How did former Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales' lucrative appearance at the University of Florida go? Well, two protestors got arrested but as best anyone can tell they aren't being held incommunicado without charges or tortured, so things are looking up.
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Gonzales Goes to School
20 Nov 2007 11:29 am
Comments (7)
Those of you who use Verizon might be interested in knowing that Verizon has just scooted out from under owing you any damages if it gave your email and Internet records to Gonzales under the warrentless wiretapping program.
I sent the following heads-up to Matthew Yglesias last Tuesday.
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1) Verizon is trying to evade a potentially huge legal liability by modifying its Terms of Service(TOS) to say its customers can obtain no damages from it greater than a pro rata adjustment to several months service charges.
2) Major telecoms have been strongly lobbying Congress to grant them retroactive legal immunity for turning over customer data to the National Security Agency without a warrent. That effort failed on Tuesday (Nov 13).
Several major lawsuits have been filed against AT&T , Verizon,etc by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other parties.
3) Verizon notified customers of the TOS change via a low key, vaguely worded email late on Tuesday. Neither the email nor the TOS change on its website refers to the warrentless wiretapping lawsuits or give customers any notice of Verizon's legal exposure. The email says customers implicitly grant Verizon legal immunity if they do not cancel Verizon service by Feb 19. If upheld, this will render the current debate
in Congress moot.
4) Verizon specifies a close deadline because if a customer cancels Verizon service by Feb 19 and changes to a new service provider then Verizon will remain liable to the customer for any past acts.
5) The warrentless wiretapping lawsuits are described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_challenges_to_NSA_warrantless_searches_in_the_United_States
6) Verizon's change to its Terms of Service is on it's website here:
http://netservices.verizon.net/portal/link/main/announcement?linkflag=guestonly_noregion&id=TOS_071120
"New Section 16.5, Limitation of Liability. We have added a new Section 16.5 to the Terms of Service which limits the liability of Verizon and its third party suppliers and providers for all categories of damages to you to a pro-rata
credit of the monthly fees (excluding all nonrecurring charges, regulatory fees,
surcharges, fees and taxes) that you have paid to Verizon for the Service during the six (6)
month period prior to when the claim arose."
7) The text of the vague email sent to customers --notifying them of the TOS change
-- is as follows:
"Dear Valued Verizon Online Customer,
This email is to let you know that we have revised the Verizon Internet Access Service Terms of Service ("TOS"). Please visit www.verizon.net/updates or look under the Announcements section of Verizon Central to review the revised TOS, as well as the announcement summarizing the primary changes. These changes will be effective as of the date set forth on the announcement. We encourage you to review these changes as they affect your rights and obligations under our TOS.
Sincerely,
Verizon Online"
8) The failure in Congress on Tuesday to NOT grant immunity to the Telecoms is noted in several news articles --
http://www.miamiherald.com/692/story/300491.html
9) The new Attorney General also just announced an investigation into the wiretapping program -- an investigation which had been strongly resisted by previous Attorney General Gonzales. See http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3860091
By the way, does anyone know if the email to Matthew ,listed here on his blog page , definitely works?
Well, we do like a show in Gainesville and Uncle Al sure as hell deserves it, but it sorta makes me think he's being underpaid. Let's get him on Springer already. Full-contact politics! Interactive audience! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
"By the way, does anyone know if the email to Matthew ,listed here on his blog page , definitely works?"
I've been sending him stuff, too. I assume it all goes directly into his "Trash" folder, because he's never acknowledged it and never referenced any of the material, even though most of it is on Pakistan and the Palestinian situation and would be interesting to comment on here.
Apparently, Matt runs on "Not Invented Here" - only issues he (suddenly) thinks are interesting get mentioned here - which is why his posts are all over the place and show no consistency except bad spelling and worse grammar.
Comments closed December 04, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Did they at least get Tasered? That probably feels about as good as getting waterboarded.
Posted by Fred | November 20, 2007 11:41 AM