It is fascinating that the Republican Party would rather allow what they believe to be a critical national security law lapse than allow it to be extended without the extension containing a rider immunizing large telecommunications firms from the consequences of prior illegal activity. It's almost as if the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of large business enterprises and very wealthy individuals, and tends to use national security and cultural anxieties as a kind of political theater aimed at securing votes so that they can better pursue their real agenda of enriching the wealthy and powerful.
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FISA
14 Feb 2008 06:20 pm
Comments (46)
Don't point the finger at the Republicans alone. It took the Senate Democrats to close debate on the bill and pass it.
It's more like the Republicans know they can get the Democrats to cave on the issue.
What a cynical interpretation, Matt. You must hate America.
Snark that reaches the top eschaton of punditry. Bravo.
Don't forget their pals among the Senate Democrats. Plenty of snark-worthy work going on there as well.
What a malapropism, Tim. Don't you mean echelon?
PROFESSOR
But then—viola. You turned it around and aced all your finals like—boom. Magic.
WILLOW
(nervous laugh) Yeah, similar to, but, um...
Too true. Too true. Now, how do we get the rest of the country to see the obvious?
First you'll have to get the democrats to see the obvious so they can state it. How hard is it for Pelosi to say: You only need immunity if you've committed a crime? Or, was this case so bad they couldn't get Alberto Gonzalez to sign off on it? Too hard for the Senate, I guess.
peter, it's exactly as hard as the amount of money the telecoms gave to dems and the amount of blue dog democrats in washington.
Brilliant post. Concise and devastating.
Ignoring Matt's class warfare rhetoric for the moment, if the telecom companies can be bankrupted by trail lawyers for providing the federal government with information it requested to prevent terrorist attacks, then what incentive would these companies have to cooperate with the government in the future? What's the point of reauthorizing FISA if you are going to let the trial lawyers intimidate telecom firms from participating?
What's the point of reauthorizing FISA if you are going to let the trial lawyers intimidate telecom firms from participating?
Um, I dunno, how about passing a law making it OK to do it (above board) in the future? That way, The Law is The Law, in the past, present, and future. It's win-win.
Yeah, I don't have anything to say but this:
AWESOME, YEAH! EXACTLY!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH OUR GOD FORGOTTEN COUNTRY???
Times like these I think that Fred and Al are the same person.
Is being a Republican like playing mad libs, where you just fill in words like "terrorists" and "trial lawyers" in the blanks?
Good news, Fred! See the article linked at my handle.
"The question of whether the telecoms acted in "good faith" in allowing warrantless government spying on their customers is already pending before a court of law. In fact, that is one of the central issues in the current lawsuits -- one that AT&T has already lost in a federal court."
Tyro: "Fred" and "Al" are paid to write the comments that they do. Pretty well, I'd imagine.
Fred makes me wish for a Hillary win.
I don't know what Obama might do, but Bill had his own ideas about the power of the executive. He didn't get away with just breaking laws and flaunting it and or run to the congress to have them try and retroactively make whatever he was doing illegal, but here is the thing...executive power grows and it's extremely rarely given back.
Fred better get himself a crypto-phone in the era of tomorrow.
Why? Fred has nothing to hide. He's one of them.
He expects they'll cover his approaches to men in bathrooms, his bribing of Congressman, his selling of nuclear secrets to Pakistan by way of Turkey, his assistance to Israeli spies, his burning crosses in black neighborhoods, his bombing of abortion clinics, his hiding out Cuban terrorists, his contributing funds to the M.E.K., his murder by sniping of random civilians in foreign countries, his forging of documents proving that some other country has nukes, his shooting down of civilian airliners, etc, etc.
He's one of them.
Well, he thinks he is, anyway. He's really too small time for any of the real crooks to notice.
Elvis,
This reminds me of the MTBE lawsuits. Government environmental zealots passed regulations requiring gas stations to add oxygenates like MTBE to the gas they sold, only to find out later that these contaminate water. So, for complying with the government's demands, these companies got sued. A win for trial lawyers, and a loss for shareholders (including long-term employees, pension funds, elderly dividend investors, etc.).
Ed,
If you know of anyone in the real world who pays people to write comments on someone else's blog, please let me know. That would be a dream job.
Richard Steven Hack,
That's quite an activity list you've got there. Aren't you leaving something off though? No clubbing of baby seals? Perhaps that was just an oversight.
As for me being too small for "the real crooks" to notice -- you're a real crook, right? So at least I've got that going for me...
it's funny: it doesn't matter what topic, fred has the same comment: somehow there is some dastardly government regulation in place, and there is always a complete misrepresentation of reality. consistency, small minds, etc.
as to the matter at hand, in police states, the government expects business to cooperate and it does.
in democratic states, the government should have no more expectation than that companies will follow the law.
the law was violated by telecoms (not all of them: some - or maybe it was just qwest - actually paid attention to the law) and now they're looking to be protected from their own law-breaking.
there is only one incentive that we should care about: that the incentive to obey the law remains in place. they wouldn't need immunity if they hadn't violated the law.
Yeah howard, and the question still unanswered by our (presumably paid) wingnut commenters is:
"[Why would the] Republican Party...rather allow what they believe to be a critical national security law lapse than allow it to be extended without the extension containing a rider immunizing large telecommunications firms from the consequences of prior illegal activity."
I think there is a limit to how long you can stretch a single sarcastic statement in any plain text medium before it kind just collapses under its own weight.
How I wish it was just the Republicans! Seriously, Matt, Reid and Rockefeller made this possible.
Unconstitutional surveillance did not arise solely in reaction to the attacks of 9/11; moreover, the Bush administration could have sought and easily, quickly obtained court orders to require—and protect—specific surveillance and information-providing actions by the telecoms.
The telecom immunity issue is very important. The spirit of constitutional rule of law is worth protecting. Yet, as far as future surveillance operations are concerned, telecom immunity is not as important as some of the expanded, largely unmonitored surveillance powers granted the executive branch in the Protect America Act which are likely to be included in any compromise legislation that the House and the Senate might agree upon. The fact that the telecom immunity issue has been receiving more attention than the FISA-related authority and operations issues is not entirely due to happenstance. The placement of so much attention on the telecom immunity issue increases the likelihood that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress will gain most of the FISA revisions that they desire.
HAH! One of your best posts ever.
This reminds me of the MTBE lawsuits. Government environmental zealots passed regulations requiring gas stations to add oxygenates like MTBE to the gas they sold, only to find out later that these contaminate water.
Really? Because the MBTE reminds me of the time I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you’d say. Now where were we?
Big Telecom (BT) is hardly a humble bookstore clerk who meekly handed over some book receipts to a fast talking Federal agent. That scandal would be bad enough, but hardly the genesis of a bankrupting lawsuit.
This is eavesdropping on an unprecedented scale. BT had to invent, develop and install the technology to harvest and mine all those data. It must've been done under secret, no-bid contracts, with senior BT executive involvement and approval. You can bet the taxpayers were billed for every extracted little bit.
There may have even been a dissenting lawyer who said Wait! This is illegal! BT must be not only liable as hell, but fearful of the business they'd lose if people found out how tenuous is their treasured privacy.
For the politicians' part, I doubt their enthusiasm to immunize BT was bought with campaign cash alone. I'm sure BT knows full well who had knowledge of the scheme and who was complicit in it. I'm sure there were Democrats involved as well as Republicans, since covering ass is the last bastion of bipartisanship.
A win for trial lawyers, and a loss for shareholders (including long-term employees, pension funds, elderly dividend investors, etc.).
I don't mind trial lawyers cleaning up financially if they stop companies from, well, poisoning me. A lot more people drink water than hold shares in oil companies.
if the telecom companies can be bankrupted by trail lawyers for providing the federal government with information it requested to prevent terrorist attacks, then what incentive would these companies have to cooperate with the government in the future
None. That's the point. The companies would have absolutely no incentive to cooperate with the government to violate the Constitution of the United States. You have a problem with that?
We also note that Fred is too stupid to remember that legitimate FISA warrants can be obtained very quickly, and even retroactively in the case of legitimate emergencies.
So, what was the government up to that it didn't dare come clean in secret to its own secret court?
Methinks that when the files are opened, Bush and his friends are going to suddenly be inspired to take a very long vacation to that ranch he's purchased in Paraguay.
.
You can bet the taxpayers were billed for every extracted little bit.
Bingo, I think we have a winner here. Ever noticed that with all this snooping, remarkably little has ever been found? Anyone want to bet that the entire system has been an unworkable cock-up from the start, and the only part that has run smoothly has been the suction pump inserted into the public wallet?
Bush and Company are too frigging dumb to be fascists. They're thieves, pure and simple.
This reminds me of the MTBE lawsuits. Government environmental zealots passed regulations requiring gas stations to add oxygenates like MTBE to the gas they sold, only to find out later that these contaminate water. So, for complying with the government's demands, these companies got sued. A win for trial lawyers, and a loss for shareholders (including long-term employees, pension funds, elderly dividend investors, etc.).
Fred,
This argument is terribly flawed. First, non-compliance with a request for information from the executive branch is not the same as non-compliance with a duly-enacted regulation. The telecoms could have refused and forced the government to get a court order.
Second, your summary of the MTBE lawsuits are misleading. The theory there is that oil companies chose to use MTBE rather than non-polluting alternatives. They're being sued not for using oxygenates, but for negligently using dangerous oxygenates when safe ones were available. Since you like analogies, it's as if your car was illegally parked, you were ordered to move, and in the course of moving it you drove carelessly and hit someone. You can't behave negligently simply because you are doing so in an effort to obey the law.
Wake up, folks! The principal purpose of this proposed law isn't to immunize the telecoms. The reason why Bush and his friends in Congress want the law adopted is to stop the lawsuits.
The information plaintiffs' attorneys will learn during discovery will put Bush, Cheney, and others in legal/criminal jeopardy. At the least those government officials may be adjudged to have conspired with the telecoms, have aided and abetted them, to violate criminal law. They could be prosecuted and if convicted, there may not be a President available to provide amnesty.
And since Cheney's Unitary Executive Theory would be at the heart of those officials' defense, the cases could well put paid to that obnoxious theory.
Fred - " if the telecom companies can be bankrupted by trail lawyers for providing the federal government with information it requested to prevent terrorist attacks, then what incentive would these companies have to cooperate with the government in the future? What's the point of reauthorizing FISA if you are going to let the trial lawyers intimidate telecom firms from participating?"
Exactly. When the FBI shows up at your door and says that they need every one of your 431 hotel clients records because a young boy was kidnapped from one of the rooms over the weekend, you don't ask "where are the 431 individual warrants". You ask if the FBI is acting legally, when they say yes, you are cooperating in good faith with an official government investigation with agents of the state initiating matters, and you supporting their efforts.
Entirely different than you getting those 431 records on your own initiative and giving them to private detectives and news media to look at.
Same with the urgent inquiries for Flight School records of foreigners following 9/11 and ATF energency requests to have Agricultural Centers and ammonium nitrate makers check to see who bought more than 1 ton of 90% pure nitro fertiizer. You are not initiating efforts to violate privacy, you are accepting the word of agents of the government that it falls into a reasonable search exception to the 4th. If a court later disagrees with the government, it is a matter of lawyers within the government disagreeing after the fact, and fallout should remain withing the government legal community and wrangled out by those lawyers - NOT become a Trial Lawyer/Lefty opportunity to financially damage or ruin private companies and individuals
for doing what they were assured was their civic duty in a vital criminal justice or National Security matter.
There is no court number citizens can call when cops show up and ask for business records to see if the request is kosher. The answer is either you are protected by good faith compliance with official agents of the state, or the court will decide in expensive proceedings (for you) if anyone is fair game for lawyers to sue if they help a cop.
sunsin - That's the point. The companies would have absolutely no incentive to cooperate with the government to violate the Constitution of the United States. You have a problem with that?
Yeah, I do. We don't live under Jew justice, where the Sanhedrin or the Israeli Supreme Court is not a co-equal Branch but as High Priests of the Law - reigns absolute over all citizens and government.
In America, when a dispute exists within the 3 branches of government over the legality of acts 1 or more branches demand citizens do that the 3rd branch disagrees with, we do not reach out and make the citizens liable for a quarrel between the Branches - we hold them blameless and let the Branches hash out who is right.
A Jewish Lawyer dressed in robes of the Sanhedrin or the "Holy Courts" is not the final word.
*****************
What's the point of reauthorizing FISA if you are going to let the trial lawyers intimidate telecom firms from participating?
Um, I dunno, how about passing a law making it OK to do it (above board) in the future? That way, The Law is The Law, in the past, present, and future. It's win-win.
Posted by ed
No, the Constitution sets our society up as a nation of men (We The People), as well as a nation of laws. When lawyers dressed in robes decide that the executive or legislative branch is wrong and millions of citizens stand "accused" of being on the "incorrect, formerly correct" side of the law - we do not let the shysters enrich themselves feeding on the good intents of the citizens.
The Law is Not the Law. It is what lawyers say it is, and relies on people accepting it as it is interpreted in everyday life. If the law changes, and capriciously punishes citizens for past good faith in complying with a different interpretation - you undermine the social contract that depends on the consensus of the People...not blind loyalty to upper caste Jews enforcing their du jour reading of Mosaic Law.
Betray the People, they will take revenge on the forces that make them unjustly pay for what the Gov't in the past told them was legal and appropriate.
When Lawyers in Robes decided that Jim Crow was wrong, or that lawyers in the executive had a wrong approach to the 5th (Miranda) - they did not set it up as a windfall for greedy lawyers to sue anyone who had been wrongly advised by Gov't in the past.
if the telecom companies can be bankrupted by trail lawyers
Trail lawyers: regular lawyers, dried, cured, salted, cut into strips, and mixed with seeds, nuts and fruit flakes.
Ford:
There is no law in place that gives general immunity to anyone who in good faith is helping an agent of the government. I don't think there should be, but if you or those who agree with you get the votes to get that passed, more power to you.
What is being discussed is a specific exemption from the consequences of breaking the law for telecom companies that stops there.
When a private investigator who is also an off duty cop shows up at the phone company and asks, as a favor, for them to tap the line of the wife of his client, the phone company is supposed to say no.
Where do you draw that line between that and a legitimate need? There is a law that answers that very question. The person who can get a warrant can get the tap. The person who cannot get a warrant doesn't get the tap. That's what warrants are. That's what warrants are for - exactly to prevent the abuse of power of agents of the government.
Government agents showed up at the phone companies and asked for warrantless taps. The phone companies had a legal responsibility to say no. The fact that they could not or did not get warrants makes this situation exactly the same as if they wanted taps for clients in a divorce proceeding.
Not only should the companies be punished for breaking the law, but in for future the principle that the executive branch needs warrants to access private information should be strengthened instead of weakened.
Fred, my interest in seeing companies who broke the law punished and seeing a full airing in public court of what this illegal wiretapping program entailed far, far outweighs any ire I might feel towards litigators. I realize that the balance sheet on your end gives the opposite result, but my moral priorities are much, much more well-placed than yours, which accounts for our difference in viewpoint on the issue.
You hate trial lawyers and love Bush more than you hate lawbreaking and invasions of privacy. I hear among Republicans that this is considered an acceptable moral system, whereas I believe that it makes you a bad person. As long as you have no positions of political or professional influence and are uninvolved in the raising or teaching of children, such a viewpoint of yours is, I suppose, mostly harmless, however.
There is no chance that the telecom companies will have to pay. House Democrats are willing to compromise on a plan that reimburses them from the federal treasury for any damages they incur due to unlawful cooperation with the government.
The point of amnesty is to prevent lawsuits. If there is no capacity to recover damages, there will be no suits. Lawsuits give powers of discovery and subpeonas. The Republicans are not protecting the telecoms, they are protecting the adminstration.
There is no chance that the telecom companies will have to pay. House Democrats are willing to compromise on a plan that reimburses them from the federal treasury for any damages they incur due to unlawful cooperation with the government.
The point of amnesty is to prevent lawsuits. If there is no capacity to recover damages, there will be no suits. Lawsuits give powers of discovery and subpeonas. The Republicans are not protecting the telecoms, they are protecting the adminstration.
If your theory is correct, this is a worthless compromise for the Republicans because it will still lead to investigations. The trial lawyers won't care who is footing the bill.
Ignoring Matt's class warfare rhetoric for the moment, if the telecom companies can be bankrupted by trail lawyers for providing the federal government with information it requested to prevent terrorist attacks, then what incentive would these companies have to cooperate with the government in the future?
The incentive of a legal warrant issued by a judge which they are require to comply with.
"If your theory is correct, this is a worthless compromise for the Republicans because it will still lead to investigations. The trial lawyers won't care who is footing the bill."
That's the point. Non-delusional people actually consider the possibility that sometimes trial lawyers represent people with valid claims of harm seeking redress of their grievances. The rejection of the compromise is a demonstration that Republicans see more value in hiding the harm their leaders have done than in addressing harm to American citzens.
"The incentive of a legal warrant issued by a judge which they are require to comply with."
Warrants don't work for data mining, which requires tracking millions of calls; warrants would be appropriate for after data mining has turned up a suspect.
There seems to be a broader pattern here: any policy that could potentially protect Americans against a terrorist attack is opposed by Democrats. Why? Why are they such sticklers for legalism when it comes to defending terrorists but not when it comes to defending unborn children, or the right of citizens to bear arms?
Warrants don't work for data mining, which requires tracking millions of calls; warrants would be appropriate for after data mining has turned up a suspect.
Bingo! And there's your answer: b-b-but we can't comply with the law because if we did so we wouldn't be able to engage in our illegal and unconstitutional activity!
If warrants don't work for data mining, then you can't engage in data mining (see, e.g., the Fourth Amendment). The importance of the Rule of Law (TM) and the fact that we are A Nation of Laws (TM) was pounded into me by dozens of florid Republican pundits and gasbags during the Clinton impeachment hearings, so I'm afraid I'm a bit of a stickler on this point....
Why are they such sticklers for legalism when it comes to defending terrorists but not when it comes to defending unborn children, or the right of citizens to bear arms?
Because we hate our freedoms. I thought you knew this?
MY, if you'd been reading Glenn Greenwald's coverage of this you'd know that many Democrats are just as culpable.
Comments closed February 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Your post doesn't go far enough: remove the "It's almost as if".
Glenn Greenwald at Salon has done a fantastic job staying on top of this travesty.
Posted by south side | February 14, 2008 6:26 PM