Wilson you are overreacting. As evil as ATT may be, they helped our Government track crucial calls that lead to actual success in converting leads to arrests. They track calls with keywords from key areas, honestly, has there been even a single case where someone was arrested on assumption of anything other than terrorist acts via phone taps? I have yet to hear of such a case.

They can listen in all they want, it's not like there's someone sitting on the other line of my call giggling at my cheesy movie references. These companies did not have to agree to help the Government and they sure as hell don't deserve to be investigated by the very people who beckoned their help in the first place.

This just shows the kind of lengths that Liberal lefties will go to in order to further tarnish this administration. I'm not going to claim I agree with every policy Bush comes up with but please, if there has been any harm done by these wire taps I'm sure it is far surpassed by the good that has resulted. Utilitarianism, I believe it is called, in the marketing world.

Phone records (who called who, not the contents of the conversation) have never required a warrant (see every episode of Law & Order if nothing else; "Pull the LUDs on him" "Yes Lt"). If you choose to dial the Hindu Kush on you Jesusphone, well, Uncle Sugar is probably going to know about it. This is just one more piece of the Dems' war on the war. It's too bad that they don't hat OBL 1/10 as much as they do Bush.

@sisedi: I call bullshit. If Congress requests it of the FCC, shouldn't they listen? Does the FCC fall under the NSA's authority or Congress's (our ELECTED leaders)? IMO, it all comes down to who the FCC is responsible to. If it's the NSA, then they acted in the right by obeying their request. If it's Congress, and they essentially told their boss "No" because the NSA told them so, then they're in the wrong. Too much power has been collecting around the Executive branch and their appointees. This is a VERY troubling condition in our multi-branch system of government.

@Canoehead: Last sentence absolutely agree, Imagine what they could do to that guy's life if they were so inclined.

"...how much longer is this government allowed to subordinate our rights to their not entirely legal whims or cozy corporate partnerships?"

Forever. If you think this is going to stop with the Bush administration, think again. Let me put it this way: if you were given a job where your predecessor had amassed unprecedented power, would *you* willingly relinquish that power?

Plus, the Democratic frontrunner isn't exactly shy about her own cozy corporate partnerships. And the Republican frontrunner is...well, a Republican.

@newgalactic: If the FCC is a self governing body elected by the Executive (?) then they can chose what to do or not do. I believe they respected our national security over efforts to gain political points for Democrats, IMO. The FCC knows what who it's dealing with and they know better than to become a scapegoat for national insecurity.

Can they wiretap bourbon?

Yes.

In 1998 they created the DMCA. The Digital Micro-Chip for Alcohol.

Of course, if you drink enough, you won't care.

[hiccup]

@sisedi: You forget that their request was for a broader investigation into potentially illegal activity that the administration is also under scrutiny for. I also believe that it is completely illegal to turn over phone records without a warrant, regardless of what you see on "Law and Order".

I guess you don't subscribe to the often wrongly attributed Ben Franklin quote:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Hopefully our road to a police state ends when the current administration finally leaves office.

@aschneid: Of course the investigation would be for illegal activities, anything to undermine the efforts of this administration.

But I believe under the patriot act there is no warrant required for garnering such information from the public, making it perfectly legal and an executive right whether or not we agree with it; apparently congress did when they passed it but then grudgingly confessed their own stupidity by claiming things like, "we didn't know that was in there!" as soon as the media began demonstrating outrage toward said bill. Got to keep that voting base happy, am I right?

And about that quote from Ben Franklin, he couldn't have anticipated the situation our nation is in presently. We are being infiltrated from the inside out by a type of criminal unforeseen by our forefathers. In his time essential liberty meant an entirely different thing, God and country my friend.

@Empire: If I recall the 1990s correctly, the current Democrat frontrunner and/her he-bitch ammassed a huge quantity of FBI files as well as IRS audits to use against their enemies in an affort that could only be described as Nixonian. While the Bush admin may have stretched executive privelage a bit, they were at least TRYING to get the people that did attack America and would do it again. Billy Jeff was wholly disinterested in attacking Al Quaeda (even after the USS Cole attack) but was more than ready to misuse the executive to attack his political enemies at home. Let us also not forget that the Bush admin did not invent "warrantless wiretaps" and extraordinary rendition, and that both were practiced by that other administration in the halcyon 1990s.

I don't do anything illegal apart from downloading illegal music, poaching a few deer, and driving a minivan, so if Uncle Sugar wants to watch my browsing habits and listen in on the phone calls to my mom, I say have at it!

i could care less if AT&T is investigated or if my phone calls are recorded but it does make me furious how the government is always in cahoots with these Deathstars of companies...

(part of that was supposed to bu funny... so lauph!!)

Don't worry too much. As soon as they tick off the wrong people, they'll be taken down by a bunch of muppets.

also, could i get a handrail?

I <3 wiretaps

@sisedi: Ben Franklin couldn't have foreseen insurgents or terrorists? Dude, he lived through the Revolutionary War. There were plenty of pro-Brittan elements here in the US at the time. If you don't believe that He'd be familiar with anything going on today, your painfully ignorant of our country's history.

...and just because it's legal today, doesn't mean that it's "right". Elements of the Patriot Act are currently under attack by our court systems. I expect certain elements of that piece of legislation to be overturned within the next few years.

@sisedi: No one in our government is "self governing", except for our Judicial Branch. The FCC answers to someone, and our Congress is a pretty big someone.

And yet another AT&T as death star graphic...how my how original.

Also, is AT&T the only one who turned over records? Why this continued and hateful campaign against AT&T one must ask?

@Niam:
I'm thinking it's because they are in fact evil. And their symbol lends itself so well to the aforementioned death star graphics.

@Canoehead: "It's too bad that they don't hat OBL 1/10 as much as they do Bush."

Yeah, it's too bad Bush and his cronies don't try to catch Osama Bin Laden 1/10 of the amount of times that they say "9/11" to scare the American public. Let me guess, you were a 2-term Bush voter? "Childrens", puuhleeeze. I didn't vote for the village idiot. If the next president wants to be the best president this country has ever seen, all they have to do is think, "What would George Bush do?" and then do the opposite.

@sisedi:

"As evil as ATT may be, they helped our Government track crucial calls that lead to actual success in converting leads to arrests"

Yeah? Turn off Faux news and prove it. I don't believe that bullshit for one second.

"This just shows the kind of lengths that Liberal lefties will go to in order to further tarnish this administration."

Um, I hate to break it to you, since you're probably part of a rapidly dwindling Bush supporter percentile: The "lefties" don't need to do much to tarnish the current administration. Tarnishing this administration is the only job that this administration does right!

@sisedi: "...honestly, has there been even a single case where someone was arrested on assumption of anything other than terrorist acts via phone taps?"

Apparently you were born after the 1960s; read up on the Church Reports. The point is not that someone was or was not arrested, but that secret monitoring of ordinary citizens has a deadening effect on political, cultural, and social discourse. People don't have to be doing anything wrong; they just have to think they might be under surveillance and they'll close down completely. The result is something like East Germany under the Stasi.

And while his case doesn't involve phone taps, Brandon Mayfield (falsely arrested as a terrorist linked to bombings in Spain) might have some choice words on how much we can trust the government's ability to properly and correctly collect and mine information on its citizens.

Rigth on Canoehead! The President should be the most intelligent and most qualified person in this nation; not some village ideot who can;t see reason.

I just want to know, who here feels more threatened by our own government than by a terrorist group?

@yardameus: Well, if you look up the definition of a terrorism:

"The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims."

I would call our current administration a terrorist group! The problem is that we live in the United States of Apathy. The fact that Bush didn't lose in a landslide in '04 is proof of that.

@Niam:
Yah... that is getting old. Let's see the ATT globe as the Loknar for a change. Whaddya say, Giz?

@Obee Juan:

I love the at&t as the death star logo analogy. Especially since they use movie scenes to tell the story...

dont worry, they only tap the good stuff. stick with the evan williams and old milwaukee and you should be fine

Wow, I really just saw a few idiots here give away their constitutional rights to fight terrorism. If we do this, we are admitting defeat, they have changed America.

Our founding fathers would have wept.

@axiomatic: I mean, seriously, right? Notice that these useful idiots have nothing to say regarding my postings. It's always the Republicans which screw up our country...do the research and you'll see who consistently ruins the economy, international affairs, etc. It's really quite sad....like sad in a "Oh, your brain isn't quite connecting the dots" kinda sad. It's actually pretty fucking pathetic. These people who forfeit their Constitutional rights only prove that retards can use computers. They are fake patriots championing the cause of a privileged shit-head who masquerades as a working man: BUSH.

@yardameus: I Do