AT&T: American Telecommunications & Tapping?

Anal Transgressions & Tunneling

If it was unconstitutional, why worry about an immunity law?

Oh yeah....warrantless wiretapping and unconstitutional violation of privacy...so hilarious!

@Overheal: Exactly!

Carey, why do you insist on making me laugh at something so despicable.

@Overheal: AT&T: American Treachery & Tattling.

Yes, well. Those motherfuckers are certainly raising the bar, aren't they?

Seriously Consumerist, you guys have lost your focus. Is that really what they're doing? No, not at all. Stop deluding yourselves into thinking that AT&T's marketing department is somehow trying to laugh off warrantless wiretapping. THIS HAS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. They're not even alluding to it. This is something else entirely.

Why not go back to whining about how Starbucks is out to get us because some fool got charged for whipped cream on their Frappuccino when they asked for none, or crying wolf in one of the million other ways you seem to these days.

@freshyill: crawl back to your desk at langley

Dr. Johnny Fever's utter paranoia about the phone cops is starting to look reasonable. Shudder.

Oh jeez. This isn't even worth commenting on.

You guys are paranoid.

I think we're doing a little extra connecting the dots to conclude that AT&T's intent is to laugh the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" crowd off, but if that's truly not it then they're still guilty of an incredibly stupid marketing campaign.

I don't get how this is at all related to the wiretapping.

I also don't see the marketing angle. If you're a suspicious person, you should get online billing?

I absolutely despise this country.

It's a goddamn joke to ANYONE with money. Legal systems? Constitutions? What the fuck are those? We can just purchase our right to break the law all in the name of "anti-terror"

We're all fucked America.

....What?

American Thugs and Thieves

I like especially like the fact that if you navigate to [www.onlineliberationmovement.com], it redirects you to the ATT landing page.

I kind of take this ad as a slap in the face.... from a company that is now immune from being sued for allowing the government to listen in on their customers' phone calls.....and making a little joke about it all.

@Kaisum: Osama Bin Laden has succeeded what he wanted to create. The after effects of one man's action/decision has affected one of the biggest super powers in the world. He is probably giddy every time he reads something that says how our government is "fighting terrorism".

Was my comment possibly out of line? Maybe. But just think about it and you'll realize, all it took was some airplanes to change the country "forever".

I sell foil beanies if anybody is interested.

Nobody had to "take" our rights and privacy from us or buy them, we just handed them over. We all just sat around like good little sheep while we have been constantly fed "fear" and "threats of terror" by the corporate media and the Bush Administration. As long as it didn't interrupt the Superbowl, or NASCAR or the next episode of American Idol (then we'd all be really upset!) we American will just contimue sit on our couches and watch TV and believe ANY lie if it is told to us enough times!

do your fucking homework. the average American citizen does not get wire tapped. the NSA does not give 2 shits about millions of Americans that DO NOT commit crime. they care about the ones that DO commit crimes.

@hc130radio:

The thing is.... being able to trust the government to know the difference.

@hc130radio: Using that logic, why then did our forefathers even bother about putting protections for liberty in our constitution? If law abiding citizens have nothing to fear from the government watching them, why is congress passing laws to give telcos immunity?

@bobpence: Cause Whackjobs like to sue. Immunity limits liability

i REFUSE to vote for anyone who approves this. This is just wrong plain and simple.

So the telecoms get defense from lawsuits pertaining to allegedly illegal wiretapping? Ummm, anyone here can prove they were wire tapped? I know sure as hell that I can't I wouldn't even know where to begin.

But if they were sued to oblivion with little to no evidence, we'd see a very interesting increase in our rates.

Personally I think it has been worth not getting attacked at all within the last 7 years, or would you rather have innocent lives taken in the name of bullshit so that you could sit in the comfort of your home knowing that no one is monitoring your communication rather than being paranoid by the possibility that someone may be interested in your stupid conversations?

True, potentially no attacks would've occurred had the wire taps not been implemented but in times like these 'better safe than sorry' comes to mind.

I don't understand two things. One, how this is possibly supposed to make me want to use this AT&T service. And two, how this can possibly be construed to refer to the wiretapping immunity. Sorry Consumerist; I still love you, but that's a stretch.

@sisedi: You're working under the assumption that were it not for all this mucking about by the government, the US would have been attacked again.

There's a problem in that.

If she's got nothing to hide, why is she covering up the Apple logo on her PowerBook G4?

@sisedi: Personally I think it has been worth not getting attacked at all within the last 7 years,

Well personally I don't. Personally I don't think getting treated liek a criminal without any evidence and generating a culture of fear to the point that no one questions anything anymore was worth any amount of attacks.

I'd rather die free than live on my knees, constantly abused and manipulated by people I (supposedly) voted for.

Warrantless wiretapping is a suspension of due process.

If you need a wiretap, you convince a fucking judge of it so that they can make sure that you're not abusing your power. That's a fundamental principle called checks and balances. The people with the power to eavesdrop and monitor and spy on people have to make a case for it to others.

I don't give a flying fuck if "innocent" lives are lost because the NSA was too lazy to put forth the effort to convince a judge that they needed a tap; it's an organizational problem, and they should fix it instead of stealing freedom from everyone else.

Honestly, do you and everyone else who says "better safe than sorry" just have no idea about what risk actually is?

You know what catches terrorists?
Police work. Yep, 9/11 was "preventable" (god, i hate that word) -- the linchpin being that the various fiefdoms that were doing their own policework didn't exchange information and resources with others, not that credit records and phone call contents and web traffic logs weren't being funneled into secret NSA facilities to be pored over by algorithms.
You know what doesn't catch terrorists?
Massive widespread data-mining and eavesdropping and telecom intercepts.

@sisedi: I have a magic rock I'd like to sell you. It's guaranteed to prevent 100% of tiger attacks! I've owned it my entire life, and never been attacked once by a tiger.

@Grive: That's why I wrote the disclaimer, read the entire comment.

@r4__: Absolutely no one is treating you like a criminal, not I nor anyone in the government. Think about this, try finding a supposed criminal who was caught under warrantless wiretaps in a crime unrelated to terrorist plotting. Yes you can be paranoid and think any second you may say something and wham, you're picked up by suits but I doubt that is the case.

And you're claiming that NSA should get a judge to verify a tap on a phone call which they don't even know exists? If you have a phone call being made traced by the words and locations of the callers, how the hell are you going to know that prior to the making of the call? To request a tap on someone you have no evidence has any wrong doing would never happen, they haven't built the flux capacitor yet.

Terrorists are hiding effectively within our country thanks to ludicrous border policies and having no evidence to tap their phones is apparently their right so why not be able to squash a bug when it comes out of hiding?

This whole post is thrown together sorry.

@sisedi:
Personally, it makes me want to vomit when people talk about how XYZ-whatever is worth not having been attacked at all within the last seven years, AS IF attacks were somehow at one point the norm, or as if those who plan attacks are truly so stupid as to make those plans over their home phones, or cellphones for which they've signed two year contracts. "Dth 2 Amrca! Dth 2 Isreal! My Iphone is AWSM!!1! TTYL"

Personally, it makes me want to vomit when people are totally content to sacrifice their basic rights because the boogeyman might be out there. Personally, it makes my stomach churn when people talk about loss of life in these situations, not only encouraging fear, but totally ejaculating all over the tragedy that was the loss of life on September 11th.

Personally, it makes me a little fucking queasy when Americans don't stand up and take those who should uphold the law, to task for breaking it.

argh.

@Angiol: Sweet analogy, its purity and relativity burns answers into my soul but the comedy is the real sting.

I like this one though:
Tank commander: I see the enemy, tank at 2 o clock, FIRE!
Tank driver: ummm, we need to get approval, sir.
Commander: Ughh... can we blow up the enemy Mrs. Pilosi?
Pilosi: Gee...idk...send me a picture please and I'm going to need non-military eye witnesses testimonies
Commander: Sending it now...going slow kinda, EV-DO sucks...
Pilosi: It's coming through...alright, looks good to go commander!
...
... Hello? Whatever...

@unravel: Vomit on your motherboard so I wont have to read your ramblings.

But don't worry, as soon as Obama gets in office he'll fix all of this right up for you in a jiffy. But how will he fight terrorism, you ask? Simple, surrender. He already enjoys talking to holocaust denying dictators so why not give them whatever they want, appease them until our economy is bled dry, at least we didn't have to sacrifice our phone calls, right?

Mmmm, America the bitch, has a certain ring to it.

@sisedi:
Somebody has sure bought into the whole Bush agenda haven't they?

@sisedi:
You have made a whole bunch of statements about terrorists hiding in the USA and so forth.

Kindly prove it.

@Angiol: nice simpsons reference.

@P.T.Wheatstraw: [abcnews.go.com]

[www.cbn.com]

[www.fas.org]

I'm sure you'll probably try to drag these authors to the ground by trying to denounce their honor or word by some means so in that case, be reminded of the synagogue attacked in Seattle I believe by a self proclaimed terrorist on a hunt for jewish people.

@P.T.Wheatstraw: I found it [www.militantislammonitor.org]

@sisedi: wiretapping -> security -> consitution -> obama -> holocaust denying dictators. This conversation is reminding me of my college days getting high and talking about politics and ending it on dogs with fluffy tails then completely forgetting what the hell we were talking about in the first place.

@sisedi:
Going by statistics, you have more of a chance of getting hit by lightening than getting killed by a terrorist in this country. I, for one, am not going to spend my life worrying about something that may never happen.

@crescentia: You reminded me of an interesting concept. If we pull out of terrorist nations, quit doing business with them, secure our own borders, keep our eyes and ears to our streets and scrap warrantless wiretaps, give us back our freedom and give a giant middle finger to said nations, we may just be secure for the rest of the existence of our country without sacrificing a thing.

But, and there's a huge but, we deal with these countries daily. The U.S. is sitting on a liquid gold mine of unrefined crude and we need to stop giving dollars to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and start digging for our own fuel. If we can succeed at that, we can pretty much ignore them for ever until they get so pissed they do something stupid and start WW3.

Oh great, a liberal orgy. The only question is, who's on top, Obama or the terrorists?

@SkyeBlue: Fucking A

oh, and btw, am I the only one that thinks Ms. Suspicious looks a bit like a fella? Or am I missing part of the joke.

@sisedi: haha yes that's exactly what i'm saying, a combat zone is just like the united states. well done.

@sisedi: I agree, the oil companies need to stop sitting on those permits that they have and actually, you know, start drilling.

@Hawk07: Oh great, yet another person who thinks that arguing for liberty is a liberal orgy.

HINT: traditional conservatives are (and the dead ones would be appalled) at the current situation in the US.

The terrorists are on top right now, they've achieved everything they could dream of: the populace is so afraid of being attacked by them that they are willing to let their lawmakers take away the protections that were the basis of our country.

My sales of foil beanies are on the rise.

AT&T - American Treason & Terrorists

@Corporate-Shill: I'll take 5 beanies, please!