FCC Chief Calls for Probe of Phone Cos.(Copps)

[cal04]

The Federal Communications Commission should investigate whether phone companies are violating federal communications law by providing calling records to the National Security Agency as part of an anti-terrorism program, an FCC commissioner said Monday. "There is no doubt that protecting the security of the American people is our government's No. 1 responsibility," Commissioner Michael J. Copps, a Democrat, said in a statement. "But in a digital age where collecting, distributing and manipulating consumers' personal information is as easy as a click of a button, the privacy of our citizens must still matter."

USA Today reported last week that AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. began turning over tens of millions of phone records to the NSA after the spy agency requested the records shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The paper reported that the NSA is building a massive call databank to analyze calling patterns.

The telecommunications company Qwest said it refused to cooperate with the NSA after determining that doing so would violate privacy law. On Monday, Atlanta-based BellSouth issued a statement that it had found no contract to provide phone records to the NSA and had not been providing bulk customer calling records to the agency. Verizon has refused to confirm or deny whether it has participated in the program.

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Copps cited the federal Communications Act when he questioned the legality of the phone companies' reported cooperation with the NSA. "We need to be certain that the companies over which the FCC has public-interest oversight have not gone — or been asked to go — to a place where they should not be," Copps said

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060516/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/eavesdropping_fcc_1

[MichiganVote]

1. Whitewash coming right up

[magellan]

2. Not very inspiring, considering who's at the FCC

Just another gesture to mollify the public's outrage, and a quiet blessing of approval down the road once it's slipped down the memory hole.

[stepnw1f]

3. FCC Will Place Their Stamp of Approval on this

Fucking scumbags.... ok names of every Bushbot working at the FCC, so that folks KNOW this is an attempt to WHITEWASH.

[EFerrari]

4. Figs trees everywhere tremble. n/t

[fshrink]

5. Funny:

"have not gone — or been asked to go — to a place where they should not be," ... That's pretty much our history over the last 6 years. So, to answer Copps' lament, yeah, we have been going everywhere where we souldn't be. At home and all over the world.

[KoKo]

6. Michael Copps is our Dem Rep on FCC /a good guy who has worked hard

to try to hold off the Repugs. He's outnumbered by two Repug appointees at the FCC. Bush made sure than he just appointed his handpicked man to head the FCC when one of the "swing commissioners" term expired. We should be glad Copps is still there....his term comes up the end of this year I believe. After that...it will be more Bushco clones...:-(

I don't have all the links on what Copps has tried to do ...you'll have to trust me that he's a good guy. But, being so outnumbered doesn't help.

[onenote]

7. a few corrections

Copps is one of two Democrats on the FCC; before taking the FCC position, he was a longtime staffer to Sen. Hollings. The other is Jonathan Adelstein, former staffer for Tom Daschle. While both Copps and Adelstein were appointed by chimpy, they are both good Democrats.

The current split on the FCC is 2 repubs, 2 Democrats. A third repub has been nominated, but has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.

Copps was renominated and confirmed for a second term last year. His current term ends, I believe, June 30, 2010. Adelstein also is serving a second term, which expire mid-2008.

I'm not sure where you got the concept that there was a "swing" Commissioner. Been a communications lawyer for 25 years and never once heard that concept. By law no more than 3 members of the FCC can be from the same party and by tradition, the President's party gets three Commissioners (i.e., if the presidency changes parties, typically the FCC Chairman, who is almost always from the party of the president, will step down, allowing the new president to appoint a chairman from his own party).

The two repubs are Chairman Kevin Martin, who previously served as an FCC staffer and worked on the bush campaign in 2000. He was originally named as a commissioner and later elevated to chairman when Michael Powell stepped down. He has close ties to Cheney (his wife works for Cheney). He was just renominated for another term that would end mid-2011. The second repub is Deborah Taylor Tate who was a utility commissioner in Tennessee (a Frist connection); she is filling the vacancy created when Martin was appointed to fill the Chairman's seat and her term will expire mid-2007.

onenote