AT&T, Verizon Get Immunity For Illegal Wiretaps
Senate fails to pass immunity-stopping amendment
The Senate today gave AT&T and Verizon retroactive legal immunity for their roles in handing over consumer voice and data information wholesale to the NSA without a court order. Telecom providers face billions in lawsuits for their decisions to participate in the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program, and have been lobbying DC relentlessly in order to derail these suits.
The highest profile case involves 22-year former AT&T employee turned whistle-blower Mark Klein, who documented AT&T's use of entire rooms (pdf) to ferry data from multiple carriers directly to the NSA. With retroactive immunity, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's case against AT&T all but disintegrates.
According to the Associated Press, the Senate voted 31 to 67 to reject an attempt to include an amendment that would have eliminated immunity. Salon has a little more detail on how voting broke down. Republicans voted unanimously for telecom immunity, while Democrats split, 31-18. Presidential candidate Barack Obama voted against immunity, while Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was a no show. Salon opines:
That's really the most extraordinary aspect of all of this, if one really thinks about it -- it isn't merely that the Democratic Senate failed to investigate or bring about accountability for the clearest and more brazen acts of lawbreaking in the Bush administration, although that is true. Far beyond that, once in power, they are eagerly and aggressively taking affirmative steps -- extraordinary steps -- to protect Bush officials. While still knowing virtually nothing about what they did, they are acting to legalize Bush's illegal spying programs and put an end to all pending investigations and efforts to uncover what happened.
Bush has said he'd veto any renewed FISA bill that did not include retroactive immunity for the phone providers. Qwest was the only baby bell to reject Uncle Sam's advances out of concern that the program was not entirely legal. That's apparently no longer a problem, as AT&T and Verizon have the lobbying muscle to make it so. There's now two FISA bills that need resolving; one in the House without immunity, and this Senate bill that includes it. Barring some last minute show of intestinal fortitude on the part of Congress, it doesn't look good for opponents of immunity.
