No subject

[Robert J. Berger]

<dave at farber.net>
Subject: The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want  
you to know about

[I hope everyone has written their Congressmen to not dare give  
immunity to these anti-freedom activities! -Rob]

Case Dismissed?
The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want you to  
know about

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek Updated: 4:00 a.m. PT Sept 20, 2007
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884696/site/newsweek/>

Sept. 20, 2007 - The nationbs biggest telecommunications companies,  
working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive  
lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping  
out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S.  
intelligence communitybs warrantless surveillance programs.

The campaignbwhich involves some of Washington's most prominent  
lobbying and law firmsbhas taken on new urgency in recent weeks  
because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is  
poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to  
terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence communitybor  
risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over  
personal information about their customers to the government without  
a judicial warrant.

bItbs not an exaggeration to say the U.S. intelligence community is  
in a near-panic about this,b said one communications industry lawyer  
familiar with the debate who asked not to be publicly identified  
because of the sensitivity surrounding the issue.

But critics say the language proposed by the White Housebdrafted in  
close cooperation with the industry officialsbis so extraordinarily  
broad that it would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom  
actions related to the surveillance program. Its practical effect,  
they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state  
inquires into how the companies have assisted the government in  
eavesdropping on the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents in  
the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.

bItbs clear the goal is to kill our case," said Cindy Cohn, legal  
director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based  
privacy group that filed the main lawsuit against the telecoms after  
The New York Times first disclosed, in December 2005, that President  
Bush had approved a secret program to monitor the phone conversations  
of U.S. residents without first seeking judicial warrants. The White  
House subsequently confirmed that it had authorized the National  
Security Agency to conduct what it called a bterrorist surveillance  
programb aimed at communications between suspected terrorists  
overseas and individuals inside the United States. But the  
administration has also intervened, unsuccessfully so far, to try to  
block the lawsuit from proceeding and has consistently refused to  
discuss any details about the extent of the programbrebuffing  
repeated congressional requests for key legal memos about it.

<snip>

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