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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting bill to me. On one hand, I hate the idea of these wiretaps, and think they're one of a number of reasons for which Bush should be impeached.

On the other hand, I think the phone companies need to be exonerated. Corporations can't be expected to pick and choose when they cooperate with the government, and they should never be penalized for doing so. We don't want to create a system in which companies can be held liable for that. It will hinder legitimate law enforcement, and create insurmountable legal bills for small businesses asked to cooperate with government investigations.

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"It will hinder legitimate law enforcement, and create insurmountable legal bills for small businesses asked to cooperate with government investigations."

Your argument is flawed because the telecoms weren't obligated to fight the government's attempts to receive a warrant, but rather to inspect the warrant before giving the government wiretapping ability.

Perhaps, I don't know that much about it. The overall problem though is with legal precedent, as I feel it puts businesses in a no-win situation. What if you're a small business owner, say of a video rental store, and the White House asks you for records? Your options are:

1. Comply

2. Start spending serious money on legal advice.

Suppose your lawyer says not to do it without a warrant (which he probably would.) Then what? You risk fighting the White House in court? You could suck up a lifetime of a video store's revenue doing this. You'd probably waste a couple weeks of profit just to pay the retainer to get that advice in the first place. You, a small business owner, the keystone of our economy, with a family to feed and kids to put through college, should have to pay a significant amount of money to help police our government?

Even for a large telecom that can afford the legal bills, they're putting shareholder money at risk to fight an ethical battle by refusing to meet the White House's demands. They might be risking shareholder lawsuits for that. Either way, they're screwed.

The way I see it, we as a society have two reasonable options.

1) This sort of oversight should come from the government itself, or at least somehow be publicly funded. or

2) Corporations should never be penalized for following a government issued order. Of course, if it turns out that order was illegal (as in the case of this wiretapping) the government agencies and employees involved should be the ones held at fault. Not the business that merely complied with the government.

There is another problem with this argument: on one hand you have bankruptcy of a business, on the other hand you have collusion of state and corporations to crush individual rights.

It's about priorities.

It's not collusion. The telecoms didn't call up Bush and say "hey, anybody want any phone records? We can work together and really screw Americans."

It's directors of large corporations trying to do their job of representing the shareholders, and their job as citizens complying with the government.

" ... and their job as citizens complying with the government."

The job of citizens is to question the government. They work for us; it's the job of the government to comply with the citizens.

Mounting a legal defense wouldn't cost the business owner any money; in fact, they wouldn't even need a lawyer. If anyone sued them they could go to court and lose instantly and be in the clear legally. But instead they acted without being compelled to by a court. That's what makes their actions illegal and that's why they deserve to be in jail.

That makes so little sense that I hope you mis-worded it. You're not thinking from the perspective of a business owner. I've been taken to court before, and when facing that situation you don't think "well, I'll go represent myself and lose, and then I'll be in the clear legally." That makes no sense.

Your thought process is more like "fuck, I better find a good lawyer." Being taken to court is serious stuff. And I've never been taken to court by the government. That's really serious stuff.

I am thinking from the perspective of the business owner. Let's say the government asks me to wiretap for them. I say no because it would be illegal, but if it weren't illegal then I would gladly do it (as an evil telecom). So the government then goes to court to compel me to do it. I go to court and put up no defense and I lose. Now because the government has a court order mandating that I allow them to wiretap, if I do allow them to wiretap then I cannot be held accountable. I don't see what is so misguided about this.

You're missing where the legal fees begin. How do you know what the government asked you for is illegal if you aren't paying lawyers to tell you that? You're a businessman, not an attorney.

Also, "going to court" even if you do the bare minimum is still costing money as well. Is your CEO going to go take the stand or something? This isn't a criminal trial (yet), you can't simply plead the 5th.

Do you think you can just disobey the government, lose a court case, then obey them, and that's the end of it? No fines? Do you think you can just not even try to represent yourself in court and not anger shareholders?

That strategy is just silly.

If the feds come to your office and ask for help with an investigation and you refuse to help, they'll just go away and there's nothing they can do. Then they either come back with a court order or they don't come back at all. You are never legally required to help with the investigation of someone else unless you are under a court order. It seems pretty cut and dry to me, and I don't see how any criminal charges could possibly be filed against you.

Also, since the wiretapping program was classified any legal action would take place in a secret court (or possibly the transcripts would be sealed), so angering the shareholders is a non-issue.

edit: If the feds come and tell you that you are legally required to do something THEN you need a lawyer. But that isn't what happened in this case.

Again, how do you know this without consulting an attorney? You keep spouting legal facts that may or may not be true (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) but are you, the CEO of a publicly traded corporation, going to simply say no because you think, despite no real legal expertise, that you are never legally required to help an investigation? Or are you going to consult with attorneys? What about the small guy who owns a video rental store that makes $40k a year in profit for him? He's going to have to go plunk down 10% of his yearly earn on a retainer just to discover that fact.

And even if what you say is true, which it surely could be, and even if it were common knowledge, it's still irrelevant. Corporations don't exist to police the government, it's the other way around. Penalizing a private enterprise for cooperating with a government agency's request is ridiculous.

there's 1 problem with your argument. these weren't small businesses. they were telecoms with hundreds of millions of dollars with nice big legal departments

That doesn't matter. There's no corporate size limit at which you no longer have to comply with government orders. In fact, the fact that they're publicly traded means they're exposed to shareholder lawsuits if the shareholders decide that the people in charge aren't doing their duty to represent them. Especially by, say, wasting a bunch of money on legal bills to fight the government.

I just can't envision running a corporation in a world in which you could be penalized for complying with the government. What Sarb-Ox has done to publicly traded companies, this would do 10x to all of them.

What if the Administration asked a company to go kill somebody in the name of fighting terrorism, somebody gets killed, but the company is exonerated? These American companies (incl ATT) had every right to refuse to support this, and could have chosen to do so, just as Qwest did. But ATT chose to cooperate, just because the Admin asked them to. So now we cut them a break by not allowing a lawsuit by American citizens to be filed?

That's the problem with all this stuff. The government compromises everything it touches to the point that bailouts overrule justice.

All this debacle will repeat itself, and next time it will be a little bit worse, and the circumstances get a little bit more ridiculous. But we American citizens will keep adjusting to it, because we become a little bit more compromised along the way.

This is wrong, and should be treated as such no matter what the consequences to any company.

It's not the corporations' responsibility to police our government, it's ours. We should be impeaching Bush and various members of his administration undoubtedly for issuing the requests.

But you just cannot have an orderly society in which corporations are expected to pick and choose which laws and governmental agency requests they are going to follow and which they are not.

"But you just cannot have an orderly society in which corporations are expected to pick and choose which laws and governmental agency requests they are going to follow and which they are not."

Court orders and subpoenas. No need for arbitrary picking and choosing.

And, really, in the end, I would hope that something was learned from Nuremberg.

The Bill of Rights does not secure the right to earn a profit. Every one of these corporations had a choice between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing.

A true patriot would fold the business before allowing it to be used to infringe upon the rights of citizens.

We can blame Bush and we can blame Congress, but first we should blame ourselves for letting it go this far.

Folding the business because you think a government order is unethical would land you in jail. When you run a publicly traded company, you have a legal responsibility to represent your shareholders' financial interest.

If you want to be technical, the Bill of Rights does not secure the right to use a phone without the government knowing who you call. In fact, it doesn't even secure the right to privacy. It kind of flirts with the issue, but it's a common misconception that it guarantees it.

Maybe I'm biased because I think patriotism is stupid (as Shaw said "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.") but if captains of industry folded their corporations every time they perceived an ethical violation we'd have no stock market left.

No, let's blame our parents for raising us to be this way!

No, let's blame THEIR parents.

I blame you.

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