Well the House of Representatives passed the crappy piece of legislation that provides retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. I find it disgusting that the House decided that potentially illegal spying on citizens is not worthy of full investigation and instead passed a bill that kills the currently progressing legal proceedings. I am glad to report that my representative, Congressman Richard E. Neal, voted against the bill, thank you very much Representative Neal.
There was a former Deputy Attorney General on the News Hour Friday night who tried to make light of this immunity with a bad analogy. He said if a policeman takes your car to chase a criminal you are given immunity from prosecution for whatever happens so, the telcos should get immunity. This is not anywhere near the same as the immunity they want to give the telcos. If a policeman hands you a gun and tells you to shoot someone in the head AFAIK you will not be given immunity from prosecution. Every citizen is required to know the law and when instructed by anyone to break that law the citizen must say no or accept the consequences. Sure a Judge might give you a break on the sentence if it wasn’t easy to determine the legality but you can’t expect full immunity because an insane authority figure tells you to do something that you should know is wrong.
The bill is now in the Senate, lets hope they throw out the retroactive immunity provision so that we can find out what this monkey business was all about.
Please contact your Senators and urge them to vote NO on this bill that cuts sharply into our Constitutionally guaranteed rights.
More information about the House fiasco here:
House Caves, Approves Fake ‘Compromise’ on Telecom Immunity
This article covers the action in the Senate on this bill:
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 