Defending the Rule of Law
The telecom companies are declaring they are not complicit in the Bush-Cheney administration’s warrantless surveillance programs because they acted at the request of the government and were doing their patriotic duty to assist in Bush’s Global War on Terror.
Phone Utilities Won’t Give Details About Eavesdropping
Verizon said in its response [to Congress] that the burden should be on the government, not the phone companies, to establish that a request was proper and lawful.
“Such an approach is vital to ensure that providers are able to respond quickly to request for assistance,” Verizon said. “Placing the onus on the provider to determine whether the government is acting within the scope of its authority would inevitably slow lawful efforts to protect the public.”
Verizon and the other companies have acknowledged that they routinely comply with what Verizon called “lawful demands” for call records and access to phone lines. In 2006, the Verizon letter said, it received 88,000 such requests, about 34,000 from federal officials and 54,000 from state and local officials. Through September of this year, it received 24,000 federal requests and 37,000 state and local requests.
Well, in Dick Cheney’s vernacular, that’s just pure hogwash. I call it conspiracy in addition to committing the actual crimes themselves. Take a look at the statutes Glenn Greenwald cited that renders their patriotic defense null and void.
[Some] of our country’s richest, largest, most powerful and most well-connected corporations were caught breaking laws that have been in place for decades, such as Section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934, which provides that “[e]very telecommunications carrier has a duty to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information of . . . customers.” 18 U.S.C. 2511 makes warrantless eavesdropping a felony; 18 U.S.C. 2702 requires that any “entity providing an electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity the contents of a communication” without a court order; and 18 U.S.C. 2520 provides for civil damages for any violations.
There are 550 lawmakers in Washington, D.C. and only one of them — Chris Dodd — appears to have a working knowledge of the law, the motivation to defend it or just simply research the matter.
Who is the real patriot? Chris Dodd or the telecom companies?
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