As many of you know, Brian Baird usually is a guest on KPOJ AM620 on Tuesday mornings. This last Tuesday he spoke about the legislation to provide immunity to the telecoms for turning over phone records since BEFORE 911 to the NSA. Representative Baird’s interview begins at 15:40 in this segment with a discussion of SCHIP.
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It is not the telecoms fault. It is nobody’s fault. The government was just doing its job and the telecoms were just obeying its orders. Everyone go back to sleep now.
My big reason against telecom immunity, and why progressives ought to fight against it, is if corporations were liable for what they do in this, they would resist these unwarranted erosions of our constitution. If they win their bid for immunity, they can simply cop to Baird’s faulty argument that – to paraphrase him – “We were just following orders from the big, bad government”. Corporations have the power, sadly enough, to write their own ticket and define the rules. There are providers that are saying no, and are probably under fire. Giant companies like AT & T could say no – and that would be the end of the argument – but instead bend over for Bushco.
In some ways this reminds me of the pharmaceutical companies that managed to ram forward waiving liability with regard to immunization drugs in the Patriot Act.