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Verizon and AT&T Deny Roles in NSA Spying
News:
Verizon and AT&T have now joined BellSouth in denying their role in the NSA domestic call-tracking program. While Verizon said it hadn’t supplied the NSA with any records whatsoever, AT&T leaned more towards the White House policy of non-denial denial, claiming that any wiretapping or call-tracking was perfectly legal (without conceding it actually took place). BellSouth has already issued its own denial, which didn’t prevent it from being added, along with AT&T, to a class-action lawsuit against Verizon for its alleged compliance with the NSA program. All told, the suit is seeking $200 billion fines from the three telecoms, to be paid to their combined 200 million subscribers.
"Methinks the lady doth
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
Frankly, I don't believe them.
"And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.'" --Monty Python and The Holy Grail
Worser.
With the administration's current well-deserved lack of credibility, I think hardly anybody believes them.
Have a Happy
A G
Wow what a surprise!
Gee, after the phone companies recieved advice from White House lawyers, they are starting a public disinformation campaign to muddy up the issue and they are in full scale denial of any participation....doesn't sound at all like a White House tactic to me. Soon, evidence will start to trickle out in which case the phone companies will backtrack to the point of appeasement and continue the lie from there until more evidence comes out. This doesn't at all sound like a possible scenario which is currently playing out in a treason/CIA name leakage investigation. They all (phone companies and Bushies) have a lot to lose by this coming out, that is why I wouldn't trust a damn thing that comes out of the head offices of any of those phone companies.
No surprise
Of course they're going to deny it. Any investigation will be squashed for national security reasons. The NSA will do everything in its power to cover this up.Any whistleblower will be hounded by Bushco operatives until they commit "suicide" or get killed by a hit and run driver,who won't be found.
The President Signed a Law That Lets The Telco's Lie
According to Think Progress, the president signed a Presidental Memorandum that allows companies to conceal any cooperation with the NSA for national security. Hush! It's a secret!
Hardy Haberman
http://dungeondiary.blogspot.com/
The Bush administration has
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/16/MNG5OISHOH1.D...
The Bush administration has launched a multipronged attack on a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of collaborating with the U.S. government in illegal electronic surveillance, arguing that customers can't prove their phones were tapped or that the company or the government broke the law -- and that, in any event, the entire case endangers national security.
The sealed documents and a heavily edited public version were submitted in federal court in San Francisco early Saturday along with declarations from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency. Both officials attest to the need for secrecy as a reason to keep the lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, from going forward.
In Saturday's filing, government lawyers wrote that "the lawfulness of the alleged activities cannot be determined without a full factual record, and that record cannot be made without seriously compromising U.S. national security interests.''
Without evidence of how the program operated and whom it targeted -- evidence that the Justice Department argued can't be made public -- the plaintiffs have no chance of proving the essential elements of their case, the government said.
Naaaaa...naaaaa...you can't touch me!!!! :p
So now what
So, where does one go from here? It is impossible for oversight or accountability when the argument basically boils down to "because I said so" reasoning.
In the absence of reason (or the elements needed to be a reasonable being), action and reaction is mediated by the most salient variable. Unfortunately for humans currently living in the United States, that variable is fear.
Your missing the point
This is a perfect opportunity to add a new fee.
The " we can fucking hear you now " fee. Somebody's
gotta pay.
Reason for massive monitoring.
The reason for the massive size of this call monitoring is to disguise the fact that the monitoring is being done for political purposes. If the monitoring was limited in any way, the political nature of it's purpose would be obvious. The government need only to know the phone number of the person it wants to monitor, then cross reference to determine his or her phone contacts. There are so few people with potential links to terrorism that their phone contacts could easily be monitored by simply entering there phone numbers into a data bank. Such a system could easily monitor tens or even hundreds of thousands of US residents and citizens. By monitoring "millions and millions" of calls the administration not only lessens it's exposure to criticizm and/or legal action by those persons or groups with potential ties to terrorism but it also hides use of the program tosee who's calling Al, et al.
In charge of a government department and got an employee complaining about your sexual advances. Have your department leader call up the NSA to see is she's talking to a lawyer or reporter. If you head a company and you are a Bush donator of high order. I'm sure Mr. Rove would pull some strings and get any snooping you need done approved to. Hell, you might just want to make a donation just to avail yourself of the service. If this program had been in existance as soon as Bush took office, Sybil Edmonds could have been headed off at the pass, Joe Wilson might have never taken that trip to Niger and a lot more generals could be forced into early retirement. 9/11 would have still happened but shutting up your real enemy (those who believe in honest, effective, responsible government) is a far more desireable goal. After all, as Mr. Rove has said so often quoting Vince Lombardi so often, "“Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.
a massive indictment of the US political process
https://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=http://news.ft....
Patti Waldmeir: Blame Bush for the spying
By Patti Waldmeir
Published: May 17 2006 18:22 | Last updated: May 17 2006 18:22
Patti WaldmeirInnocent Americans are outraged that their government has been spying on their telephone calls, so what do they do? Sue the phone companies, of course. The lawsuits are a massive indictment of the US political process: Americans do not trust their elected representatives to rein in the government's costly and misguided programme to monitor every phone call made from every phone in the country, so they are trying to strong-arm the telecommunications companies to fight the battle for them. It might work; but it is a strange way to make public policy.
The American telecoms giants, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, are facing lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars, for their alleged complicity with the National Security Agency in a data-mining scheme aimed at compiling a database of American phone calls. AT&T is also facing an earlier lawsuit accusing it of helping the government listen to some Americans' overseas calls. The data-mining scheme does not involve listening in, however: supposedly the government are just keeping records of which phone called which other phone, and when. The numbers are not connected to names, and no content is included.