Some days I hate my country.

-abs

That situation is unfortunate, and most of us are morally lucky not to find ourselves in circumstances like these. But there are some cases in which all of the options are bad, and trying to do what’s right can come with great personal sacrifice. Nobody ever said that being ethical was easy.

This case, however, is somewhat different because we have corporations, not actual human beings, who are guilty. I still don’t understand people who bend over backwards in defense of corporations and the “free” market. The system is designed in such a way that only the most unscrupulous companies can succeed. By design, they do not give a shit about you or me except insofar as they can deprive us of our income by whatever means necessary.

Even worse, it’s telco companies we’re talking about here. Is anyone satisfied with how they do business? Do you like being treated as a criminal by your ISP? Because if it’s not the government pushing it to invade your privacy, it’s the damn RIAA or MPAA that would be all too happy to impose a totalitarian surveillance state on us if it meant they could stop piracy and increase profits.

These institutions are in effect superhuman psychopaths. Giving them free reign (i.e., the “free” market) is a recipe for disaster for everyone, including the executives who run them–in the long term. It’s even worse if you let them break what few laws we do have on the books to protect us.

http://actblue.com

I more or less agree with catbeller, the reason the Dems have caved with FISA and refused to impeach is because Rove, or someone has them blackmailed.

Why not do as Ockham suggests and refrain from multiplying entities needlessly? The obvious answer here is that the Dems don’t care about the NetRoots, the progressive agenda, or defending the Constitution. They LIKE this stuff. They think it’s a good idea, and they know you (plural) will vote for them anyway and tell folks that won’t that they’re Throwing Away Their Vote, Thanks Ralph! I mean, what are you gonna do, vote for the other guy ha ha snort, he’s crazy!

Believing in this theoretical blackmail permits you to think that the political party you’re affiliated with is somehow not responsible for the wholesale destruction of civil rights, continuing to fund a useless war, and so on, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. They didn’t mean to do it, honest! The other, eerily similar party that also seems to want an imperialist police state drove them to it!

But the factual error doesn’t, alas, make the actual content of the story any more palatable.

-abs

Fudtards, the whole lot of them.

So the Speaker of the House, and both Presidential candidates, don’t care about the 4th Amendment.

Pelosi’s statement says she swore an oath to protect and defend the country. But she didn’t — the Congressional oath is to support and defend the Constitution.

An oath she violated today.

You’re wrong.

The law is that if the government wants telecoms to give up phone records or conversations, they need to go to a judge and get a warrant.

“what does a company that wants to keep from the blow of the law do?”

Obey the law!

While I’m also deeply concerned about the lack of oversight warrantless wiretaps poses, I don’t feel the people to be held responsible are the telecoms. The immunity makes sense in a way: even if what the president did was wrong, blaming the telcos for being cooperative is bad business. They’re critical infrastucture, and suing them to the brink of collapse would make them less likely to assist anyone in even lawful efforts. Besides, they’re smeared in the eyes of the public, and you can’t keep something secret when everyone knows about it. Klein blew the cover on it, and that was all that needed to be done.

Haven’t politicians have always pardoned people who get caught up in their dirty dealings, usually right before they take the fall for it themselves?

As for the class-action allegation of American-to-American surveillance: Where’s the proof? You can’t assume it must be true simply because the government refuses to talk about it: Proving something is NOT true can give away sensitive details about the operation.

The EFF’s argument of massive surveillance is extremely misleading: Were billions of conversations funneled to the NSA? I don’t think so. Backbone fiber was split to the NSA equipment, but how much traffic does it actually pay attention to? See above about electronic surveillance of multiplexed traffic, even when you do have a warrant. My cable modem has a shared cable split to it, and see’s my neighborhood’s packets. Am I wiretapping them? Can the members of the class-action suit verify they were actual surveillance targets?

To catbeller and others who are claiming this is all about political blackmail: The people who would do that never have and never will get a warrant. Not before Nixon, not after, never. It’s always been a dirty game, and you don’t need a secret room full of surveillance gear to play it.

It’s hard to believe it’s over now.

Yes, and that’s why the Bush administration should be investigated and charged with failing to do just that. But if I’m AT&T, and someone from the Bush administration, Homeland Security, FBI, etc., comes without a warrant, it should not be incumbent on me to decline to co-operate with the government.

It would be like, if the police knock at my door without a warrant and ask to search the place, and I accede, and they find evidence of a crime my neighbor has committed, I haven’t violated his rights by allowing the search. It’s entirely within my purview to cooperate with a government agency, which often I would be willing to do.

Now obviously that’s not a true analogy, because I’m not a phone company. A phone company has to maintain privacy of its users by FCC rules, yes? So what happens when the flip side happens? An agency gets the proper paperwork, but the phone company declines to give over the information because it’s worried about prosecution later on.

“Obey the law!”

And if the law says two contradictory things?

You do live somewhere where you can DO all that.
In China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and many other countries you would be grabbed, questioned, tortured and killed for doing any of that. So? What are you doing?

to quote Jello:

Finally got to Washington in the middle of the night
I couldn’t wait
I headed straight for the Capitol Mall
My heart began to pound
Yahoo! It really exists
The American International Pictures logo

I looked up at that Capitol Building
Couldn’t help but wonder why
I felt like saying “Hello, old friend”

Walked up the hill to touch it
Then I unzipped my pants
And pissed on it when nobody was looking