Comments on Rep. Reichert. Not Immune.

I kinda wish I was in his district so I could vote against him. I certainly don't mind voting for Adam Smith, but it's not like he's hurting for support.

Mike - Renton IS in the 8th Congressional District. That is, if you really are "of Renton". Or perhaps you used to be?

@2 Not all of it

You could move! :^)

Could someone explain to me the reasoning behind this no-immunity thing? To my mind, if the government asks a company to do something and the company complies with the government, the government should not then be allowed to turn on the company and scapegoat them for doing what the government initially asked them to do. The guilt should fall on the shoulders of the government for issuing a bad order, not on the companies for caving into the pressures of the powers that be.

The only reason I can think of NOT to give companies a "get out of jail free card" would be that the government theoretically operates under separation of powers, and it's (I think) the executive branch asking companies to do stuff and the justice branch pressing charges.

Seriously, I'm asking for some clarification. There must be something I don't know or understand.

Having an R after your name this year is not going to be fun.

More like a Scarlet Mark.

@5,

The strategy of groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation—who sued AT&T over the spying and are the cause of this provision in the bill—is to fight the expansion of Bush's surveillance powers on two fronts.

First, they're attacking legislatively, to outlaw it. Second, they want players like AT&T to be accountable for upending the 4th Amendment...so that there's a disincentive for companies to spy for the government.

You suggest that it should be on the government's shoulders, but how do you implement that idea. Really, all you can do is mandate it legislatively. Short of that, you can patch up the problem by making 4th Amendment claims against the perpetrators, in this case, AT&T.

You cannot be excused (morally or legally) from breaking the law just because you were ordered to do so by the government. Let's say that Governor Schwarzenegger ordered you to kill Sarah Connor, and you did. You would not be absolved of the crime just because it was requested by the government. The only way you would be absolved, is for a law to pass saying that killing Sarah was never a crime in the first place, or if it was a crime, then anyone who killed her gets retroactive immunity from prosecution.

The disincentive argument makes the most sense to me. There would have to be serious, painful consequences, though... a slap on the wrist won't turn this country moral.

@5,

The telecoms knew perfectly well it was illegal, most did it anyway. Qwest and Cingular (I believe) told the government to fuck off.

However much I hated my Cingular service, I'm extremely pissed that it was bought out by AT&T.

Katelyn, no offense, but were you raised in a dictatorship or police state?

Katelyn wrote:

[In] my mind, if the government asks a company to do something and the company complies with the government, the government should not then be allowed to turn on the company and scapegoat them for doing what the government initially asked them to do.

You're confusing asking with ordering. Either way, if it's illegal, nobody -- not the federal government, a police officer, drill sargent, or George Motherfucking I-declared-myself-above-the-law Bush -- has the authority to compel you to do it.

The guilt should fall on the shoulders of the government for issuing a bad order, not on the companies for caving into the pressures of the powers that be.

Okay, you were thinking of an order, not a request. No, the guilt should fall upon the shoulders of the guilty. In the United States, no government just orders people to do arbitrary things. We have laws here that define what are and are not allowed to do. The most ordering any government does is to order you to obey our laws.

There are people within our federal government doing lots of illegal things nowadays. They repeatedly lie to us to scare us into letting them break the law under the guise of protecting us. Among those illegal things is spying on Americans without warrant -- without receiving court approval after convincing the court that such action is necessary. They convinced phone companies to conspire to commit this crime by paying the phone companies. We know this because when the NSA quit paying, AT&T quit helping them do the illegal spying. Now, in order to help convince other companies to join the conspiracy in the future, the people doing all the illegal stuff want to write a law that says the illegal stuff AT&T did wasn't actually illegal after all.

Here's a great animated presentation describing the warrantless spying and retroactive immunity for telecom traitors.

If the government of the United States "asked" me to do something, I'd think long and hard about my options before I said no. And I'd feel particularly upset if I said yes, under such pressure, and then was criminally charged for saying yes. The whole system is fucked up. Holding the companies accountable for their actions is one thing, but I don't see the sense in doing that without an equal raid on the people issuing the orders.

Katelyn, no offense, but were you raised in a dictatorship or police state?

No... I was raised in the suburbs where cops are friendlier to white people and the vote goes to the politician with the most business support.

Thanks for responding, everyone. It's been helpful!

Katelyn, if some U.S. government official came to you and said, "We need you to go break into all your neighbors' homes, dig through all their desk drawers and file cabinets, photographing everything you see with this camera we'll lend you, and leave behind these bugs on their phones. It's a matter of national security. And we'll pay you a lot," would you think twice about joining the conspiracy if you knew that when a big company like AT&T did it, they lost a bundle in lawsuits as a result?

Just how long and hard would you have to think about participating in something unethical, illegal, and unconstitutional if some corrupt government official tried to bribe you into doing so?

Answer: Not very long if we establish that government officials are above the law by allowing them and private businesses to conspire to deprive us of our Constitutional protection from unreasonable search and seizure and then to later grant all co-conspirators immunity from prosecution for their crimes.