Pushing PC nonsense

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For decades, political leftists in America have demanded that corporations develop a "public conscience." Yet when it was reported that AT&T and some other telecommunications companies responded positively to a request from our government to help protect the American people from future terrorist attacks, the critics went ballistic, charging that these evil corporations were assisting an even more hated president to "spy on millions of Americans" in violation of their civil liberties.

At issue is an alleged data exploitation or "data mining" program designed to identify possible terrorists by having computers examine digital telephone records — not including any names, addresses or so much as a single word from any communication — to identify telephone numbers that have communicated with telephones regularly used by known or suspected foreign terrorists. No one will go to jail merely for making or receiving a telephone call; but people who frequently communicate by phone with several known terrorists will receive additional attention in an effort to determine whether they are planning to murder large numbers of our fellow citizens.

Is this a violation of civil liberties? That issue was resolved by the Supreme Court in the 1979 case of Smith v. Maryland, when the court affirmed lower- court rulings, which held that it was perfectly lawful for the police to install a "pen register" outside a suspect's home to record telephone numbers but not any content of conversations. This issue has been litigated and resolved, and all of the cooperating telecommunications companies were assured by the highest officials at the Department of Justice that the program was fully lawful.

Listening to outraged House Democratic leaders, one wonders if they have forgotten that in Section 201(d) of the 2002 Homeland Security Act Congress expressly directed the Department of Homeland Security to engage in "data mining" to try to protect the country from terrorism. And for the National Security Agency to have a computer search my phone records (along with virtually everyone else's) trying to identify a handful of individuals who are talking to terrorists is no more intrusive than when an FBI computer scans over my fingerprints (along with hundreds of millions of others) seeking to match a print found on a handgun at a crime scene.

Congressional critics oppose granting immunity from lawsuits concerning this program to AT&T and the other cooperating telecommunications providers on the grounds that if we don't allow the ACLU (and, presumably, suspected terrorists who claim their rights were violated) to sue for millions of dollars, we will never know the details of the NSA program. Unless the critics have come up with some way to inform the American people of the details of highly secret intelligence programs — without, in the process, informing our enemies — they owe us an explanation of why they are trying to undermine efforts to identify individuals who may be planning catastrophic terrorist attacks against their fellow Americans.

Further, unless the critics can persuade us that they are absolute idiots, they owe us an explanation of why they are trying so hard to provide massive financial disincentives to other corporations that might be inclined to cooperate with our government in its efforts to protect us from the next attack.

Let's assume for a moment that congressional critics succeed in blocking immunity and AT&T winds up having to compromise our intelligence programs in court and then give the ACLU a windfall profit of a few million dollars — costs that will of course ultimately be passed on to American consumers in the form of higher rates. Every prudent corporate general counsel will presumably quickly send a memorandum to the front office advising corporate leaders not to provide any assistance to the government in the war against terror. If you can't rely upon assurances from the president and the attorney general, the only safe option is simply not to deal with the American government.

Some clearly view patriotic corporations as part of the "military-industrial complex." As for me, I remain grateful that I grew up speaking English rather than German or Japanese " and a major factor in our victories in World War II was the contribution of what we once called "the arsenal of democracy." I am profoundly grateful that we have corporations that are still willing to voluntarily help out in the war against terror; and, to show my own gratitude, I just paid a $400 early termination fee to shift my cell phone service to AT&T.

Robert F. Turner co-founded the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law and is a former counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board at the White House. The views expressed here are his own.