Somehow skimming over the disregard for the constitution, the false promises to actually produce subpoenas, and the lickspittle phone companies' rush to comply, my tired eyes hit and fixated upon the language used by AT&T t o defend their behavior.
[T]he FBI used the exigent letters in non-emergency situations and often failed to get subpoenas, the report said. In less than two years, the bureau sent out at least 739 exigent letters requesting information on around 3,000 different phone numbers.
So how did phone companies respond?
After all, AT&T and Verizon still have contracts with the FBI. They bureau pays them for their trouble in digging up data on customers. Here are some canned responses from an email from AT&T to Wired News and a Bloomberg story on Tuesday, respectively:
"ATT has a practice of complying in good faith with emergency requests from the FBI for information. We do that to help protect innocent life and prevent criminal or terrorist acts. We've always insisted any of these emergency requests be followed up by some sort of legal process, such as a subpoena, warrant or national security letter."
--Walt Sharp, AT&T spokesman"Every day, Verizon's subpoena unit responds to emergency requests from federal, state and local law enforcement for particular calling records. After 9/11, of course Verizon responded to FBI emergency requests in terrorist matters, and we had every reason to believe they were legitimate emergency situations."
--Peter Thonis, Verizon spokesmanThese responses are what we'd expect from big companies worried about their reputations. They deflect responsibility and play up corporate heroism. But they leave much to the imagination. We'd like to know how much the phone companies get paid for their terror fighting efforts. We'd like to know what evidence threshold the FBI must meet in the exigent letters.
Argh.
Posted by binky at March 22, 2007 11:44 PM | TrackBack | Posted to The Ever Shrinking ConstitutionThese responses are what we'd expect from big companies worried about their reputations.
Aaaand from big companies whose whole reason for being is to exploit federally-granted permissions and licenses. When the continued existence of your business is dependent on federal regulators, and you're in a period of history where the regulators (generally speaking) are even more politicized and capricious than usual, it's pretty much impossible not to say "yes" when the FBI starts making demands.
Put another way, I'd be very surprised if the payments from the government even cover what it cost them to make all this data available at the drop of a hat, much less add jack-fucking-shit (look! I'm a liberal blogger!) to their bottom-line revenues. I'm sure the money isn't what's motivating them to bend over. The payments are just a little lube, that's all.
Posted by: jacflash at March 23, 2007 06:59 AM | PERMALINKOn all that and more, I am sure you are right. I was just particularly touched by the "We do that to help protect innocent life."
Posted by: binky at March 23, 2007 11:24 AM | PERMALINKit's also worth noting that the checks on misconduct of this sort, if misconduct it be, are designed into the government. if we have private actors, be they individuals or corporations, taking it upon themselves to decide the legality of orders that come cloaked in the mantle of legally binding orders, and deciding on the fly and according to their own opinions whether to comply, we have lawlessness.
it's not AT&T's fault that the system has been compromised by the people in power. it's the electorate's fault for electing people with so little respect for the law and for the structure of a government designed to ferret out and remedy its own abuses.
by way of illustration, would you have african-americans refuse to yield to the NJ state police on the new jersey turnpike just because there is documented evidence of that police racial profiling? i'm all for civil disobedience, but organized resistance is very different than piecemeal refusals to submit to government authority.
Posted by: moon at March 23, 2007 11:40 AM | PERMALINK"Not resisting" is not the equivalent of the kind of bootlicking represented by parroting the "innocent life" taglines.
Posted by: binky at March 23, 2007 01:14 PM | PERMALINKif the point is the language, sure, i get it -- but press releases are full of that kind of crap, no matter who's doing it. it's worth noting as well that AT&T was complying with requests like that long before 9/11 in the feds' efforts to corner rapsists, drug distributors, murderers, etc. and there's almost no question that their compliance has saved innocent lives before.
Posted by: moon at March 23, 2007 02:01 PM | PERMALINKif the point is the language, sure, i get it
"my tired eyes hit and fixated upon the language used by AT&T to defend their behavior"
Posted by: binky at March 24, 2007 04:10 PM | PERMALINK