Telecommunications Must Answer For Their Part

[shraby]

The leaders of the telecommunications companies that gave the NSA access to their customer's phone and computer activities must answer to their customers and the American people. I want answers. I want to know on what legal grounds they opened up their files to the NSA. I want to hear them testify before congress that their activities were legal and in agreement with any contract they have with their clients. They cannot skate on this. When business is helping the government to break the law and violate our constitutionally protected rights, someone needs to explain it. I want to see a big ole table of suits, sitting before a congressional panel, raising their hands and swearing to tell the truth and then tell us all how what they did was right, legal and in accordance with the contracts they have with their customers.

<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/25/125820/71>

[C_U_L8R]

1. Just wondering...

(not a legal expert here)
can the telcos be prosecuted or sued for violating consumer privacy (contracts) ?
Perhaps some class-action suits or even on an individual basis ?

any pros out there with some ideas?

[acmavm]

2. They are helping this administration break the laws and violate the

Constitution and this administration breaks the law and violates the Constitution for its big corporate supporters. It is what's called a symbiotic relationship.

[customerserviceguy]

3. Well frankly

I figure any conversation I have with someone other than in person has a decent chance of being watched. It's in the fine print of any cell phone contract, at least they let you read those, you don't get to when you sign up for a landline.

What's going to blow this open, if anything does, is finding a real victim, somebody who is a sympathetic individual to bring before a Congressional hearing. If all anyone can find is Arabs who are not even citizens, who were listened to talking about a movie being "the bomb", and having someone listen closer (but no arrests, detainments, deportments, etc.) then the average Joe American is not going to care about this.

[walldude]

4. You think they need help from the Telecommunications

industry to tap phones or spy on computers? Maybe 20 years ago. Today the things you need to do this kind of work are readily available if you know where to look for them...

[bigtree]

5. absolutely

here's a problem: Lucent Technologies

Lucent Technologies CEO Pat Russo appointed by President Bush to National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee

FOR RELEASE THURSDAY MAY 01, 2003


MURRAY HILL, N.J. - President George W. Bush has announced the appointment of Patricia Russo, chairman and CEO of Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). NSTAC comprises 30 presidentially appointed industry leaders and provides industry-based analyses and recommendations to the president regarding policy affecting national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) telecommunications.

In her NSTAC role, Russo will be involved with a wide range of policy and technical issues related to telecommunications, critical infrastructure protection (CIP), homeland security, and other NS/EP concerns. This includes assisting the government in the development of CIP policy and national strategy; assessing research and development issues related to network security technologies and vulnerabilities; and identifying legislative and regulatory matters that potentially impact NS/EP telecommunications.

Russo was one of the executives who helped launch Lucent in 1996 and has spent 20 years of her career managing some of Lucent's and AT&T's largest divisions and most critical corporate functions. She returned to Lucent in January 2002 as president and chief executive officer after serving as president and chief operating officer of Eastman Kodak. Russo was named chairman of Lucent in February 2003. Russo is a member of the board of Lucent Technologies, Schering-Plough Corporation and her alma mater Georgetown University. She graduated from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University in 1989, and received a bachelor's degree in political science and history from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She also received an honorary doctorate in entrepreneurial studies from Columbia College in South Carolina. http://www.lucent.com/press/0503/030501.coa.html


According to the WSJ, members of the so-called "Employers Coalition on Medicare" - the group of big companies that lobbied for the subsidy. CongressDaily reports that this group spent over $1 million to push the Medicare bill and the subsidy. A quick tally using the Center for Responsive Politics statistics shows that this coalition's members contributed over $22 million to President Bush and his allies in Congress who pushed the provision. Two of the coalition's members, Lucent Technologies Inc. and SBC Communications Inc. (who gave a whopping $1.8 million to Bush and his allies), are expected to show "some of the biggest accounting gains." Already, SBC Communications recently announced it was going to start capping retiree benefits, which "could leave retirees with a bill for hundreds and perhaps ultimately even thousands of dollars a year in added costs." Lucent has sliced retiree benefits and is looking into future cuts.http://www.employersandmedicare.org/portal/medicare/about/members.htm

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=38235

[Ian David]

6. AOL provides Homeland Security with "Unfettered Access"

DHS and AOL: An Unholy Alliance
October 3, 2005
by Martin McKinney
The Financial Reporter (U.K.)

Washington- The American-based internet giant, AOL, wholly-owned by Time-Warner, has formed a working partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to permit unlimited surveillance of the millions of AOL online members, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce. AOL works 'closely with the DHS' to supply information on any AOL customer and allows agents from these entities 'free and unfettered' access to AOL Hq at Dulles, VA for the purpose of 'watching over and keeping surveillance' 'on the millions of AOL customers,' according to the report.

The legal basis for this is the recently Congress-approved Patriot Act which permits warrantless searches of persons and property. While information gleaned from delving into personal computer messages is supposed to be kept confidential, it appears that the DHS has exceeded their brief and obtained what appears to be strictly personal information which is then circulated to entities outside the DHS.

The Department of Commerce report also states that news of this surveillance has leaked out and is causing serious concern in the American, and European, business communities who are fearful that trade secrets may be given to other business entities, considered as "friendly" to the Bush Administration.


More:
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1902.htm#002

[dusmcj]

7. the government needs to answer for it, they forced telcos to harvest

fedgov has been forcing the telecomms industry to implement backdoors for surveillance access for years. CALEA was the earliest I was aware of, 93 or 94 ?, and required access mechanisms built into digital telco switching. It's been the same ever since, there's been 10 years of court battles about the exportability/confidentiality of encryption for the same reason.

AFAIC you can expect business to roll over on this one. For one thing, it's populated with people who think like Repubicans, for another, fedgov will make the industry come to a grinding halt if they don't get their way.

This comes back to the same issues as an domestic surveillance:

- the US government needs to implement federal standards for data and privacy protection, just like every other developed nation worth mentioning has. Privacy, and freedom from illegal search and seizure is not a privilege granted by a worldly authority, it is an inherent right which the US government prevented from abridging. The principle, which is timeless, needs to be codified into legislation which is appropriate to the 21st century.

- the government and the people need to come to some understandings based on both parties recalling how things work in the US:

-- government is of, by, and for the people. It is us, and people occupying its offices are not privileged in some way by the power they hold, either individually or collectively. Lately some of them have been acting like they are... They need to find another occupation.

-- once members of the public who occupy government positions remember how to behave, the people will
no longer have motivation to be acutely suspicious of government behavior and motivation (they will still have motivation to continually review and control what government does; the Founders noted the old adage that power corrupts...). The US public needs to grow up and remember that if it doesn't like what government does, the man to address it is staring back from the mirror.

[peacetalksforall]

8. So, in addition to giving a giant donation, we suspect that this company

also gave them access to us (citizens and our leaders) and the data may have been used politically.

Did a company like this one receive cold cash? Only favors and contracts? Or nothing?

Or is a company like this political only?

Are there any who said NO (as Daschle said NO on behalf of the country when asked to change the language to spy on us.)

If any said no, did they also decide not to reveal that they were asked?

Were they asked or were they ordered? If ordered, what language, authority and signature was in and on the order? Were they called together or were they approaced individually? Did George or Dick approach them? Or Queen Liar?

Did the NSA handle everything? Did the CIA, DIA, or State Dept know or facilitate it?

Did the legal departments of these companies check out the law? If yes, what were their findings?

Have the WH and NSA records already been destroyed? If there were any?

To consider a parallel to another scnadal - were any journalists or networks or other media biggies in on this?

Whose software was used to store, compile, and analyze? Did they custom design the programs? If yes, who participated?

Who were the analysts? Did they all speak Arabic, Farsi, French or any other language of the countries their terrorists come from? How about Hebrew? Tagalog? Chinese? It can be assumed that if they were only spying on potential terrorists, that 95% of the analysts would speak and read Arabic or one of the other languages of terrorists?

Were messages in the languages of the suspect terrorists translated by anyone special or by software? If software, whose software?

What priority was used to process data and translate it?

Do any lists or findings exist that can be impounded?

Was the work outsourced? If yes, to which country? Who arranged it? Who monitors it? Who receives the results? What does this cost? Whose budget does it come out of?

Was any of this operation shared with, by, or in Echelon spying?

Will Frist, Roberts, Hastert, DeLay/Blunt stop any Congressional action to ask these questions?

Yes, you are right, it appears that corporations facilitated our radical right wing leaders, but these corporations are a brash sort, and probably don't give a damn.

Will the citizens and our leaders give a damn?

We now have another divisive issue at hand - those who are fearfully (and/or hatefully) blind and submissive and those who understand what it means constitutionally starting with caring what the law is.