FISA

Yes, but the telecom companies knew that following the government order's meant breaking the law.

*government's

and the FISA court, created after the Church-Pike hearings of the seventies, has the most liberal arrangement possible; it rarely turns down requests for wiretaps. If the White House had a problem and wanted to make a case for adjustments in a post 9-11 world, it could have done so in good faith – and educated a lot of citizens as to why this system was instituted in the first place. Instead it broke the law.

This, like the Iran part of the Iran-Contra scandal, is a classic case of good intentions colliding with settled law.

my question isn't about the white house breaking the law - which seems pretty clear - but about the "retroactive immunity for telecoms" bit, which is the part which seems to have everyone so wound up

"son i'm makin you a deputy. here's a gun. now shoot that son of a bitch"

*BANG*

"i'm bookin you for murder, son"

TH, as an analogy, let's recast your hypothetical thusly:

say you're a landlord. in the wake of sep 11, the us government comes to you and goes "we need you to enter this person's apartment and retrieve some documents and videotapes for us, cause we think they might be planning to blow up your mom." and well, you do it. why? the federal government's telling you to. they say terrorists might be blowing up your mom. and they say, hey it's cool. we're the government. i know this contravenes a few things but WE say it's OK.

This is, under any understanding of the law with which I'm familiar, burglary on the part of the landlord, and a clear attempt to obtain evidence without a warrant on the part of the government. It's not like the landlord had a good-faith expectation that the law wouldn't apply, and neither, in this case, did the telecoms.

it seem sort of cheeky to turn around and prosecute the phone companies for just obeying orders from the government

This is the problem here, and cheek has nothing to do with it. The government has neither the power or authority to compel you to break the law. "All we did was obey an order to do something illegal" is never going to -- or at least should never -- fly, regardless of who occupies the White House. That's the whole concept of the rule of law.

but surely the white house convinced them that it WAS legal? and/or threatened consequences if they didn't comply?

the other aspect of this is that people with evidence that they were spied on (or a reasonable assumption - e.g. let's say a U.S. citizen Islamic scholar who frequently talks to people overseas on the phone) want to find out what happened. since any information from the government is behind a wall of "national security - highly classified" they filed suit against the other parties involved, the telecoms. now that road will be cut off.

but surely the white house convinced them that it WAS legal? and/or threatened consequences if they didn't comply?

the telecom companies can afford better lawyers.

If they can't order you to break the law, they certainly can't threaten you into breaking the law. That's ridiculous.

but surely the white house convinced them that it WAS legal?

Assuming that the general counsel and legal staff of these companies are not comprised entirely of the cast of Hee-Haw, then no.

I can't really see any US company, in the immediate wake of Sept. 11, refusing any kind of request from the Government, however outrageous, merely on the grounds that it was illegal.

Firstly I'd imagine the Governement would say, "We're in charge now, dog! We'll look after you",a promise they would now appear to have kept.
Secondly; I hazard a guess the patriotism meme probably wouldn't allow refusal. Your country appears to be under attack and you're not going to do whatever your Government asks for you to do in order to help, it says, to defend it? Being seen to be patriotic would be more important than being right at this point, I'd expect.
And finally; I suspect that all the Government would have to do would be to point out that that company's obvious unAmericanism in refusing the request at such a time of need might well be leaked to the domestic press (somehow!) and this would look really,really bad and maybe even help put the company out of business (or severely reduce its profits in the US market)

Although I'm a Brit, so what would I know? Brits would probably refuse to cooperate out of sheer bloodymindedness.

I can't really see any US company, in the immediate wake of Sept. 11, refusing any kind of request from the Government, however outrageous

Colonel Kurtz for President

Brits are going to get a lot more 'polite warnings' from the BPI over the next few weeks re piracy. BPI still talking about taking ISPs who don't give them customer IP details to court.

Stone Monkey has taken the words right out of my mouth!

the other aspect of this is that people with evidence that they were spied on (or a reasonable assumption - e.g. let's say a U.S. citizen Islamic scholar who frequently talks to people overseas on the phone) want to find out what happened. since any information from the government is behind a wall of "national security - highly classified" they filed suit against the other parties involved, the telecoms. now that road will be cut off.

^ this seems like a much bigger problem

I think Colonel Kurtz would have gone against the government and refused to cooperate with the FISA stuff, if that's what you're suggesting.

(Slightly related: watched the first half of AN last night! Holy shit! Why did anyone try to make a Vietnam movie after this one!)

I can't really see any US company, in the immediate wake of Sept. 11, refusing any kind of request from the Government, however outrageous, merely on the grounds that it was illegal.

Qwest Communications did.

Nonetheless, the zeal to be lawbreakers, however patriotic, should not immunize them from prosecution now. I mean, I'm sure someone beat up a Sikh or two because, hey, Sept. 11, right? They should still be going to jail.

let's talk about how awesome Robert Duval is and how awesome the scene with the bunnies in the helicopter is

if robert duval ordered me to kill some bunnies i would stand my ground and say "no sir, killing bunnies contravenes the uniform code of military justice"

Jesus, the idea of "Sept. 11" being a get-out-of-jail-free card because YOU JUST LOVE THIS COUNTRY SO MUCH is sickening to me. I don't want a country full of Ollie Norths thanks very much.

they weren't killing the bunnies

i thought ppl's objections to this went beyond the retroactive immunity and into issues of violating the constitution

Tracer, you need to read a few Greenwald columns. He's made the case clearly and carefully since December 2005.

was robert duval smoking them? i can remember like 0 about that movie.

alfred - what is his case?

Pancakes, i don't think the telecoms illegally spied on people through any kind of patriotic zeal, i think they illegally spied on people because they were intimidated to do so by the government and assured they wouldn't be held responsible.

it's quite easy to say now that they shouldn't have gone along with it but Stone Monkey's assessment of the climate at the time seems irrefutable.

Any number of posts over the years, but this is a good summation.

dumb thread

somebody already noted this but qwest said "uh guyz can we see a letter from FISA" and then told them to gtfo, which is what they all should have done

while you may not understand that this shit was illegal, telecoms have multi-million dollar legal departments who are in the business of making sure companies don't break the law even if somebody tells them its cool

Pancakes, i don't think the telecoms illegally spied on people through any kind of patriotic zeal, i think they illegally spied on people because they were intimidated to do so by the government and assured they wouldn't be held responsible.

Whichever it was, they should all now be behind bars, and that includes whatever members of the Executive Branch were involved in this. In common parlance, the situation you've described is called "a criminal conspiracy."

What's more, and as looking back through Greenwald's archives will show, this wiretapping stuff began before 9/11, and some of it was apparently perpetrated against groups on the GOP's enemies list. But, hey, now we'll never know, huh?

it's quite easy to say now that they shouldn't have gone along with it but Stone Monkey's assessment of the climate at the time seems irrefutable.

That doesn't make it right.

of course it doesn't! but it mitigates the shit out of it.

telecoms have multi-million dollar legal departments who are in the business of making sure companies don't break the law even if somebody tells them its cool

this wasn't "somebody", it was the federal government!

the federal government is not, despite Hobbes, Leviathan.

Like hell it mitigates the shit out of it. No more so than the fact that US hostages were being held in the Middle East mitigates the Reagan Administration breaking the law in selling arms to the contras.

Jesus fucking christ where is Tombot? I can't work up the proper level of anger and misanthropy to respond properly here.

watched the first half of AN last night! Holy shit! Why did anyone try to make a Vietnam movie after this one!

Because of the second half.

No more so than the fact that US hostages were being held in the Middle East mitigates the Reagan Administration breaking the law in selling arms to the contras.

I alluded to this upthread. The Reagan administration made things worse by instigating the illegal Contra funding after Congress passed a law banning, and AFTER the CIA mined international waters around Nicaragua.

this wasn't "somebody", it was the federal government!

the FISA deal still allows people to sue the feds if they like

Because of the second half.

Oh shit. Really? ;___;

jesus christ you guys, i finally googled a f*cking "about.com" link that told me more than what's being said on this thread. apparently the top telcos met regularly and frequently with the bush adminstration, pre-9/11, and were competing with each other for multimillion dollar contracts involving illegal domestic spying. that's all i really needed to know. thanks, about.com!

haha welcome to ILE 2008, Tracer

retroactive immunity is fucking chump shit and obama said he was against that part of the bill passed in the house, or so I thought

I'm doing my best not to pay that much attention when glenn greenwald and markos moulitsas are both trying to piss on the candidate at the same time

and yeah there were tremendous amounts of money involved.
i personally know a former nsa counter-terror shuffler who got a contracting position with verizon. wonder what paid his bills.

Greenwald has NOT pissed on Obama, and has said so.

uh

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/21/obama/

What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it. What's more, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, and yet he's supporting it anyway. Anyone who sugarcoats or justifies that is doing a real disservice to their claimed political values and to the truth.

so, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, why is he doing it?

ok ok great
well there you go
we're all fucked no matter what, let's all move to canada, thanks dr morbius for knowing all along

btw tracer never send me an e-mail again unless you want me to read it DUN DUN DUNNNN

uh, Mr. Que, did you read the next paragraph?

Having said all of that, the other extreme -- declaring that Obama is now Evil Incarnate, no better than John McCain, etc. etc. -- is no better. Obama is a politician running for political office, driven by all the standard, pedestrian impulses of most other people who seek and crave political power. It's nothing more or less than that, and it is just as imperative today as it was yesterday that the sickly right-wing faction be permanently removed from power and that there is never any such thing as the John McCain Administration (as one commenter ironically noted yesterday, at the very least, Obama is far more likely to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will rule that the bill Obama supports is patently unconstitutional).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Fm7wswv98

so he pissed on Obama and then took it back, is that what you're saying?

i love it when lawyers-turned-bloggers tell me how to use their posts in the voting booth

R. Kelly should take some tips from this guy.

tbqh my position on this is way left of where obama is but any disgust with his individual position regarding this bill as he runs for commander in chief is well displaced by a far more thoroughly jaded outlook on the dem majorities in both houses going back many months now, and yeah, telecom immunity (administration immunity) is easily the one issue here I find most upsetting as in "fuck you, you spineless, short-sighted, idiot J. Edgar fucking shit swine" if you allow it to pass, but this is America and I was born here and haha oh well our democracy is a failed experiment.

let's not get Gore Vidal into this.

for all I know somebody disclosed to somebody else the actual scope and $$$ and willy-nilliness of the telecom hit program and/or pointed out that somebody in gitmo on no charges was put there basically because of it and a smoky-room meeting determined that the US Government, under any administration, would have to wait at least 20 years before admitting that we have been running MI-5/Stasi shit on citizens

not that any journalist still working here would ever bother to explore such a concept, since it's more fun to just fill your space and time with endless fawning and bitching, who needs to KNOW anything about what's going down

it's funny how little the "insider" journalists actually know, about anything

they know what their "insider" buddies want them to
you know even seymour hersh only writes about stuff when his contacts decide to use him as an alternative to actual whistleblowing

rof elz: Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court rules

what a wonderful time for my account to have been suspended

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/202676.php

thanks gabbneb, I was wondering what TPM Reader JP's expert analysis of this issue was going to be

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barack-obama/my-position-on-fisa_b_110789.html

How would Wapo know how "generally" robust the FISA process is or isn't? This is one of the first times the public has seen under the hood of a FISA application. https://t.co/WxFbwRei8B

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 17, 2019

ugh please