If You're Not Listening To Randi...You Should Be

[orleans]

discuss:

"New Presidential Memorandum Permits Intelligence Director To Authorize Telcos To Lie Without Violating Securities Law
In recent days, AT&T, Bell South and Verizon have all issued statements denying that they’ve handed over phone records to the NSA, as reported by USA today.

There are three possibilities:

1) The USA Today story is inaccurate;

2) The telcos left enough wiggle room in the statements that both the USA Today story and their statements are accurate; or

3) The statements from the telcos are inaccurate.

Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law. But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))

There is no evidence that this executive order has been used by John Negroponte with respect to the telcos. Of course, if it was used, we wouldn’t know about it.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to the May 5 document as an “executive order.” It is a presidential memorandum.

UPDATE II: Greg Sargent unpacks the Verizon and Bell South denials. "

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/new-executive-order/

and now...who was "briefed" on nsa spying/arlen & orin excerpts

[wryter2000]

1. Even CBS said the telcos were "parsing" their words carefully

The night the telcos denied what they'd let stand for days, the CBS Evening News said they were parsing the words of their denials. Even CBS didn't buy them.

[johnnypneumatic]

2. note from Bush: "It's ok to lie, we do it all the time..."

"and send me more money"

[Javaman]

3. AT&T formly SBC is a huge, gigantic repuke contributor...

are we the least surprised at their faigned indignation?

I will never ever believe a single thing that comes out of this WH.

to quote the talking heads: "we got computers, we're taping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed".

Smoke and mirrors folks, nothing more than that.

hey bush*, can you hear me now??????

fucktard*.

[DearAbby]

4. Just heard on Shultz show that Bell South

is DEMANDING USA Today to retract the story. :wow: