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Flashback: 11 years ago "US supreme court finalizes gift of immunity to the telecom giants"
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And now, the US supreme court just consecrated one of the most corrupt acts of the US government over the past decade: its vesting of retroactive legal immunity in the nation's telecom giants after they had been caught red-handed violating multiple US eavesdropping laws.
When the New York Times revealed on 16 December 2005 that the Bush administration was spying on the telephone calls and emails of American citizens without the warrants required by the criminal law, it exposed lawbreaking not only by government officials but also by the nation's largest telecoms.
In 2008, the industry obtained an extraordinary act of Congress that gave them the gift of retroactive immunity from all criminal and civil liability for their participation in the illegal eavesdropping programs aimed at Americans on US soil.
Thus, the same tribunal that regularly consigns ordinary, powerless Americans to prison for decades for even trivial offenses yet again acts to protect the most powerful actors from any consequences for serious crimes: that is the US justice system in a nutshell.
As usual, it is not only the executive branch, Congress and courts which enable this elite immunity, but also the nation's establishment media, which obscures and distorts these issues with flagrantly misleading claims.
In a country that imprisons more of its ordinary citizens than any other on the planet by far, and that imposes more unforgiving punishments than any other western nation, our most powerful corporate actors once again find total impunity even for the most serious of lawbreaking.
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