Why Retroactive Amnesty for Telcos Matters

November 7, 2007

Yesterday afternoon I sat down with AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein. He’s the technician who revealed that the NSA has secret rooms for sweeping up massive amounts of electronic communications on the internet.

Klein is calling on the Senate to not grant telecommunications companies retroactive immunity. He’s also testifying to the scale of the Bush administration’s electronic surveillance:

“Everything you could imagine you use the internet for flows through these cables. It’s not only international traffic, but a huge amount of domestic traffic too.”

Watch the video of Klein talking about why he opposes retroactive immunity.

call the senate

I turn to the indefatigable Matt Browner-Hamlin for the real deal on telecom immunity.

Posted by pistonhonda
Filed in AT&T, politics

3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Why Retroactive Amnesty for Telcos Matters”

Winghunter Says:

November 8, 2007 at 2:40 am
I suggest if you expect anything at all to be private on the internet, you’re a damn fool.

Wherein, if the Bush administration isn’t using it against innocent people and merely concentrating on finding terrorists…who gives a rip??

I say go for it but then again, I’m not up to anything which might have repercussions if revealed…maybe you shouldn’t either.
pistonhonda Says:

November 9, 2007 at 4:09 am
Fred Thompson fan, “Winghunter” makes the assertion which reiterates a need for a Godwin’s Law-like name for the phenomena that in any discussion about expansions of government surveillance, the longer the discussion goes, the more likely it is that some authoritarian apologist will say “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

While the concept still doesn’t have a name, I’m frankly exhausted of destroying all those who utter the phrase, but because Fred Thompson is so repugnant, I’ll make this exception: Privacy is not about hiding a “wrong,” but about the basic human concept of liberty. In a world where your every movement is watched, it’s always easy for the watchers to abuse that info, either by defining what’s wrong (which can change rapidly), or simply by using that info to embarrass or blackmail a person — even if the actions are perfectly legitimate. With that in mind, people act very differently under constant surveillance. They are not free to be themselves — even if they’re not doing anything “wrong.” So, the answer to the question of what are you worried about is simple. It’s the loss of basic human freedom and liberty.

Winghunter, Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? (“Who watches the watchers?”). You’re retarded.
Sam Tresler Says:

November 9, 2007 at 7:53 pm
I’ll also chime in here for a second. To me the key point is what defines wrong?

Were the colonists wrong to rebel from Britain?

Today ex-prime minister Bhutto in Pakistan was put under house arrest for leaving to go to a rally. Is going to a rally wrong? If I e-mail about going to a rally, before I go, should I be worried? Did I just do something wrong?

And you know what… come to think of it I have a lot of friends, and I don’t keep track of what they do in their spare time. What if one of them is actually doing something wrong, and my name gets lodged in several hundred reports as being the person they joke with online? Is that wrong? Is having friends wrong?

I also do my banking online. I’m positive that all these ‘watchers’ are upstanding do-gooders that would never think of taking my account numbers or social security numbers and selling them to the highest bidder. The bank could do that, but they could be prosecuted, the do-gooders are lobbying congress to be held exempt from prosecustion. Good thing I don’t have to worry about these law-exempt do-gooders, as they are just to G-D honest to steal.

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