Telecom Amnesty: Update

Glenn Greenwald and Anonymous Liberal are the go-to guys for understanding this issue. Again, I urge everyone to call, write every Congressman you can, sign any petition - make your voice HEARD to keep our government from passing this sick legislation. I want to highlight a part that addresses a point you brought up, Mike:

Using 9/11 to "justify" telecom amnesty is not only manipulative, but also completely misleading. Telecoms did not merely break the law in the intense days and weeks following the 9/11 attacks. Had they done only that, there would almost certainly be no issue. Indeed, the lead counsel in the AT&T case, Cindy Cohn, said in the podcast interview I conducted with her last week that had telecoms enabled illegal surveillance only in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks -- but then thereafter demanded that the surveillance be conducted legally -- EFF almost certainly would not have sued at all.

But that isn't what happened. Both the Bush administration and the telecoms jointly broke the law for years. Even as we moved further and further away from the 9/11 attacks, neither the administration nor the telecoms bothered to comply with the law. The administration was too interested in affirming the theory that the President could exercise power without limits, and the telecoms were too busy reaping the great profits from their increasingly close relationship with the Government.

The 9/11 attacks could be a coherent (though not persuasive) defense to lawless surveillance on September 13, 2001 or even on October 13, 2001 -- but not throughout 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and into 2007. That is nothing more than deliberate lawbreaking motivated by limitless power (in the case of Bush) and swelling profits (in the case of telecoms). Rockefeller's exploitation of 9/11 and "patriotism" to justify years of illegal spying is shameless in the extreme, and the only thing "unfair and unwise" is to pass laws with no purpose other than to relieve the lawbreakers of all consequences.

Not only that, but I believe there's evidence that this illegal surveillance was actually going on for months BEFORE 9/11. There's certainly no excuse for that!

Additionally, regarding your point that we need to go after Bush instead of private industry that would affect jobs:

But Rockefeller knows this is untrue. Lawsuits against the government almost certainly cannot proceed. The Bush administration continuously invokes the "state secrets" privilege to compel courts to dismiss any such suits brought against the Government. Worse, because no individual citizens can prove that they were subjected to this illegal surveillance -- because Rockefeller and his friends in the administraiton have ensured that it all has stayed completely secret -- no plaintiff, as the Sixth Circuit has ruled, has "standing" to proceed in NSA lawsuits against the Government.

Thus, amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms would not mean that "we hold government officials accountable for mistakes or wrongdoing." It would mean the opposite. The Cheney-Rockefeller amnesty would strangle to death the sole remaining mechanism for obtaining a judicial ruling as to whether Bush broke the law with his various illegal NSA spying programs. It would be the final nail in the coffin in the attempt to ensure accountability for this lawbreaking.