equality, fraternity. As someone states in his sig, this makes for an interesting set of priorities... too bad neither the french nor the americans seem to follow that set of priorities.

Re:Funny

[c_forq]

Because you left out decriminalization. Do you think that when it was decided that prohibition of alcohol was a bad idea that it should be left up to the President and the Judicial system to give everyone pardons and immunity (which in most cases someone has to be arrested for something before they can receive either)? Don't you think it would be a hell of a lot easier of the legislators were able to change and retract laws? I would like to point out at this time there have probably been more judges bought and owned than congress-people. Granted the appeals court is usually a good check on this, but if you also own the district attorney...

Re:Love It Or Hate It...

[bitflip]

> We've been damned fortunate and thwarted every single planned attack since 9/11... we've batted 1.000 so far.

But what does Bush, or congress, or any of the laws they have passed have to do with it?

The reason we haven't been attacked is because after 9/11, I started shaving my crotch, and have kept it shaved ever since then.

Yes, I'm willing to do this to save American lives. I'm that cool.

Re:Hmm

[squidguy]

How is the previous post a troll? Believe what the AC is trying to say is that since there have been (apparently) no more attacks of 9-11 scope carried out in the US, perhaps, just perhaps, the program is working.

Dammit People!

[Xyrus]

"as long as my constituional rights don't get outright trampled on, I REALLY DON'T CARE HOW THEY FIND TERRORISTS... just as long as they catch and kill every goddamn one of them."

What the hell is wrong with this country? Why is it that congress, and the populace aren't trying to solve the freakin' problem?

Why don't people ever stop and ask the question: Why are they so pissed off at us? What have we done to deserve this? If they did, people might actually discover that the terrorist, as well as much of the Middle East, are angry for legitimate reasons.

They're pissed off because of 60 years of brutal US foreign policy in the Middle East. We've overthrown democratic governments. We've installed bloody dictators. We've supported terrorism, and even had proxy wars fought by our "puppets". The Shah of Iran, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein were all funded and supported by the US. We turned a blind eye or even supported their atrocities as long as they were serving US purposes.

This isn't conspiracy theory. It's well documented. Several former CIA experts have written multiple books on this, and the blowback we've been seeing (like 9/11). Our foreign policy there basically amounts to an "the ends justify the means" campaign. It definitely puts all of this in a quite different light once you start researching our history in the region.

What's really sad is that we have not learned our lessons either, as once again we are supporting yet another military dictator to achieve our goals.

They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we've been screwing them over for the better part of a century. Terrorist attacks are a symptom of the problem, and that problem is our aggression and foreign policy.

If you want the threat of terrorism to go down, it's simple. Get out. Leave them alone. Get our bases out the region. Stop supporting murderous dictators like Saddam and the Shah. Stop trying to overthrow their governments. Let them try to figure it out themselves, and stop trying to shove our ideas down their throats. Stop terrorizing them with threats of embargoes and bombings.

Seriously, if another country did half the crap to us as we have done to the Middle East we'd be pretty damned pissed off too.

~X~

Re:Radicals

[uniquename72]

I like Bush's logic that created this debate:
GWB: "We must allow domestic spying immediately in order to prevent another 9/11."
GWB (2 weeks later): "I will veto any domestic spying legislation that doesn't retroactively protect the telcos."

In other words, protecting the telcos (retroactively!) is more important than preventing another 9/11.