The founding fathers of the United States were not interested in giving constitutional rights to corporations. In fact, they wanted to regulate corporations very tightly because they had had bad experiences with corporations during colonial times. The crown charter corporations like the East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company had been the rulers of America. So when the constitution was written, corporations were left out of the Constitution. Responsibility for corporate chartering was given to the states. State governance was closer to the people and would enable them to keep an eye on corporations.

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush's five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government's authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration.

...

Voting record for FISA Amendments Act of 2008

Breaking months of acrimonious deadlock, House and Senate leaders from both parties have agreed to a bill that gives the nation's spy agencies the power to turn a wide swath of domestic communication companies into intelligence-gathering operations, and that puts an end to court challenges to telecoms such as AT&T that aided the government's secret, five-year warrantless wiretapping program.

What a bunch of crap.

In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

As first reported by Threat Level, Chuck Fish, a full-time lawyer for the McCain campaign, also said McCain wanted stricter rules on how the nation's telecoms work with U.S. spy agencies, and expected those companies to apologize for any lawbreaking before winning amnesty.

But Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements, and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's.

[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]

We do not know what lies ahead in our nation's fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.

The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001.

Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries...

23 General Motors $176,558.00
25 Wal-Mart $166,809.00
26 Exxon Mobil $163,881.00
27 Ford Motor $162,558.00
28 DaimlerChrysler $159,985.70

(in millions)

House Democrats aren't planning a compromise on telecom amnesty and are actually going on offense to find a way to learn more about President Bush's five-year secret "Total Information Awareness" program.

At least that's what's suggested by a 119-page draft bill being circulated by the leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees as answer to the Administration-backed Senate spying bill.

The bill proposes a way for the government to issue blanket surveillance orders in order to force American telecom and internet providers to give the government a copy of every phone call, email or instant message that is believed to involve a foreigner. That mimics the Senate version and largely legalizes the president's warrantless wiretapping program.

However, the bill restates -- as the 30-year old spying law stated -- that the law is the only route for the government to conduct electronic surveillance inside the United States. Bush opposes that language and says he has the power as Commander in Chief to spy inside America without any Congressional or court oversight.

Hooray!

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

"What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, CTO of New Jersey-based IGXglobal told Threat Level. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that."

HB407, sponsored by Rep. Michael Morley, R-Spanish Fork, would require the Utah Division of Consumer Protection to create a designation for providers who prevent access to "prohibited" material. After attaining the "seal of approval," providers would be subject for fines up to $10,000 for violating requirements.

"It's very difficult to figure out a way to monitor the internet," Morley said. "I think it's a positive thing for those who are looking for a site that is dedicated to fighting pornography."

ISP-based filters will block inappropriate web pages at service provider level and automatically relay a clean feed to households.

To be exempted, users will have to individually contact their ISPs.

The trial will evaluate ISP-level internet content filters in a controlled environment while filtering content inappropriate for children, Enex said.