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Re: Expost facto laws & violations of the Constitution..
RMax304823
04-09-2008, 2:38 PM | Post #2506827
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Gov: About the immunity of telecom companies for proriving the administration with personal data on American citizens, an immunity which has just prompted Bush to veto a bill that would extend surveillance of suspected terrorists, while blaming Congress, you wrote,
"I disagree. These companies were asked by the government, following 9/11, to help with surveillance of possible terrorist suspects overseas calls. They were not doing it under the own volition.
Now, you can say what the Bush administration did was unconstitutional, but i dont believe the telecoms submitting to a request to the federal government, for national security reasons, in a time of war, should be the fault of the telecoms."
A couple of observations. (1) They WERE, in fact, doing it under their own volition. Verizon and AT&T complied with the administration's request, but Qwest decided not to. Qwest was never charged with non-compliance because the request was not authorized by law. (2) Only Congress has the power to declare war, and they haven't done it. The word "War" is slung around far too loosely. We have "wars" against drugs, against poverty, against corruption, against cancer. This loose usage enables any president of either party to declare himself or herself a war-time president with war-time powers and is an invitation to catastrophe.
Topics
American
AT&T
Qwest
telecom
Verizon
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