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

[cos]

The telecommunications companies broke the law. Qwest was the only big one who did not break the law, but all of them have legal departments part of whose job it is to tell the difference between legal and illegal requests for information, and these requests were very obviously, screamingly obviously, illegal.

Now, if the phone companies were actually acting in "good faith" and couldn't figure it out and thought what they were doing were legal, then they could defend themselves in court. It's the courts' job to determine that sort of thing, not Congress.

When the Church commission drafted the original FISA legislation, they understood that the problem wasn't just limited to the executive branch of government - it was also part of the problem that telephone companies would cooperate with such illegal requests. Therefore, they made the law explicitly address that. Telecom companies have an explicit duty under the law to refuse to comply with illegal requests for information from the government.

They broke the law. When someone is suspected of breaking the law, we have courts to handle determining their guilt and proper punishment.

For Congress to step in and try to cancel it out and excuse the lawbreaking is extremely dangerous. It means that FISA's requirements, placing a legal duty on telecom companies to take customers' privacy seriously, will no longer be as meaningful, because the precedent will be that if you break this law, the president will then successfully get Congress to excuse you anyway.

In other words, "If the president asks you to do it, then it is not illegal".

This is Congress agreeing with Nixon.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Qwest was the only big one who did not break the law

Thank you. I'd been trying to recall the name of the company but was drawing a blank.