Ask your senator to vote against HR 6304 (right now please. thanx)

[netmouse]

To quote Novapsyche's post, there is still time to call your Senators regarding the capitulation on FISA (aka, the evisceration of the 4th Amendment).

The bill is H.R. 6304 and i have seen it described as a confirmation of the legal king model of government since it basically protects people (in this case, telecommunication companies) from being prosecuted for illegal activities because the president asked them to do them.

I would prefer to live in a country where presidential fiat does not make it ok for people to break the law, especially regarding the privacy of citizens, and in order for that to be true, we need to defeat this bill. please call your senator now.

Comments

[ckd]

You might look at this explanation. A key point:

As has been pointed out by others, the law prohibits the telephone companies from giving information to the government. Therefore, it is ridiculous for them to say, “but the government asked us for it.” These are gigantic corporations with legal departments. They should bloody well know when the government is lying to them about what is and isn’t legal. Similarly, if in the future the government makes a request that actually is legal, the fact that the phone companies can be punished for breaking the law shouldn't make them unwilling to obey the law. We don't worry that putting bank robbers in jail could discourage law-abiding citizens from withdrawing their money from the bank.

At a minimum, the lawsuits need to proceed so we can use the trials to determine the details of what happened, of how egregious the violations of FISA actually were, how many thousands or millions of us were spied upon. And if there really is a signed piece of paper out there from the Administration assuring the phone companies that its request was legal, then the phone companies can countersue the government to recover their damages. (Google “detrimental reliance.”)

(Emphasis added.)

The phone companies, therefore, have recourse. For civil suits, detrimental reliance (as noted above); for criminal cases, Presidential pardons. There's no reason that immunity has to be the solution, except to keep information from coming out during the ensuing cases; the obvious reason that's so important is that they think it would lead to criminal cases against the government personnel responsible—in which case, it's critically important not to let retroactive immunity go into effect, shielding them from the consequences of illegal actions.