On 08/16/2015 09:47 AM, Shelley wrote:
Nothing we didn't know or expect, just more confirmation/proof that AT&T & Verizon are all too eager to get on their knees for the NSA.
https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts-extreme-willing...
Also worth a look: how they connected the dots, supporting documents. https://www.propublica.org/article/a-trail-of-evidence-leading-to-atts-partn...
(Apologies for not including the article text, I'm currently mobile.)
-S
Institute for Public Accuracy has issued a press release from AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein. Klein was the AT&T technician who blew the whistle on AT&T’s cooperation with the NSA in 2006. http://www.accuracy.org/release/att-whistleblower-on-companys-partnership-wi...
“The documents prove I was right, and if a court had been willing to allow the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit against AT&T to go forward, we would have won. But Congress knowingly put a retroactive pseudo-‘legal’ stamp on the violations of law and the Constitution, and the courts accepted it. Both parties are to blame, all three branches of government are culpable.
“I’d gotten my story out through the New York Times in April 2006 after the Los Angeles Times had killed it. The editor who killed the story was Dean Baquet — who is now executive editor at the New York Times.
“Obama had campaigned against immunizing the telcos, but by the time the vote happened in 2008, he had sewn up the nomination and switched sides. It was a betrayal even before he got to the White House.
“The entire congressional leadership pushed this, especially the ‘gang of eight’ who were the ones who actually knew what the immunity was about. My own senator, Dianne Feinstein, who was on the intelligence committee, wouldn’t even speak with me, she was all about covering up for the NSA.
“Many in congress who voted for the immunity blindly voted to immunize a crime details of which they didn’t know or didn’t want to know.
“It wasn’t just AT&T of course, it was that the Bush administration had brazenly violated FISA and of course the Constitution. They didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, which is why they needed the immunity.”
There's more, mostly a sitrep, on site. RR