Retroactive Telco Immunity Opponents Buying TV Ad 291
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Whether they're mad at the Republicans for creating the mess, the Democrats for caving in, or both, many are still pissed off over the grant of retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason. And now some of them are trying to do something about it — they're buying an advertisement on cable TV. While it's not entirely clear what good, if any, this will do given that it's too late, at least it's cheap to participate — they're looking for $6 donations. The ideas is that, if more grass-roots groups do this kind of thing, their 'representatives' won't be able to afford to blow them off as easily."
Throw the bums out. All of them (Score:4, Interesting)
and then throw them out again.
Never vote for an incumbant again, at least
for another 3 election cycles.
I don't care, throw them out. You think you
have a 'good guy' in congress? You're wrong.
Throw them out.
All of them. /that/ is the fix for so called special interest lobbies. Take away their power.
That is the only fix.
Better that the government never get anything
else done.
Re:I wouldn't mind doing this (Score:5, Interesting)
I AM against telco immunity. I'm against domestic wiretapping. I'm against an administration that blatantly disregards the Constitution and regards everything they do as legal, simply because they are doing it. However, hard experience has taught me that contributing to ANY cause gets me on mailing lists for "similar" causes - whether I want to be or not.
I no longer give to charity for an extension of those same reasons. Charities are now run like businesses, with salaried fund raisers, and wage slaver collectors on the streets. They pay to make money, and they make more money this way. Since making money is their primary cause, they see it as a good thing.
In the same way, although they are aware that they bother, irritate, or even outrage former givers by sending out reminder after reminder about all the giving opportunities available to previous donaters, they know that they will receive more money, overall, by doing this.
Unfortunately, some gut part of me reacts objectionably to this, and I cannot in good conscience send money their way.
Re:Direct link, because editors are lazy (Score:5, Interesting)
And too bad the ad is incredibly forgettable and badly done. Most people will not even pay attention to it.
It's a waste of time to put that on the air, the money is better spent elsewhere... Like paying to get a real in your face ad made, they need to not hold any punches, they need to be blunt.
I'm not paying. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not gonna pay. It is not because I liked or agreed with the wiretapping. However I support the Immunity. In general going against the Immunity is saying I hate big companies because they have more money then I do. Having them fined or jailed will do nothing positive. If you fine them you pay the fine as it will increase costs. If you put the guys in jail you pay to put someone who isn't a threat to society, and pay to keep him there. This case took a while and didn't get marked illegal 100% there was a split, meaning even if they did hire lawyers to determine if what they were doing is legal or not they may have gotten the same mixed answers. Thus coming down to a risk analysis. Do it and get some liberal hippies pissed off at us who are already hate us anyways, don't do it and have possible retribution by the government. Especially think about the times were Bush was at a all time high, going against national security was unpatriotic. Google said no and their stock fell, facing legal problems. By not passing this Immunity it would give the government a method of forcing companies to do illegal things... The question is why isn't the government taking responsibility for telling the TelCos to do that. The Government should give each of those customers and the people who they called during the illegal search $100 for each call they illegally wiretapped, and take it out of their assets.
Re:I wouldn't mind doing this (Score:5, Interesting)
Well I'm probably in the minority here. I have hugged a tree. I like trees. They don't complain, they look pretty, and they provide me with oxygen. And unlike with "higher" primates you can't get AIDS or any other social disease from hugging a tree. Trees rock, primates are mainly assholes.
Re:Direct link, because editors are lazy (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe they do. For one, this gives you a lot more "connection" to the campaign if you can point to the screen and say "that is my ad" instead of "I made a small donation to the people who run the fund that bought this ad".
Two, politically, it's also an interesting move, because it puts actual people behind the ad campaign instead of some anonymous organisation. We will know when we see the PR in the mainstream press. If they play their cards right, the mainstream media might well write "thousands of people bought ads to protest the FISA act" or something like that. Which, of course, is a lot more headlines material than "some protest organisation protests FISA, as they did before".
Re:I'm not paying. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not about punishing TelCos. It's about the Discovery Phase of such a trial. In the discovery phase we'd find out about who they tapped and what they listened to. That's important because knowing this admin, it's perfectly reasonable to suspect it possible that they might be lying when they said "we only tapped the phones of folks who spoke to overseas terror suspects."
Maybe. Just MAYBE, they listened to a few more people who weren't speaking to terror suspects. Maybe they even listened to purely domestic calls. Honestly the actions of this admin sound a heck of a lot like what Nixon was forced to resign over.
With the immunity in this bill, any lawsuit against TelCos is thrown out even beofre the discovery phase.
Re:It's just a bunch of lawyers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, I'll bite.
the legislative issue on wiretapping was only whether or not a bunch of greedy lawyers want another set of deep pockets to go plundering
When Evil-X left me and my two teenaged daughters for another man (have you any idea what that did to the kids?) I was damned glad to have one of the "greedy lawyers" you hate so much. Likewise when I was forced into bankrupcy because the bitch had run my finances into the ground, I was damned glad I had a "greedy lawyer".
When I got a detached retina this year I was damned glad I had a "greedy surgeon", who charged a lot more than the lawyers. You, sir, have a jealousy problem. And no, IANAL. I do databases at work for a whole lot less maney than the doctors and lawyers I have been GLAD to pay.
Left wing leaders don't care about the spying. They just want another set of excuses to try and destroy the American economy
Odd, when the Republicans were in power everybody I knew was hurting financially, but then again I don't know many rich people.
even more than all their environmental regulation already has
I'm 56. When I was a kid, few had air conditionaing in their cars. But even when it was ninety five degrees farenheight you rolled the windows up driving through Sauget where Monsanto had their plant. Anybody who curses Nixon for signing the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act is either a polluter or an idiot, or too young to remember what it was like before environmental regulation.
Now I guess I need to go to the Biters Anonymous meetings again, because IHBT.
Re:Direct link, because editors are lazy (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a good point - but what wasn't mentioned in the TFS was that the cost of the ads (as mentioned in the Wired blog) goes up to almost $2000. How many people are going to pay that kind of money to get this ad on the air? And that was for a spot on CNN (between 6PM and midnight - how much you want to be it gets shown closer to midnight?), not during American Idle* or some other popular show - which would probably cost much more, as well as being much more effective.
Maybe they could go both routes - have a link to "go here to get the ad played yourself" and a link to "go here to contribute to our fund to play the ad during popular primetime shows"?
* - No, I didn't misspell it. I meant it that way.
Barr anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Throw the bums out. All of them (Score:3, Interesting)
The real fix is to separate politicians from money. Give them and their family a "free ride for life" if that's what it takes and we'll STILL save money. Prevent them from ever being a corporate leader and stop the revolving doors from spinning. Prevent them from accepting ANY money at all and they cannot be bribed as easily. Then they can focus on voting their conscience and ideals, whatever they may be, because they will be "above" money.
Doing something like that will find the welfare of the nation as a whole will be important and not just the oil lobby, the cigarette lobby, the energy lobby, the cheap foreign labor lobby and all those other lobbies.
Re:The gentleman doth protest too much (Score:3, Interesting)
Any conversation with anyone outside the US can be intercepted, not just the ones that originate overseas or are from known or suspected terrorist organizations. If Grandma is in London, England, or even London, Ontario, the conversation can now be legally listened to. Also, the FISA courts were set up as a rubber stamp. IIRC, there's a special room at the NSA where a federal judge does nothing but grant warrants for FISA wiretaps. The whole process takes about five minutes, and the warrant was retroactive for a few days so that nothing important would be missed. The current administration felt that this was too restrictive, so they just stopped following the law.
With disposable phones so prevalent now, how do you know which call to listen in on? This is why the gov't can't get a warrant. If you think about how it works, you will understand. Take this hypothetical:
A call comes in from Pakistan from an unknown number. It's a disposable cell phone in the northern "tribal" region to a disposable phone in Washington DC. Another call comes in from London to the same number. Another call comes in from Iran to that number. How do you know if it's tap-worthy? There's no other option but to listen in. You listen in and find out that it's just someone talking with relatives scattered all over the globe because grandma just died. No threat, so you stop listening. Do you get a warrant now because you listened in? There are thousands of calls that come in like this every single day. Most of which are harmless. Do you get a warrant for each and every one?
Re:A TV ad? (Score:3, Interesting)
Something more on topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A [wikipedia.org]
Rooms designed for the interception of all telecom traffic,
including net activity, and not just for ppl on terror watch
list but all US citizens.
Re:It's just a bunch of lawyers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah yes, because all those career Democrat politicians are spending their lives working for a government..... But there's no vast left-wing conspiracy to take down the American economy.
Nationalize everything, and therefor, the government has a lot more power. I don't see what the Dems are doing as maliciously minded. I perfectly concede that they genuinely believe that everything would be better if they ran everything. It's just that, humans have tried socialism over and over again and it simply hasn't worked. You need to have private property and businesses for the economy to work. Everyone knows this. Even Cuba is now gradually increasing private property rights for individual farmers in a bid to increase its own production.
Of all great ironies, though, is that, if we step forward 100 years, Reagan and Clinton will be seen as more alike than apart, and similarly, Bush and Obama will both represent a more activist and centralized government.
Re:Throw the bums out. All of them (Score:3, Interesting)
The real fix is to liberate politicians from the need to bow to corporations to sponsor their elections, simple as that. Even if you give the politician a "free ride" once he's in, how did he get in if he didn't accept brib... I mean, campaign contributions from companies?
I prefer our model. Our politicians and parties get tax money for their campaign. That's right, you heard me, tax money. You get at least 2% of your voters to vote for you and you're eligible for campaign money. WE pay our politicians to lie to us. But at least WE buy them. Not some company. And to some degree, taking money from companies is outright illegal here. Unfortunately only to some degree... A proposal to force politicians to put every single cent they get paid on the table was shot down by some parties, which are (surprise, surprise...) also the parties closely associated with big business.
Personally, I see my politicians as my employees. Well, mine and that of the rest of the people living here. I have to announce to my employer every job I want to take, and I think, so should my employees. I just want to make sure that no "competition clause" may be applicable...