Maine Owl

"The primary job of any president is to protect us, not just those of us who own Internet and telephone companies, but all of us"


January 31, 2008: Special comment, "FISA and the telecoms"

It's so utterly false, I can't see how people in Congress who appear to shudder before Bush believe it. Why do they even take him seriously? If they spent less time shuddering and more time investigating what the Administration is really doing, then telling the public... My GOD, they (and we) should be OUTRAGED!

Here is the marching order on telcom immunity the President issued in the State of the Union message:

President Bush: Dedicated men and women in our government toil day and night to stop the terrorists from carrying out their plans. These good citizens are saving American lives, and everyone in this chamber owes them our thanks. And one of the most important tools we can give them is the ability to monitor terrorist communications. To protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying and what they're planning. Last year, Congress passed legislation to help us do that. Unfortunately, Congress set the legislation to expire on February 1st. That means, if you don't act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger.

Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We've had ample time for debate. The time to act is now.

Congress passed a fifteen-day extension of the particularly egregious and misnamed "Protect America Act" this week after Bush's statement. Now, the senate leadership along with the Republicans are trying to muzzle debate on the long-term bill. It's so wrong, and so obviously unrelated to terrorism what they're doing. Olbermann does the best job of pointing this out that I've ever heard:

OLBERMANN: ... If you, sir, are asking Congress and us to join you in this shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of fascism, the merge efforts of government and corporation who answered to no government, you still don‘t have the guts to even say the telecom companies did assist you in your efforts? Will you and the equivocators who surround you like a cocoon never go on the record about anything, even the stuff you claim to believe in? Silly me.

Of course Mr. Bush is going to say believe. Yes, it sounds dumber than if he had referred to himself as the alleged president or had said today is reportedly Thursday or acclaim mission accomplished in Iraq. But the moment he does say anything else, any doubt that the telecoms knowingly broke the laws out the window and with it, any chance that even the Republicans who are fighting this like they are trying to fend off terrorists using nothing but broke beer bottles and swear words could not consent to retroactively immunize corporate criminals, which is why the vice president probably shouldn‘t have phoned in to the Rush Limbaugh propaganda festival yesterday.

Six sentence out of Mr. Cheney‘s mouth. The FISA bill is about, quote, retroactive liability protection for the company‘s that have worked with us and helped us prevent further attacks against the United States. Oops, Mr. Cheney is something of a loose cannon of course. But he kind of let the wrong cat out of the bag there. Because Mr. Bush and the corporations that he values more than people, did not want anybody to verify what Mark Klein says.

Mark Klein is the AT&T whistle blower who appeared on this news cast last November who explained in a placid, dull terms of your local neighborhood IT desk, how he personally attached all of AT&T circuits, everything. Carrying every phone call, every e-mail, every bit of web browsing into a secure room, room number 641-A at the Folsom St. facility in San Francisco, where it was all copied so the government could look at it. Not some of it, not just the international part of it, certainly not just the stuff some, truly patriotic and telepathic spy might able to define have been sent or spoken by or to a terrorist, every thing.

Every time you looked at a naked picture, every time you bid on eBay, every time you phoned in a donation to a Democrat, my thought was George Orwell‘s 1984, Mr. Klein told me, reflecting back and here I am, forced to connect the big brother machine. You know, Mr. Bush, if Mr. Klein‘s big brother machine, along the vice president conveniently just confirmed for us, if it wasn‘t any damn use at all at actually finding anything, you could probably program it to find out who started that slanderous e-mail about Barack Obama...

Use room 641-A to identify that E-assassin, sir, and I‘ll stand up and applaud you. Yes, I‘m holding my breath on that one too. But of course, sir, this isn‘t about finding that kind of needle in a haystack. This is not even about finding a haystack. This is about scooping up every piece of hay there ever was and laying the ground work for the next little job which you have to outsource to AT&T and Verizon and all the rest....

It's Big Brother, NOT terrorist surveillance we're talking about. If you peacefully oppose the government--and there are a lot of us networked to do that--worry. Tiny, buried terrorist cells? This "big net" surveillance IS UTTERLY USELESS in ferreting them out! More on this later...

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has the details of what is going on right now HERE.