What does immunity for the telecoms REALLY mean?

[ck4829]

Bush is really gunning for this.

I've been wondering though, having a deputized telecom that has immunity could mean you could get away with a lot of stuff.

Could this mean they could get away with wiretapping a minority group, normally this would get them on some sort of discrimination charge, would they be able to get away with it if they get immunity?

How about if a political opponent is 'accidentally' wiretapped, would this also mean that the telecoms could get off free?

And if you think that the Bush Administration is only wiretapping terrorists, then you need to wake up. People the Administration doesn't like HAVE been wiretapped before, such as Mohamed ElBaradei.

No amnesty for AT&T.

[Demeter]

1. It Means They Did Something REALLY Illegal and Unforgivable

and that it threatens the foundations of the nation and the government. Therefore, immunity must not be granted to Bush or the telecoms.

[Richard Steele]

2. Exactly. nm

[Echo In Light]

3. Masses are swept to find individuals and those "minority groups" you mention

No different than how people with unfavorable views have mysteriously turned up on the "no fly" list. Corporatism/fascism: secretive, centralized corporate/state nexus. Power out of the hands of citizens, of oversight, accountability, etc. Of course the the telecoms will be given immunity. Would you really expect otherwise?

[underpants]

4. It is illegal it WAS illegal and if they didn't know they should have

and truth be told they knew damned well it was illegal and did it anyway.

Here is the point about the wiretapping that no one will mention-it's not just that they did it what we really need to know is WHO they did it too. You think it is any coincidence that they were able to keep every single member of their party in both house completely (almost per person per vote) in line? You think that even the corporate press is really THAT compliant? Same thing for the Democrats...no it was either dirt they digged up or (and this is some actually real "smarts" by Rove) the THREAT of dirt that they might have.

That is what the wiretapping was used for. They have no policy apparatus and never have, they have no planning and never have, all they have is politics. Period.

[Bonhomme Richard]

5. It means that the next time the government asked a corporation

to do something illegal they will be more inclined to go along. Resistance is futile and we will cover your ass anyway.

[karynnj]

6. Here is what Senator Kerry said when explaining why he was against the intelligence committee bill

The Judiciary bill also safeguards Americans against widespread warrantless spying. It reaffirms that FISA is the exclusive statutory authority for conducting foreign intelligence surveillance, prohibits limitless “fishing expeditions” — so-called “bulk collection” of all communications between the United States and overseas, and ensures that the government cannot eavesdrop on Americans under the guise of targeting foreigners — what is known as “reverse targeting.”

Most importantly, unlike the Intelligence bill, the Judiciary bill does not provide retroactive amnesty to telecommunications providers that were complicit in the Administration’s warrantless spying program.I fear this Administration is deliberately stonewalling to avoid an adverse court decision finding its surveillance program to be unconstitutional. It is seeking political security in the name of national security.

The heart of the matter is that allowing Americans their day in court — introducing some kind of accountability, affording some kind of objective authority (in lieu of the Bush Administration) to adjudicate competing claims — will shed much-needed light on the Administration’s secret surveillance program.

If the lawsuits are shielded by Congress, the courts may never rule on whether the Administration’s surveillance activities were lawful. We must hold the Administration to account. And an impartial court of law insulated from political pressure is the most appropriate setting in which to receive a fair hearing.
(December 17th post on http://www.johnkerry.com/blog)
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The immunity is RETROACTIVE - so it's only for laws that were already broken. Note the first paragrap. I read this as saying the intelligence bill does not preclude fishing expeditions going forward.

Kerry is cautious in pronouncements of this type, as befits a Senator, but what he is saying is that the immunity is really to protect Bush, not just the telecos.

[NightWatcher]

7. it goes beyond all this and is a major facet of Total Information Awareness

or "Basketball" as DARPA is now calling it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/16741/?a=f

In April, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the advocacy organization for citizens' digital rights, filed evidence to support its class-action lawsuit alleging that telecom giant AT&T gave the National Security Agency (NSA), the ultra-secret U.S. agency that's the world's largest espionage organization, unfettered access to Americans' telephone and Internet communications. The lawsuit is one more episode in the public controversy that erupted in December 2005, when the New York Times revealed that, following September 11, President Bush authorized a far-reaching NSA surveillance program that included warrantless electronic eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mails of individuals within the United States.

Washington's lawmakers ostensibly killed the TIA project in Section 8131 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal 2004. But legislators wrote a classified annex to that document which preserved funding for TIA's component technologies, if they were transferred to other government agencies, say sources who have seen the document, according to reports first published in The National Journal. Congress did stipulate that those technologies should only be used for military or foreign intelligence purposes against non-U.S. citizens. Still, while those component projects' names were changed, their funding remained intact, sometimes under the same contracts.

Thus, two principal components of the overall TIA project have migrated to the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA), which is housed somewhere among the 60-odd buildings of "Crypto City," as NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, MD, is nicknamed. One of the TIA components that ARDA acquired, the Information Awareness Prototype System, was the core architecture that would have integrated all the information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. According to The National Journal, it was renamed "Basketball." The other, Genoa II, used information technologies to help analysts and decision makers anticipate and pre-empt terrorist attacks. It was renamed "Topsail."

[ThomWV]

8. Immunity is a wall which prevents investigation, so we'll never know the extent of what has been don