Re:the third parties are running idiots too..... (Score 1)

You know, I still don't get the huge deal with the telecom immunity.

It was never about telecoms. Retroactive Immunity should be reserved for those cases where an actor violated a law which was so egregiously and blatantly wrong that they can be forgiven, after the fact, for having violated the law in the first place.

It should come with a formal apology by the lawmakers for having created the law in the first place.

It should also come with a compensation package for those who were financially impacted by by their act of following the law (at the time) and doing the right thing.

And finally, it should come with a change to the law, correcting the original flaw, and preventing a similar situation from occurring again in the future.

In this case, Obama's vote in favor of retroactive immunity can be read to mean he feels FISA was egregiously and blatantly wrong for demanding that telecoms not disclose information without a warrant. He clearly also feels that Qwest deserved to suffer financially against their (Bush-spyfunded) competitors for not seeing that their privacy-preserving actions would eventually by condemned by Congress.

These are, or course, my words, not Obama's. But the Senator should know why a backlash has formed against his as a result of his vote.

Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records. The government obviously shows a disdain for the constitution and considers anyone who stands in their way to be terrorist accomplices. What's going to happen to you when you say 'No'?

There's another point many are missing: Among the innocent Americans which the current Republican administration has felt justified in spying on are the staffers and volunteers of the Obama for America movement, and the Senator himself. Was there ever a more clear-cut case of a group agitating for Regime Change in the US than this group of "terrorists"?

Which brings us back to Today's Slashdot article...