August 14, 2008 4:00 AM PDT
Wanted: Writers for D.C. tech lobby group, secrecy mandatory
Mel King is a Boston-area community organizer locally famous for a housing sit-in, an almost-successful mayoral campaign, and the South End Technology Center, which provides low-cost computer training.
King, born in 1928, has long been a critic of telecommunications companies and an advocate of strict Net neutrality laws. He participated in an activists' "technology convening" in 2006 that fretted "companies who own the 'pipes' will control who gets on and what they can say." He joined a pro-Net neutrality coalition that opposed federal legislation backed by broadband providers.
Excerpt from a pro-Comcast, anti-Net neutrality op-ed in the Harvard Crimson newspaper supposedly written by Boston activist Mel King. To see the full article, click on the image.
Yet King placed his name on an opinion article in the Harvard Crimson in March that took the opposite position. It stated, "Most experts agree that broadband providers should be allowed to reasonably manage their networks," and it poked fun at the "idea that broadband networks should blindly treat each bit of information on the Internet equally."
July 11th, 2008
This Wednesday, the Senate followed the House in caving to White House fear-mongering by passing an unconstitutional overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) dangerously expands the president’s warrantless wiretapping powers far beyond what the Constitution allows. Perhaps even more controversially, the FAA also contains provisions intended by the Administration to grant retroactive immunity from civil suits to the telecommunications companies that colluded in the president’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
Despite the steadfast opposition to an immediate grant of telecom immunity by more than 40 Senators including the Majority Leader—and the passion and eloquence in opposition of Senators Dodd, Feingold, Kennedy and Leahy in particular—EFF’s mission to hold the phone companies accountable for violating the privacy of millions of Americans received an admittedly serious set-back with the FAA’s passage.
The Administration certainly hopes that the immunity provisions in the FAA will aid in the cover-up of its illegal behavior, by definitively putting an end to lawsuits such as EFF’s case against AT&T and avoiding a clear legal ruling that the president’s warrantless surveillance program—and the telecoms’ participation in it—violated FISA and the Fourth Amendment.
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7-9-08 Bandwidth
July 9th, 2008
Senate Joins House in Caving to White House Immunity Demands
Telecoms Let Off the Hook for Illegal Spying - For Now
Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act, broadly expanding the president's warrantless surveillance authority and unconstitutionally granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program. The House of Representatives passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly.
"It is an immeasurable tragedy that just after its return from the Fourth of July holiday, the Senate has chosen to pass a bill that betrays the spirit of 1776 by radically expanding the president's spying powers and granting immunity to the companies that colluded in his illegal surveillance program," said Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "This so-called compromise bill represents a shameful capitulation to the overreaching demands of an imperial president. As Senator Leahy put it in yesterday's debate, the retroactive immunity provision of the bill upends the scales of justice and makes Congress and the courts handmaidens to the White House's cover-up of its illegal surveillance program."
The FISA Amendments Act won passage after several amendments intended to remove or modify the bill's immunity provision failed to pass. One amendment, offered by Senator Christopher Dodd, would have stripped immunity from the bill altogether. Another, introduced by Senator Jeff Bingaman, would have stayed the pending cases against the telecoms and delayed the implementation of the immunity provision until the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice and other U.S. government intelligence agencies finished their investigation into the spying program, thereby preventing Congress from granting immunity in the dark.
--MORE--
EFF to challenge new FISA law
ACLU Announces Legal Challenge To FISA Law To Follow President’s Signature
Appeal to American NSA Officers: Join Us
Goodbye rule of law.
Related
Roll call on Amendments to H.R.6304 Stripping immunity failed 32-66. Full FISA vote around 2:15 p.m est
Inconvenient To Say Bush Committed A Felony With His Wiretapping Program: Constitutional Expert
Living in Fear of Our Government
Strangebedfellows: The left and the right are uniting... against the Democrats who gave in to Bush's FISA "compromise"
US Government Censors Declaration of Independence: The Declaration talks about the necessity "to dissolve the political bonds." About "unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Most radically of all it says "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT, and to institute new government..."
Jul 9, 1:37 PM EDT
Senate commits to shielding telecoms from suits
By PAMELA HESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Wednesday affirmed its intention to protect from civil lawsuits telecom companies that helped the government wiretap Americans without court authorization after the Sept. 11 attacks.
It turned back three amendments that were offered during final debate on a bill that overhauls the rules on secret government eavesdropping.
The votes suggest the surveillance bill will pass by an easy margin later Wednesday, and signal an end to almost a year of wrangling between the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, and Congress and the White House over the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
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Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Why is the American political establishment so keen on allowing Bush to grant immunity to telecommunications company wrongdoers who broke the law in helping Bush to fight Bibi's 'war on terror' by running roughshod over the rights of Americans? Even Obama, whose instincts seem top notch, refuses to take what appears to be the obvious politically appropriate position, infuriating many of his core supporters. Could it be because the the American political establishment is afraid that telecom executives, put on trial, will sing a sorry tune in their defense concerning American government foreknowledge of September 11? From the NYT (my emphasis in red):"The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings.
The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, also asserts in the filings that the agency retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative outsourcing contracts.
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Nancy Soderberg was deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. Today, she has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty. The entire Op-Ed is just a regurgitation of the same trite, vague talking points which the political elite are using to justify this bill, accompanied by the standard invocations of "National Security" which our Foreign Policy elite condescendingly toss around to justify whatever policy they're claiming is necessary to protect us. But it's the language that she uses -- and the brazenness of the lying (and that's what it is) to justify this bill -- that's notable here.
It's notable because the political establishment is not only about to pass a patently corrupt bill, but worse, are spouting -- on a very bipartisan basis -- completely deceitful claims to obscure what they're really doing. This is what Soderberg says is what happened:
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Senator Bingaman's Immunity Amendment: Congress Should Know What It is Immunizing
Barack Obama, FISA, and Social Networks
by Mike Stark :: Filed Under U.S. Domestic Issues :: June 28th, 2008 @ 10:06 pm EST
I received an email last Thursday afternoon; a friend wrote to tell me someone had created a group on Barack Obama's website for the purposes of asking him to oppose the FISA legislation pending in the Senate.
Several months ago, Obama promised that he would support the filibuster of any legislation that granted immunity to telcos that illegally wiretapped American's communications at the behest of Alberto Gonzalez and Dick Cheney.
Just last week, Obama flip-flopped and sold the Constitution for 30 shekels. With the primary over, he's apparently made the calculation that he can afford to betray the people that supported him at least partially based on the premise that he'd stand up to the old politics of fear and false choices. He decided that he was going to support the current package of legislation that not only offers telco immunity, but grants unprecedented authority to the executive by removing critical checks and balances.
Meanwhile, Obama has not amended or retracted other campaign promises. For example, he promises a more open and connected government:
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June 26th, 2008
Trevor Lyman of Break the Matrix.com discusses the strange bedfellows project forming alliances with Glenn Greenwald and other prominent voices to stop the retroactive immunity that Congress is trying to give to the telecom industry for their crimes against Americans and hopes that going forward they will be able to continue to combine their influence to save the Bill Of Rights.
MP3 here. (13:16)
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Obama: Immunity not that important. Won't support filibuster
Election 2008 June 24, 2008
Obama's Secret Digital Weapon
Blue State helped create the Web machine that brought in the bucks and built the buzz. Now it's looking to sign up more corporate clients
by Tom Lowry
Since Senator Barack Obama announced that he would forgo public financing for his Presidential bid, even more is being made of his campaign's prowess at raising record sums on the Web. Obama seems to have an almost magical ability to generate a spontaneous upwelling of political and financial support.
In fact, the presumed Democratic nominee has a secret weapon. It's a small, obscure firm called Blue State Digital, a market research-New Media hybrid that has played an instrumental role in fostering Obamamania. The campaign declined to discuss Blue State, but the firm says its handiwork and technology can be seen in the more than $200 million Obama has raised online, the 2 million phone calls made on the candidate's behalf, and in barackobama.com's social network of 850,000 users, who have organized 50,000 campaign events.
Besides Obama, Blue State has attracted more than 100 clients, including such widely known corporate names as AT&T (T) and Stonyfield Farm. There is also talk that the firm could continue playing a role as a contractor in an Obama White House. "Blue State is using technology to give people a chance to become involved, whether it's a voter or a customer," says film marketer Lisa Smithline. While director of creative marketing at independent film company Focus Features in 2006, Smithline hired Blue State to promote the Iraq war documentary The Ground Truth through a vigorous Web campaign that generated 500 screenings in churches and community centers. "They cross over and really reach those who have never been reached before," she says.
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Adelphia founder and son's prison terms reduced
By Emily Chasan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge reduced the prison sentences of Adelphia founder John Rigas and his son Timothy after an appeals court threw out one count of their convictions.
The prison sentence of John Rigas, 83, was reduced to 12 years from 15 years, and the sentence of Timothy Rigas, 52, who served as the former chief financial officer at Adelphia, was reduced to 17 years from 20 years, prosecutors said, citing an opinion from U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand.
The Rigases plan to appeal the ruling immediately, saying their remaining sentences are still too long, according to a statement provided by their attorney.
--MORE--June 25th, 2008 by DAMOZEL
In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted the NSA in illegal wiretapping. Most of us have wondered what happened to change the minds of 94 Democrats. What happened between June 20 and March 14 to change 94 Democratic hearts and minds?
The answer might well be simple: money. Could it be that simple?
MAPLight.org has published a breakdown of contributions received from Telco PACS by the 94 Dems who experienced the change of heart. [Maplight.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Berkeley, California. Its search engine at MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between Money And Politics (MAP) via an unprecedented database of campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.’]
Here’s the bottom line:
--MORE--June 24, 2008
MAPLight_Logo
HOUSE DEMS WHO CHANGED THEIR VOTE TO SUPPORT FISA BILL, GIVING IMMUNITY TO TELCOS, RECEIVED, ON AVERAGE, $8,359 IN PAC CONTRIBUTIONS FROM VERIZON, AT&T, AND SPRINT
BERKELEY, CA—Last week, on June 20, the House of Representatives approved a compromise bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The bill sets new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits resulting from the government’s warrantless eavesdropping on phone calls and viewing of emails of private citizens in the U.S. Approximately 40 lawsuits have been filed with potential damages totaling in the billions of dollars.
On March 14 of this year the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped the National Security Agency carry out the illegal wiretapping program without proper warrants. Ninety-four House Democrats voted in favor of this measure--rejecting immunity--on March 14, then ‘changed’ to vote in favor of the June 20 House bill--approving immunity.
“Why did these ninety-four House members have a change of heart?” asked Daniel Newman, executive director of MAPLight.org, “Their constituents deserve answers.”
--MORE-
 TopNews | Bush praises overhaul of wiretap laws CNN - For future wiretaps, the new measure would require a special court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to approve any effort to spy on ... A Better Surveillance Law FISA Amendments Act of 2008 Bush: 'Terrorist surveillance' covered |
Related
Amnesty Bill Covers Torturers, Too; To Be Bundled With War Supplmental
Democrats, GOP agree to telecom immunity deal as well as amnesty for torture. CALL Senate switchboard: 202-224-3121. CALL House switchboard: 202-225-3121
Ari Melber
Obama Silent as Democrats Give Bush More Spying Powers
Democratic leaders in Congress are poised to grant new spying powers to President Bush and arrange retroactive amnesty for telecommunications companies accused of illegal surveillance, according to a deal announced Thursday evening. Today's New York Times describes the legislation, which the House could vote on today, as "the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years" and a "major victory" for the lame duck president. If passed, the bill would constitute the largest capitulation by Democratic leaders since winning control of Congress, an especially striking setback as Democratic voters rally around a presidential nominee who has flatly opposed Bush's spying policies -- and repeatedly promised to challenge the corruption, doubletalk and "politics of fear" that rule Washington.
Yet Barack Obama has been mostly silent as the House caved into White House demands for more surveillance power this week. He has advocated civil liberties and accountability during previous clashes over surveillance, voting against a White House spying bill in August, but Obama has sidestepped the issue this week, despite pleas from supporters. "If Obama remains missing much longer, it may be necessary to issue an Amber Alert for him," wrote Glenn Greenwald, an attorney and Salon blogger who rallied activists to raise over $115,000 in two days to run primaries against Democratic incumbents who undermine the rule of law.
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RCMP charges former CEO of Nortel Networks Frank Dunn with fraud
Dodd Fallout: GOP Senators Pushing Housing Bill Delay
The timing for Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) could not have been worse: Just as the Senate Banking Committee chairman was finalizing a bipartisan deal on legislation aiming to stem the nation's foreclosure crisis, Portfolio magazine breaks the news that he received special rates from Countrywide Financial when he refinanced homes in Washington and Connecticut in 2003.
Now, some Senate Republicans want to delay action on Dodd's foreclosure bill to examine its effects on Countrywide. From the June 18 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.):
We are also concerned with recent allegations related to Countrywide Financial, a private entity that by some estimates would receive more than $2.5 billion in benefits from this bill. We request that you delay consideration until we have adequate time to read the bill and better understand the allegations and how much Countrywide will benefit from the bill.
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