Telco Immunity Foes Get Boost as Dem Presidential Contenders Voice Opposition

Submitted by MacRonin on October 27, 2007 - 2:15pm

Telco Immunity Foes Get Boost as Dem Presidential Contenders Voice Opposition: "

After Senator and Democratic presidential contender Christopher Dodd (Connecticut) preemptively announced last week that he would put a hold on any spying bill giving retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped with secret, government spying program, fellow Democratic Senators and candidates Joseph Biden, Barack Obama (Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (New York) announced this week they too strongly oppose immunity for companies like AT&T and Verizon that are being sued for alleged massive violations of the nation's privacy laws.

Following pressure from activist bloggers and MoveOn, Obama's camp says the Senator would support a filibuster of any bill that included immunity, while Clinton says she'd support a filibuster of the current bill, unless she sees new information that would convince her otherwise.

That high level attention thrills groups that have been suing the government and the telecoms.

'Right now we are hopeful,' said Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kevin Bankston who, in a shift for the usually D.C.-shy EFF, has been meeting with Congressional staffers 'But pressure needs to stay on.'

'The tide is turning on telecom immunity,' said Caroline Fredrickson, the legislative director for the ACLU's Washington office. 'In 2005 when the New York Times broke the story of domestic and illegal wiretapping, Congress was outraged. Now it is poised to essentially make warrantless wiretapping legal.'

Meanwhile, the next battle over the Senate measure moves to the Senate Judiciary committee, where chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and ranking Republican Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) are on record opposing immunity until they get documents from the White House that they subpoenaed. The White House has successfully avoided turning over those documents for months, but did provide some documents to the Intelligence Committee after Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) agreed to include immunity in the bill.

On Thursday, Leahy said he had spoken with White House Counsel Fred Fielding, and the White House had agreed to show some documents to Leahy and Specter only. Leahy wants all committee members to see the documents, according to a spokeswoman, and its not clear if the document offer included the detailed legal memos Leahy subpoenaed or the more narrow certifications that were given to the Intelligence committee.

Other members of the Senate Judiciary committee that are on record opposing immunity include Biden, and Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin) and Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). Feingold, who also sits on the Intelligence committee, was one of two votes against the bill when 13 other members voted to pass the bill last Thursday.

In addition to including the telco get-out-of-jail card, the Senate measure known as the FISA Amendments Act gives the intelligence agencies wide powers to order any communication service provider -- such as Google's Gmail, AOL's Skype internet calling application, Comcast's internet service and Yahoo's instant messaging service -- to open their services to wiretapping, so long as some measures are taken to focus on foreign communications.

By contrast, the version pending before the House has no immunity provisions and complicates the NSA's drive for almost unfettered access to American communications services and infrastructure by only allowing such access without a court order when the NSA is sure the communications are exclusively foreign-to-foreign.

The Senate Judiciary committee will hold a hearing on the bill on Halloween, though the witness line-up has yet to be announced. Civil libertarians would love to see telecom executives testify before Congress regarding their participation, but that's deemed highly unlikely.

Specter and Leahy wanted to do so shortly after the USA Today reported in May 2006 that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth had turned over billions of phone records of Americans' to the NSA for a massive data mining operation. The USA Today later retracted the BellSouth allegation, but the paper's key revelations were confirmed later by Congress members briefed on the program.

Leahy and Specter had series of conversations with the White House and the telecoms, but Specter says the attempts to have telecom execs testify were 'blocked' by the White House. The committee never issued subpoenas to the companies.

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(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)

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