Techno-Rant: The EFF vs. AT&T
Salon.com has an interview with Cindy Cohn, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding their lawsuit against AT&T for warrantless wiretapping. The EFF is the pre-eminent civil rights organization for the electronic age, as they deal mostly in issues of citizens' rights online. They're suing AT&T for providing information to the White House about their customers' call histories and Internet activities (with an ongoing program!), an action which is in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978:
"As a result of [the Church Committee's investigations], Congress very wisely decided that it wasn'ts ufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carriers not to participate in illegal surveillance."
And if you think this is just about suspected terrorists and their phone calls back home to Saudi Arabia, think again. The EFF has proof (authenticated by AT&T themselves) that AT&T built a secret room in their Folsom Street (San Fransisco, CA) facility explicitly for the NSA to route traffic for packet analysis. They have the technology to snoop what you're doing online and probably even replicate the pages you visit. This isn't about terrorism; this is about your civil rights being flagrantly violated under the auspices of "security." And you're not the only ones who don't understand the repercussions and implications of such surveillance. Congress has yet to call the former AT&T employee (upon whose documents, verified by AT&T again, this entire case is based) before a committee to testify.
The White House tried to stop this lawsuit (and a similar one filed by the ACLU) by invoking "state secrets," a nebulous and seldom-used loophole not officially written into law but brought in through precedent. A judge (appointed by the current President Bush) shot this argument down, so now they're trying to push through a telecom amnesty bill to retroactively provide the companies with protection from this investigation. Even though the judge has already ruled that "...no reasonable phone company in the position of AT&T could have thought that what they were being asked to do was legal...." No reasonable company could have thought that was legal.
If I may editorialize, this is evil. Our country is allowing corporations to violate the law in the name of "homeland security," while giving them carte blanche to spy on us for whatever reasons they see fit (or can later pin it on). This is America, the country that spent 45 years locked in a cold war with oppressive dictatorships that routinely engage in this activity themselves. Our government isn't even getting its hands dirty; they're letting the corporations do it for them, and likewise reap the benefits.
You think there's no benefit to knowing exactly what Joe DSL Subscriber looks at when he's at his home computer? Couple this with a "partnership" to get the e-mail past your spam filters and you're floating in junk mail while your provider's bank account overflows. 'cause they ain't gonna cut the rates for your DSL. And what if they can also sell your call history? Three calls to the home improvement store last month and somebody's getting triple the calls from those replacement window people.
I'm mad. And this time it's justifiable.
"As a result of [the Church Committee's investigations], Congress very wisely decided that it wasn'ts ufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carriers not to participate in illegal surveillance."
And if you think this is just about suspected terrorists and their phone calls back home to Saudi Arabia, think again. The EFF has proof (authenticated by AT&T themselves) that AT&T built a secret room in their Folsom Street (San Fransisco, CA) facility explicitly for the NSA to route traffic for packet analysis. They have the technology to snoop what you're doing online and probably even replicate the pages you visit. This isn't about terrorism; this is about your civil rights being flagrantly violated under the auspices of "security." And you're not the only ones who don't understand the repercussions and implications of such surveillance. Congress has yet to call the former AT&T employee (upon whose documents, verified by AT&T again, this entire case is based) before a committee to testify.
The White House tried to stop this lawsuit (and a similar one filed by the ACLU) by invoking "state secrets," a nebulous and seldom-used loophole not officially written into law but brought in through precedent. A judge (appointed by the current President Bush) shot this argument down, so now they're trying to push through a telecom amnesty bill to retroactively provide the companies with protection from this investigation. Even though the judge has already ruled that "...no reasonable phone company in the position of AT&T could have thought that what they were being asked to do was legal...." No reasonable company could have thought that was legal.
If I may editorialize, this is evil. Our country is allowing corporations to violate the law in the name of "homeland security," while giving them carte blanche to spy on us for whatever reasons they see fit (or can later pin it on). This is America, the country that spent 45 years locked in a cold war with oppressive dictatorships that routinely engage in this activity themselves. Our government isn't even getting its hands dirty; they're letting the corporations do it for them, and likewise reap the benefits.
You think there's no benefit to knowing exactly what Joe DSL Subscriber looks at when he's at his home computer? Couple this with a "partnership" to get the e-mail past your spam filters and you're floating in junk mail while your provider's bank account overflows. 'cause they ain't gonna cut the rates for your DSL. And what if they can also sell your call history? Three calls to the home improvement store last month and somebody's getting triple the calls from those replacement window people.
I'm mad. And this time it's justifiable.