{"id":7402,"date":"2006-05-13T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-13T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7402"},"modified":"2006-05-13T10:55:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-13T14:55:00","slug":"this-is-not-a-happy-day-for-telecoms-general-counsels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/this-is-not-a-happy-day-for-telecoms-general-counsels\/","title":{"rendered":"‘This is not a happy day’ for telecoms’ general counsels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago, Congress made it illegal<\/a> for the [tag]telecommunications[\/tag] companies to give the government [tag]records[\/tag] showing who their customers had contacted. Oops<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Legal experts said the companies faced the prospect of [tag]lawsuits[\/tag] seeking billions of dollars in damages over cooperation in the program, citing communications privacy legislation stretching back to the 1930’s. A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers. […]<\/p>\n

Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University, said his reading of the relevant statutes put the phone companies at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order.<\/p>\n

“This is not a happy day for the general counsels” of the phone companies, he said. “If you have a class action involving 10 million Americans, that’s 10 million times $1,000 — that’s 10 billion.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As James X. Dempsey, a lawyer for the Center for Democracy and Technology, put it, “It is simply illegal for a telephone company to turn over caller records without some form of legal process, such as a court order or a subpoena.”<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, [tag]AT&T[\/tag], [tag]Verizon[\/tag], and [tag]BellSouth[\/tag] allowed themselves to be bullied by the administration. The [tag]Bush[\/tag] gang told them that it was their patriotic duty to turn over their records and comply with government requests, without warrants or any kind of legal process. They also “hinted” that lucrative government contracts were on the line<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Right about now, I suspect the telecoms are regretting their decision to go along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago, Congress made it illegal for the [tag]telecommunications[\/tag] companies to give the government [tag]records[\/tag] showing who their customers had contacted. Oops. Legal experts said the companies faced the prospect of [tag]lawsuits[\/tag] seeking billions of dollars in damages over cooperation in the program, citing communications privacy legislation stretching back to the 1930’s. A federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}