J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy, sitting in an off-track betting parlor somewhere in the ninth circle of hell, doomed to handicap cockroach races for all eternity, got a break today from studying their bug spattered racing forms when Satan brought in a TV and tuned it to the US Senate roll call vote on the Dodd Amendment “to strike the provisions providing immunity from civil liability to electronic communication service providers for certain assistance provided to the Government” from the FISA amendments act of 2024.
The jeering and cheering from the ninth circle of hell were audible everywhere in Washington DC, particularly in the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Hoover and McCarthy didn’t live long enough to see their paper based systems of secret files and intimidation converted to Internet Protocol but their spirit was with us today when the Senate caved in to pressure from the Bush administration and the AT&T lobbyists to provide retroactive immunity for lawbreaking in the area of wiretaps and surveillance, an immunity which can be applied to the Bush administration officials who suborned their telecom industry corporate accomplices.
According to the Washington Post today,
The vote represented a victory for the Bush administration and a number of telecommunications companies — including AT&T and Sprint Nextel — that face dozens of lawsuits from customers seeking billions of dollars in damages.
Approval of the amendment would have exposed the companies to privacy lawsuits for helping the administration monitor the calls of suspected terrorists without warrants from a special court….
The Post makes no mention of the sulfurous stench and smoke coming out of the fissured ground near FBI Headquarters at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, nor the hideous preternatural laughter that has echoed throughout the city since it became clear that the Senators had no intention of exposing themselves to fallout over whatever dirt the NSA, in the true spirit of J. Edgar and Tailgunner Joe, might leak exposing their own little peccadilloes.
The House of Representatives might yet make things right on this bill. Unfortunately, the NSA probably has Keyhole satellite images of Congressmen in the floating crap game in the alleys south of Independence Avenue, or illegal Internet email surveillance or some other Spook 2.0 nonsense.
I sent Senator Dodd a “thanks” for his noble efforts these past months but since most of our “representatives” don’t feel out Constitution or our liberties are worth anything I decided to do the one thing I can think of which was cancel my contract with Sprint (which I’ve had for nearly eight years) and signed up with Credo who refused to illegally spy on Americans. When asked why I was dropping Sprint I told the kind man on the phone that in all these years I’ve never had a problem with my service but I refuse to give my money to a company who ignores the laws of this nation.
It’s so sad that the only retribution any of us now have is to pay a fine and cancel our contracts. I really hope the House will do the right thing on this issue.
Bastards.
I tell ya, that whole “by the people, for the people” bullshit that your country’s marketers use on y’all … just so much cow-pucky. Which has been observed like a million-and-one times already, but just bears repeating every once in a while.
Never underestimate the ability of a people to remain massly deluded for a long, long time when their flag has stars on it.
There is a petition here to the US House of Representatives urging them to send the White House their original bill as written, to restore FISA and deny immunity.
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/petition/RestoreFISA