[ale] OT: Forget Comcast, I wanna move to Germany!

[Jim Popovitch]

On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:46 -0400, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> The law that prevents it is called the Constitution.  The government is
> not allowed to "search and seize" without due process. 

The government isn't searching and seizing, wrt AT&T and other telcos.
The govt asked and the telcos agreed.  It's a business-govt agreement,
and they happen all the time in all sorts of areas.  If you don't like
businesses working with various governmental agencies, get a new law
passed.  Apparently nothing illegal has occurred, other than folks
making wild accusations without facts. ;-)

> The fact that someone chooses to collude with illegal NSA requests
> doesn't make such a request legal.

Nor does it make it illegal, which is something you seem to
(incorrectly) be thinking.  The NSA has the permission to request
anything they want from others.  The only big restriction on the NSA is
against themselves doing internal spying.  Look at Echelon to learn more
about what the current (and past) laws allow for.   Agreements between
two parties, to share data, are perfectly legal inside the limits of the
law, and the Constitution.  Again, you may not like this, but that is a
different problem.

-Jim P.