[TUCKER]

Originally Posted by sensitiveguy

The agreement extends the government's ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while effectively providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecom firms. They face more than 40 lawsuits that allege they violated customers' privacy rights by helping the government conduct a warrantless spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

They did! While executing this program for years w'out senate approval, these companies conducted "covert domestic spying" operations on U S citizens for the Justice Department, the N S A and other gov't agencies. Indiscriminate emails were monitored and read by interested federal parties. If the info was useful they passed it to the interested agency, w'out knowledge of the server's client.

Under the surveillance agreement, which is expected to be approved today by the House and next week by the Senate, telecoms could have privacy lawsuits thrown out if they show a federal judge that they received written assurance from the Bush administration that the spying was legal.

They shouldn't get it because the spying was illegal. The House and the Senate had asked the Bush admin to cease and desist these covert tactics as early as 2000.

The legislation also would require court approval of procedures for intercepting telephone calls and e-mails that pass through U.S.-based servers -- another step that the White House and GOP lawmakers previously resisted.


Pelosi said the most important part of the deal is "exclusivity" language making it clear that the surveillance law is the only legal authority when it comes to government spying. In defending its warrantless spying program in the past, Bush administration lawyers argued that the commander in chief's warmaking powers trumped such considerations.

Yesterday's agreement ended a four-month standoff that began after House leaders refused to pass a Senate-approved bill that would have made permanent a temporary surveillance law enacted last August.

I've been talking about this covert program called "CARNIVORE" here for yrs now! "CARNIVORE" is an illegal spying operation conducted by the CIA and FBI covertly and jointly.

Ideally: emails of people suspected of being terrorist sympathizers could be intercepted and scanned w'out the sender or the receiver knowing. The gov't would simply go to the server and intercept all emails originating at the suspects keyboard. Of course the server has the gov'ts promise that they will not look at, or alter any emails that are not suspect. Now who makes the determination you ask? The same gov't that made the promise! How do they make the distinction you ask? They've got to read the email! But they've promised to uphold the agreement with the servers as worded.

Actuality: "CARNIVORE" confiscates ALL mails leaving the server from the suspect's source. All mail is scanned for security and returned to the server to complete its operations. All this without the consumers knowledge, but with the knowledge and cooperation of the phone companys and the servers. This is spying!

The "CARNIVORE" program has been up and running since the mid 90s. Its called that because it eats emails. When the house and senate learned of the program, in 2001. In a closed session, they asked the president to order it stopped because of its potential for abuse and he agreed to do so after a period of time had lapsed. Then came 911 and the program was put into affect in full force, still without congressional approval and that is where it stands today.