Letters to the Editor
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The NYT weighs in, and I think we have it Backward
Or maybe, following Glenn, I should say "Various Things".
The New York Times finally weighed in on the Joe Nacchio revelations in a Scott Shane article and a lead editorial this morning. I do not apologize for getting all over their back for a half week, however, and they never acknowledged that they failed to "record" the Progressive Caucus forcing Steny Hoyer to withdraw a totally craven proposal for FISA reform earlier. The implication is the latter was "not fit to print". The Shane article brings out one new piece that I hadn't seen elsewhere: Court documents in the AT&T lawsuit in San Francisco show AT&T beginning to tool up and begin forwarding material to the NSA around the time that Nacchio reported his meeting on February 27, 2001. There you have it. If that trial goes to a verdict, we find out about pre-9/11 lawbreaking proposals, hopefully about post-9/11 lawbreaking proposals, and therefore whether or not "9/11 changed everything" or whether our entire response to 9/11 was pretty much in the works waiting for an excuse.
Following on that, and since I currently study analogical thinking around the clock, I propose Glenn, that the secret world we entered into in 1947 has become over time a world through the looking glass. We can't figure out the motives (I rant on this, the "vast sums" that the telecoms are paying into Congressional campaign coffers are piddly and insufficient for explanation) because we have the game backwards.
In the through the looking glass world of surveillance and government secrecy, everything is backwards. The government attempts to do "corrupt" things that are against the law, it is up to the corporations to uphold the law and refuse the bribes.
As Arne Langsetmo has pointed out numerous times, it is the corporations that comply with CALEA, it is also, according to Nacchio, the corporate general counsels who generate an opinion on whether or not the government has made FISA lawful requests, and the corporations which give up or not give up information.
So looking at corporate corruption of government and the motives of the Senate Intelligence committee as being corrupted by corporate money is backwards. The way it works is that the government wants to do something that is not permitted by law, the corporations are charged in the surveillance world with upholding the law, so the Attorney General lobbies the Corporate General Counsels with OLC opinions. If the CGCs still say that is against the law, the government stick is to blackball, to Nacchio the company. The government carrot is to offer favorable contracts and lax regulations. With the correct lobbying efforts, the government can get its reward from the corporations -- information useful to those in government for whatever purposes.
It is backwards to complain about sleazy corporate lobbyists illegally corrupting government officials to bend the rule of law about surveillance. Through the looking glass, it is sleazy government lobbyists illegally corrupting corporate officials to bend the rule of law about surveillance.
And the government's current bribe is retroactive immunity.