The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want you to know about

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: September 22, 2007 7:50:19 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The secret lobbying campaign your phone  
company doesn't want you to know about

[Note:  This item comes from reader Robert Berger.  DLH]

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: September 22, 2007 4:36:13 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, David Farber  
<dave () farber net>
Subject: The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want  
you to know about

[I hope everyone has written their Congressmen to not dare give  
immunity to these anti-freedom activities! -Rob]

Case Dismissed?
The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want you to  
know about

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek Updated: 4:00 a.m. PT Sept 20, 2007
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884696/site/newsweek/>

Sept. 20, 2007 - The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies,  
working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive  
lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping  
out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S.  
intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs.

The campaign—which involves some of Washington's most prominent  
lobbying and law firms—has taken on new urgency in recent weeks  
because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is  
poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to  
terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community—or  
risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over  
personal information about their customers to the government without  
a judicial warrant.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say the U.S. intelligence community is  
in a near-panic about this,” said one communications industry lawyer  
familiar with the debate who asked not to be publicly identified  
because of the sensitivity surrounding the issue.

But critics say the language proposed by the White House—drafted in  
close cooperation with the industry officials—is so extraordinarily  
broad that it would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom  
actions related to the surveillance program. Its practical effect,  
they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state  
inquires into how the companies have assisted the government in  
eavesdropping on the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents in  
the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.

“It’s clear the goal is to kill our case," said Cindy Cohn, legal  
director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based  
privacy group that filed the main lawsuit against the telecoms after  
The New York Times first disclosed, in December 2005, that President  
Bush had approved a secret program to monitor the phone conversations  
of U.S. residents without first seeking judicial warrants. The White  
House subsequently confirmed that it had authorized the National  
Security Agency to conduct what it called a “terrorist surveillance  
program” aimed at communications between suspected terrorists  
overseas and individuals inside the United States. But the  
administration has also intervened, unsuccessfully so far, to try to  
block the lawsuit from proceeding and has consistently refused to  
discuss any details about the extent of the program—rebuffing  
repeated congressional requests for key legal memos about it.

<snip>

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