"It's Not My Job"
A convenient excuse, that. It's the one being raised by the telecom companies in response to the congressional inquiries into the warrantless eavesdropping done by the federal government and the telecom's cooperation with that domestic spying. While the companies are finally admitting to the extent of that cooperation, they claim that it's not their job to determine whether the government "requests" are legal, according to an article in today's Washington Post.
Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times since 2005.
The company said it does not determine the requests' legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations. ...
Verizon also disclosed that the FBI, using administrative subpoenas, sought information identifying not just a person making a call, but all the people that customer called, as well as the people those people called. Verizon does not keep data on this "two-generation community of interest" for customers, but the request highlights the broad reach of the government's quest for data. ...
AT&T and Verizon both argued that the onus should not be on the companies to determine whether the government has lawfully requested customer records. To do so in emergency cases would "slow lawful efforts to protect the public," wrote Randal S. Milch, senior vice president of legal and external affairs for Verizon Business, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications. [Emphasis added]
How much of an "onus" is it to demand a court-issued warrant or subpoena, especially knowing how easiy it is for the government agency to get one from the FISA court? Yet Verizon has admitted to doing so 720 times in the last two years. Do they turn over their own financial records to federal auditors so easily? I somehow doubt it. That's private information.
And if the telecom companies are so certain their actions have been totally legal, why are they (and the current administration) so anxious for retroactive immunity to be written into the new FISA law?
That silence in response to that question must be deafening.
Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times since 2005.
The company said it does not determine the requests' legality or necessity because to do so would slow efforts to save lives in criminal investigations. ...
Verizon also disclosed that the FBI, using administrative subpoenas, sought information identifying not just a person making a call, but all the people that customer called, as well as the people those people called. Verizon does not keep data on this "two-generation community of interest" for customers, but the request highlights the broad reach of the government's quest for data. ...
AT&T and Verizon both argued that the onus should not be on the companies to determine whether the government has lawfully requested customer records. To do so in emergency cases would "slow lawful efforts to protect the public," wrote Randal S. Milch, senior vice president of legal and external affairs for Verizon Business, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications. [Emphasis added]
How much of an "onus" is it to demand a court-issued warrant or subpoena, especially knowing how easiy it is for the government agency to get one from the FISA court? Yet Verizon has admitted to doing so 720 times in the last two years. Do they turn over their own financial records to federal auditors so easily? I somehow doubt it. That's private information.
And if the telecom companies are so certain their actions have been totally legal, why are they (and the current administration) so anxious for retroactive immunity to be written into the new FISA law?
That silence in response to that question must be deafening.
Labels: Domestic Spying, Fourth Amendment
posted by Diane at 4:09 AM
2 Comments:
Surely they knew that some of their customers, like maybe the ones vauguely familiar with Amendment IV, would have questions regarding their service contracts in this regard.
"Hundreds of times." I'm trying to get my mind around that admission -- yeah, we broke the law hundreds of times, what's the big deal? What, we were supposed to ask for warrants? We shouldn't have just assumed that because the government was asking for this information it had to be on the up and up?
And it was a real emergency HUNDREDS OF TIMES? Perhaps once the Feds could have gotten away with the "forget this warrant nonsense, this is an emergency, lives are at stake", though I would have hoped that there were some lawyers working for the telecoms who might have flagged the issue as a question of legality (it having been against the law to give out that information without a warrant), but frankly, any possible justification on an emergency basis disappears when the feds come back hundreds of times and never have a warrant. You'd think that any intelligent person -- and God knows, any lawyer worth his or her salt, thinking about possibile liability down the line -- would begin to smell a rat there.
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