DOJ to drop bomb on EFF vs. AT&T Options

[pebkac]

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/

The federal government intends to invoke the rarely used "State Secrets Privilege" -- the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb -- in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class action lawsuit against AT&T that alleges the telecom collaborated with the government's secret spying on American citizens.

Wow. Dubya's covering his own and his partners' asses.

[pebkac]

Everybody on the internet thinks they are the smartest mother fucker alive and are never wrong. I swear, every post I read has nothing but ego behind it. And every person thinks that when they read a statement like that, it means everybody BUT them. We are all dumbasses and wrong more times than not.


And my point about the weed smoking/hacking/illegal downloading related to wiretaps is that it's ironic whenever you have people who openly disregard the law criticize the government for breaking the law. The government is a bunch of people, and they are human afterall, so they are going to have the same tendencies to stretch the legality of their actions. If you (not zetec, people in general) aren't willing to adhere to federal laws, then why should you expect that of your government officials?

And I see the whole 1984-like society that some of you think this will lead to, and I know that if you give an inch in liberties then the government will take a mile, but why would we want to handcuff our government's ability to catch potential mass murderers? I bet half of you wouldn't care if Bill Clinton was the one who did this.

You know, I would probably agree with the first part of your post if what you're saying wasn't so fucking stupid. Not only are you making pointless ad hominems against the people you disagree with, but you're making overbroad generalizations too. Regardless, none of what you've said is a valid argument for or against anything, so I don't see any reason to argue against it. But just for your information, I voted for Nader.

ok... but how does the "secret court" prevent the illegal wiretapping from happening in the first place if it doesn't deem the tap illegal until after the fact?

and as far as "govt scare tactic" not being legitimate... I wouldn't exactly call it that, but like I said before melodrama isn't something lacking on these boards.

Personally, I'd rather have a small group of people wrongfully have their regular boring conversations tapped than have a possible 911 style terrorist attack go off without a hitch because of some pointless legal red tape.

I guess my question to you guys upset about it should be, How would you have it work that would satisfy you?

Personally, I think the status quo works. I'm not saying that it's wrong for the government to listen to people; I'm saying it's wrong for the government to have absolute power to listen to people whenever they want to. While I would grant you that the current system isn't perfect, it's still better than the government being able to listen to whoever they want whenever they want.