The truth about telecom amnesty (Greenwald interviews EFF)

[struggle4progress]

... GG: The lawsuit you originally brought was against only AT&T and not against the Bush administration or any government officials. Is that correct?

CC: Yes. We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government ...

As a result of this, Congress very wisely decided that it wasn't sufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carries not to participate in illegal surveillance.

So they are strictly forbidden from handing over your communications and communications records to the Government without proper legal process ...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/17/amnesty/index.html
via http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/10/20/1034218.shtml

[TexasBushwhacker]

1. I wonder if all telecoms will be investigated

I worked for a cell phone company (PrimeCo) for a few months back in 1997. I know that they allowed someone from the government (FBI?) to do surveillance without any kind of warrant or oversight. I asked my boss one time if they had a warrant, and he said something like "No. But if I didn't let them in there, they'd just come back with one." He and most of the engineers were ex-military.