The steady erosion of your rights

The Democrats in the House and Senate are currently arguing with each other over legalizing the warrantless wiretapping of Americans' private telephone conversations. Don't be mistaken - both sets of politicians want to make it perfectly legal for government spooks to listen to you have phone sex with your overseas paramour, or discuss private, sensitive business secrets with one's foreign counterparts, based solely on the government's desire to do so, and with absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing required. The only sticking point in the legislative plan is that the Senate Democrats want to provide retroactive immunity to the telephone companies who have been coughing up the data all along, while the House Democrats decline to do so. To be fair, President Bush and some Republicans are also in favor of and have been lobbying hard for the immunity, so it seems that only a small minority of our lawmakers understand the concept of ex post facto laws.

You see, the phone companies, particularly AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth, are being hit with thousands of lawsuits by citizens who are pissed that their private data was released without the proper legal procedures being followed. They seem to have a fairly rock-solid case:

"Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered."

This law, like others that we've discussed here recently, doesn't seem to carve out a "terrorism exception".

Of course, since government agencies such as the NSA have been blatantly ignoring the law for years, much of this argument is apparently moot anyway. They didn't bother to seek wiretap authority from the "secret court" already in place for that very reason, they just went ahead and did whatever they wanted, until the media busted them:

"The National Security Agency, however, secretly bypassed the court for years as it obtained information from telecommunication companies, until media reports revealed the arrangement."
With no consequences for breaking the law, naturally. Now the agencies wish to protect their little buddies in the phone industry for rolling over like lapdogs and doing whatever they were asked to do, with no respect for their customers' rights or privacy. Only one phone company, Qwest Communications, heroically declined to give customer data to agents, and responded to the government's demands for information with the equivalent of "Come back with a warrant", as it properly should have.

"In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more. Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused."

We don't need no stinkin' warrants, we're the government! You'll do whatever we say, or no more cushy government contracts for you!!

Maybe we all should begin starting and ending our phone conversations with "I don't consent to the warrantless monitoring of my conversations. Screw the NSA!!!"