Ooops, I agreed with Democrats...

[cryowizard]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071009/pl_nm/usa_security_democrats_dc_1

I agree with Dems on this one -- there should be more oversight over our internal spying activities and there should be warrants issued. Judicial and legislative oversight would be a balance to the executive's desire to operate without any scrutiny. I hope however that cases like this would not happen when intelligence activities are reviewed by judges and lawmakers. In fact, there should be a provision covering press leaks in the new bill, with severe penalties for blabbing.

One caveat here is that I wonder why Dems have an issue giving blanket retroactive immunity to companies who provided data to the US spy agencies under the statute's current provisions. How could they not have? It's the law, or are we supposed to only follow laws selectively?

Comments

Re: Answer to your "why" question:

[mhmeln-57.livejournal.com]

i wasn't aware that there was a law authorizing the companies to disclose information to the government. i thought it was done via governmental requests / subpoenas. Am i missing something? What was the original statute?

Re: Answer to your "why" question:

[cryowizard.livejournal.com]

I was talking about this part:

>> retroactive immunity from lawsuits for U.S. telecommunication companies that cooperated in the warrantless surveillance program [that] begun after the September 11 attacks.

The warrantless surveillance program is done under PATRIOT Act, signed into law on October 26, 2001. If I understand the problem correctly, some companies complied with requests for information issued under the Act, and some didn't. Lots of these telecoms are now being sued for violating subscribers rights.

Re: Answer to your "why" question:

[mhmeln-57.livejournal.com]

i don't have the same interpretation of the problem as you do - i don't think the law provided blanket authorization for companies to provide information per requests - the law may have authorized the government to perform warrantless surveillance, but did not extend to requiring private companies to cooperate with the government. i could be mistaken - i am not up to speed on my PATRIOTism. :-)