More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 4:55 PM
Subject: re: More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   For two hundred years, Americans' freedom from unreasonable search and seizure was guaranteed by our courts. That was amplified in the wake of Nixon's crimes by the FISA act of 1979. Additionally, that act provided for retroactive court warrants in cases of unusual urgency. That was the state of our law when the Bush administration invited several telecomm companies to participate in a program of illegal (indeed, unconstitutional) wiretaps on American citizens.  Qwest, to its credit told the federal agents to go away unless they could provide a valid warrant. Other companies showed no such character.  Candidate Obama in 2008 announced that he "opposed[d] any form of immunity" for the telecomm companies who committed these crimes. Half a year later, he voted in the Senate to immunize these companies from civil suits, then failed to direct his attorney general to pursue the criminal violations. Should we be shocked that our police state is becoming ever more intrusive when it operates under such a shield of impunity? What's the news here?

Barry Haskell Levine