Aid & Abet

One of the workshops I went to at the National Conference on Media Reform that I really enjoyed was a session called “Privacy in the Age of AT&T, Google, and the NSA.” In part, the panel was so good because the presenters, like Tim Jones of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Tim Sparapani of the ACLU were so knowledgeable.

This was not a session that talked about how to protect your personal privacy on the internet, though that would have been an equally well-received workshop. What they did was cover in some detail recent developments, such as the move by the White House to grant immunity to telecom companies that participated in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping, as well as the implications. In another facet of the same case, AT&T is being sued by the EFF after a whistleblower came forward with evidence of AT&T’s participation in the wiretapping, creating a “dragnet” that gathered unsuspecting users’ emails.

The panel discussed the implications of these (and other cases), and I found a couple of points very interesting:

• In the case of warrantless wiretapping, the actions by the telecoms were clearly illegal. The companies are seeking extra-legal approval by asking Congress to say they are immune from laws. Isn’t this the whole “I was just following orders” argument? Anyway, Tim Jones refered to this as “sanctioned vigilante-ism”–law-breakers shouldn’t be punished if they are good or have good intentions. Who decides what’s good? This also sets a precedent that when national security is at stake laws can be set aside.
• The panel also discussed the blurring of lines between government agencies (like the NSA) and big corporations (like the telecom companies), creating as one panelist said, “quasi-governmental agencies” which are performing functions that the government should or used to perform, like security/policing/surveillance/disaster relief/etc. How are those companies held accountable?

I hope to see more of these issues coming up in discussions of the spying cases as they head to court.

If you want to learn more, my favorite website for this kind of news is Reclaim the Media.