Telephone Company is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit

By Ryan Singel
October 8, 2009
8:24 pm

The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: the nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying.

Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn’t enough to squash a rights group’s open records request for communications between the nation’s telecoms and the feds.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to see what role telecom lobbying of Justice Department played when the government began its year-long, and ultimately successful, push to win retroactive immunity for AT&T and others being sued for unlawfully spying on American citizens.

The feds argued that the documents showing consultation over the controversial telecom immunity proposal weren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act since they were protected as “intra-agency” records:

more-> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/att-doj-foia/

While the progressives didn't.

Good to hear a judge will let the Telecom records be opened wide. I guess he's one person that can't be bought.

Can we turn them into non-prfits? How niave of me.

"There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.”

“There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today."
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Your relationship with health insurance racketeers is about to take on the same subject-to-sovereign nature as your relationship with the phone companies. Between them, the public-private partnership of corporations and government has all the discretion and all the power, and you will have none.

Why don't corporations just take over the government? Because in this arrangement corporations have the benefit of rule without the burden of performance. This way is simply cheaper and more profitable.

The whole shebang is here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork4.html
Network (1976) Directed by Sidney Lumet, Screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky

we are checking them out now. If they cover our area then they will be our new service.

"Mr. Veedle, you owe us a balance of $23.64. When may we expect payment? Pardon? When what freezes over? I don't see why you're kicking up such a ruckus when according to our files your present bank balance, plus stocks, securities, and other holdings, amounts to exactly ... Pardon? Privileged information? Oh! (snort, snort) Mr. Veedle, that's so cute! No, no, no, youre dealing with the telephone company. We are not subject to city, state, or federal legislation. We are omnipotent."

Part of the government when getting sued.
Private company when collecting money.
Telephone-using citizens getting screwed.

Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.