Patti Waldmeir: Blame Bush for the spying
Patti Waldmeir: Blame Bush for the spying
By Patti Waldmeir
Published: May 17 2006 18:22 | Last updated: May 17 2006 18:22. Copyright by The Financial Times
Innocent 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.
The administration implausibly insists that from this gigantic digital haystack, it will extract essential truths about terrorism and how to stop.
But deciding whether the project is a waste of money, or unacceptably infringes American privacy, is something the people, the courts and the legislators should decide. How will it help to extract a few cool billions from the phone companies?
So far, it is not even clear what happened. The current furore over data mining blew up after an article last week in the populist newspaper, USA Today, said that Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth had given the government bulk data on domestic phone calls.
But BellSouth and Verizon say they did not do so, and AT&T says only that it did not turn over any data “without legal authorisation”.
The companies are fighting potential class action lawsuits claiming billions in damages in at least three jurisdictions, with more suits likely to be filed in future.
Most of the suits are very new, so the companies have filed no detailed responses yet. But AT&T has replied to the earlier eavesdropping suit, filed in January in California by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet civil liberties group. AT&T says Congress and the courts have conferred blanket immunity from liability on telecoms companies responding to requests for information from high level government officials. But another telephone company, Qwest Communications, says it refused such a request. The company’s former chief executive, who is also facing insider trading charges, says he refused because the government did not have a warrant from a special court set up to oversee foreign surveillance activities. Does that mean companies – at least, those that value their public image – should “just say no” when faced with a request for phone records from the government?
The laws relating to data mining are so murky that it is a very close call, legally; and politically, it may be an even more difficult decision. In the immediate wake of September 11 2001, when they were apparently first asked to participate, patriotic phone companies may have thought their customers would not like it if, after they refused to provide the information the government was seeking, more people died.
They may not have really been tempted to refuse, in any case. Phone companies have worked hand in glove with government virtually since telephones were invented, and courts have seldom if ever said they should bear liability for doing so. As AT&T points out, the phone company involved in some of the Watergate tapping was spared liability, even though the tapping was warrantless. Also, top officials of Verizon and AT&T have close ties to the Republican hierarchy that might have predisposed them to co-operate.
Some legal experts say it is the responsibility of phone companies to make sure the government is acting lawfully before co-operating. But AT&T says that when it comes to national security “it cannot be the province of telecommunications carriers to second-guess [the government], especially without having the facts.”
If the government broke the law with either the data mining or the eavesdropping, the courts and the Congress should decide what should be done about that. But the phone companies are just a proxy in this battle. They are damned if they obey the government (because they will be sued), and damned if they do not (because they could be prosecuted). Pursuing them is just a distraction from the real issue: is this really any way to run a war on terror?
By Patti Waldmeir
Published: May 17 2006 18:22 | Last updated: May 17 2006 18:22. Copyright by The Financial Times
Innocent 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.
The administration implausibly insists that from this gigantic digital haystack, it will extract essential truths about terrorism and how to stop.
But deciding whether the project is a waste of money, or unacceptably infringes American privacy, is something the people, the courts and the legislators should decide. How will it help to extract a few cool billions from the phone companies?
So far, it is not even clear what happened. The current furore over data mining blew up after an article last week in the populist newspaper, USA Today, said that Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth had given the government bulk data on domestic phone calls.
But BellSouth and Verizon say they did not do so, and AT&T says only that it did not turn over any data “without legal authorisation”.
The companies are fighting potential class action lawsuits claiming billions in damages in at least three jurisdictions, with more suits likely to be filed in future.
Most of the suits are very new, so the companies have filed no detailed responses yet. But AT&T has replied to the earlier eavesdropping suit, filed in January in California by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet civil liberties group. AT&T says Congress and the courts have conferred blanket immunity from liability on telecoms companies responding to requests for information from high level government officials. But another telephone company, Qwest Communications, says it refused such a request. The company’s former chief executive, who is also facing insider trading charges, says he refused because the government did not have a warrant from a special court set up to oversee foreign surveillance activities. Does that mean companies – at least, those that value their public image – should “just say no” when faced with a request for phone records from the government?
The laws relating to data mining are so murky that it is a very close call, legally; and politically, it may be an even more difficult decision. In the immediate wake of September 11 2001, when they were apparently first asked to participate, patriotic phone companies may have thought their customers would not like it if, after they refused to provide the information the government was seeking, more people died.
They may not have really been tempted to refuse, in any case. Phone companies have worked hand in glove with government virtually since telephones were invented, and courts have seldom if ever said they should bear liability for doing so. As AT&T points out, the phone company involved in some of the Watergate tapping was spared liability, even though the tapping was warrantless. Also, top officials of Verizon and AT&T have close ties to the Republican hierarchy that might have predisposed them to co-operate.
Some legal experts say it is the responsibility of phone companies to make sure the government is acting lawfully before co-operating. But AT&T says that when it comes to national security “it cannot be the province of telecommunications carriers to second-guess [the government], especially without having the facts.”
If the government broke the law with either the data mining or the eavesdropping, the courts and the Congress should decide what should be done about that. But the phone companies are just a proxy in this battle. They are damned if they obey the government (because they will be sued), and damned if they do not (because they could be prosecuted). Pursuing them is just a distraction from the real issue: is this really any way to run a war on terror?
posted by Carlos T Mock at 10:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home