White House wants telcos protected
THE WHITE House is pulling out all the stops to try and protect telecommunications companies that were spying on customers on its behalf.
According to a press release, the White House has said that liability protection for telecos was critical saving America from another terrorist attack.
Apparently, the White House is concerned that telecommunications companies will not spy on U.S. citizens unless they get some form of liability protection.
White House spokesperson Dana Perino was talking about lawful government requests to spy, but the main problem is that the White House has been asking telcos to spy without warrants claiming that they were legal because the President said they were.
The statement was made backing a bill before the Senate. While it would not prohibit lawsuits against the government or provide immunity from criminal prosecution, it means telcos will require companies to verify that government requests are legal before carrying out the spying work. It would give them a get out of jail free card.
Perino said that Telcos should not be sued because they were only protecting the US from terrorists.
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With this laws I always wonder what kind of legal loopholes will come with.

If it gets passed, will they suddenly find telcos are suddenly immune to a lot of other forms of prosectution, or other people become targets instead.
Isn't this kinda like what Yahoo! got raked over the coals for concerning China? 

Do as I say, don't do as I do...
1) Never take anything from a bush PR bunny at face value.
2) The original FISA legislation compels telecoms to assist in valid legal wiretaps.
3) The original FISA legislation already provides immunity for telecoms that assist with valid legal wiretaps.
The push by the bush regime to legislate retro-active amnesty for the telecoms has precisely nothing to do with protecting Americans and everything to do with killing the discovery process in pending civil suits against the telecoms that would undoubtedly reveal the scope of the bush regime's illegal domestic spying.
FISA does NOT need to be reformed-- it needs to be ENFORCED!
Fine lines....
The patriot act enabled wiretaps on non-citizens and citizens combined.
Under Executive order the telcoms were shut up. The stupid democrats are undermining the war on terrorism purely because they hate bush. 

The Democrats wanted the telcoms to show Who and how the wiretaps were going, that would tear apart discovery of sleeper terrorist cells and be detrimental to our nation.

Under the fica laws and patriot act they do not have to speak, and while fica only protects legal non-citizen taps... the patriot act does not do the same protection of telcoms... hence why the new protection is needed.

Go read up on the patriot act, there is more under that umbrella than you think.
it gets rid of the red tape.

this is where the fine line between freedom and fighting terrorism comes in. Freedom comes at a price, in this case wiretaps.