Gov't acknowledges discussing lawsuits with telecom company

[Dominion]

Gov't acknowledges discussing lawsuits with telecom company
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Govt_acknowledges_discussing_lawsuits_with_telecom_0212.html
Nick Juliano Published: Tuesday February 12, 2008



A US government attorney working for the Director of National Intelligence secretly discussed pending litigation with a telecommunications carrier, a top Intelligence official acknowledged this month. But much remains unknown about when the conversation took place or what advice the government attorney may have offered, as the Intelligence Director works to keep notes of the conversation classified.

In a filing released as part its ongoing lawsuit with a privacy watchdog, the government for the first time revealed the contents of a telephone message slip it previously withheld from a Freedom of Information Act response. A DNI administrative assistant took a message from a telecommunications company representative and gave the telco rep's name and number to a govenrment lawyer, who returned the phone call and took notes on the message slip, according to the filing.

The disclosure comes at the Senate is preparing for a final vote on a bill that would grant legal immunity to the telecommunications companies. Senate Democrats find themselves in precisely the situation they hoped to avoid in working to update a foreign surveillance law, and the push for immunity has created some deep divisions between the Senate and the House, as Roll Call reports.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a FOIA request for all documents concerning discussions or exchanges between Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell or others in his office and telecommunications carriers regarding efforts to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hundreds of pages of documents were released in November and December detailing McConnell's discussions with Congress.

The lawyer called to discuss "the various options that may be available to address the litigation facing the telecommunications carriers" and the two disussed "options such as court orders and legislation," such as the telecom-immunizing FISA update to be voted on Tuesday. The government argued that releasing the identity of the telecommunications company it talked to would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy and could aid terrorists seeking to subvert US surveillance methods.

"Confirmation by the ODNI that the US Government does or does not have a relationship with a particular telecommunications carrier for an intelligence activity would provide our adversaries with a road map, instructing them about which communications modes and personnel remain safe or are successfully defeating the US government's capabilities," wrote Ronald L. Burgess, Director of Intelligence Staff.

Wired's Ryan Singel notes the government has declared the document Top Secret.

"To highlight the fact it was not an official document, the government reveals that the attorney who wrote on the slip left it on his desk for several weeks and then just filed it in an 'unofficial' FISA folder," he writes. "It's unclear if that's official policy for handling Top Secret documents or not."

The government does not say when the phone call took place, although it is most likely sometime after February 2006, when USA Today reported that Sprint, MCI and AT&T cooperated with the National Security Agency's post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program. EFF filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T the next month; there are about 40 lawsuits pending against those companies alleging they violated laws protecting customers' privacy in cooperating with the government's program.

"A majority of international calls are handled by long-distance carriers AT&T, MCI and Sprint. All three own 'gateway' switches capable of routing calls to points around the globe," the paper reported. "AT&T was recently acquired by SBC Communications, which has since adopted the AT&T name as its corporate moniker. MCI, formerly known as WorldCom, was recently acquired by Verizon. Sprint recently merged with Nextel."

Details of the warrantless wiretapping program remain secret, and as the Wall Street Journal reported after the companies' cooperation was disclosed, even company CEO's may not have known the full details of how the government was accessing their customers' telephone calls, e-mails and faxes.

"Internally ... Verizon Communications Inc., which recently acquired MCI, and the former SBC, which recently acquired and took the name AT&T, have encountered a confusing situation," the paper reported. "Workers who hold security clearance at the acquired firms can't always legally talk about details of their work to workers who don't have such clearance at the new parent company, people familiar with the situation say."

The EFF is continuing to fight for the full message slip to be released, and it will argue its case against the government in federal court March 7, Singel reports.

[Dominion]

Oops: White House spokesman admits telecoms spied
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Oops_White_House_spokesman_admits_telecoms_0212.html
John Byrne Published: Tuesday February 12, 2008



Oops.

On the eve of a vote to give telephone companies immunity for their alleged participation in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretap program, White House spokesperson Dana Perino admitted that the companies actually spied.

Because they were patriotic.

"The telephone companies that were alleged to have helped their country after 9/11 did so because they are patriotic and they certainly helped us and they helped us save lives," Perino told reporters at Tuesday's press briefing.

The admission, while possibly a verbal slip-up, was first noticed by Ryan Singer, of Wired.

The Senate gave the phone companies immunity by a 69-29 vote. It passed wiretapping bill in its entirety just before 6pm ET, 68-29.

Earlier this afternoon, the immunity measure's staunchest opponent, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), announced he would abandon his effort to block the bill with a filibuster, arguing that the House, which has passed an immunity-free bill, would be a better place to try to strip immunity from Congress's final piece of legislation.

"We lost every single battle we had on this bill," Dodd said on a conference call Tuesday with reporters and bloggers. "And the question is now, Can we do better with the House carrying the ball on this bill?"

The bill to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including a provision granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated government spying, passed the Senate on a 68-29 vote Tuesday evening.

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[Dominion]

Telecom immunity: how stupid do you think we are?
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/02/12/telecom-immunity-how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are/
Posted on February 12, 2008 by Dr. Slammy

It’s FISA Day in your Senate - amazing how this was scheduled for Potomac Primary Day, huh? - and Matt Browner Hamlin has the agenda up at Holdfast.

My big issue is item #4: retroactive immunity for telecoms. Verizon and AT&T have done all they can to pretend that they had no idea that their participation in warrantless wiretapping might be, you know, a full-monty assault on the Constitution itself. I mean, shucks, they wuz just doing what the president wanted them to, and if you can’t trust the White House who can you trust?

Here’s what Sen. Russ Feingold had to say on the matter:

 

Let’s pay close attention to this part:

The telephone companies and the government have been operating under this simple framework for 30 years. The companies have experienced, highly trained, and highly compensated lawyers who know this law inside and out.In view of this history, it is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were. And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance. This whole effort to obtain retroactive immunity is based on an assumption that doesn’t hold water.

I’d give anything to have a transcript of the conversations that went on in the respective telco legal departments over this, because I’ve dealt with corporate lawyers. Even more to the point, I worked in a telco and dealt with telco lawyers.

I’m with Feingold - I call bulls**t. Of all the lies that the American public has been asked to endure since early 2001, this is easily one of the biggest. In terms of plausibility, this far surpasses the whole Iraq/WMD debacle, because in that case there was actually evidence to be fudged. Here we’re simply asked to accept that some of the nation’s finest corporate lawyers saw nothing remotely wrong with a program that a pre-law student with middling marks at a third-rate community college could tell you was iffy at best.

Two responses ought to quickly lay this parade of foolishness to rest. First, I’ve seen telecom lawyers throw up roadblocks over innocuous official communications due to little more than arguments over comma placement. Legal departments in these kinds of companies are legendary in their aversion to risk, and they can imagine risk in places that wouldn’t bother a textbook paranoid schizophrenic.

Second, Joe Nacchio realized it was illegal and politely declined. Let me repeat: Joe Freakin’ Nacchio, a guy whose epic lust for power and cash has him facing prison and brazilians of dollars in fines. When a deal is too crooked for the devil himself, I don’t want to hear a damned word about how Legal thought it was all kittens and rainbows.

The Senate needs to nard-stomp this immunity crap and then start summoning attorneys at Verizon and AT&T. Bring a stick, too. Somebody will eventually sing, and once you get one on record the dominoes will start to fall.

Meanwhile, stop insulting our intelligence