Between a Rockefeller and a hard place

Just how do you position yourself before Congress, seeing that the influential Democratic senator who is co-sponsoring a wireless consumer protection bill is the same fellow trying to get you out from under privacy lawsuits in connection with the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism warrantless wiretap program.
It is an interesting situation for AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc., defendants in lawsuits against the National Security Agency. Do carriers trash the cellphone consumer bill-of-rights measure championed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), reserving praise for an industry-friendly bill authored by Sen. Mark Pryor (DArk.)? How might that sit with Rockefeller, the No. 2 member of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the wireless consumer-protection bill. Rockefeller also chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee that agreed to give telecom carriers retroactive liability protection in a bill to modernize Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Questions have been raised about whether telecom industry campaign contributions might have had a role in Rockefeller’s embrace of wiretap immunity for telecom carriers. (The quick response is, of course not.)
There is another view that immunity or limiting damages or indemnification amounts to what Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) cleverly called amnesty for telecom giants. Clever because the long-shot presidential hopeful knows all too well how radioactive the word “amnesty” has become in the immigration reform debate. Dodd went further, saying he would block Rockefeller’s FISA modernization bill. The move will give much more leverage to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the wiretap issue and whose leaders-Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)-show little inclination to cut slack for telecom giants.
“A retroactive grant of immunity or pre-emption of state regulators does more than let the carriers off the hook. Immunity is designed to shield this administration from any accountability for conducting surveillance outside the law,” Leahy stated. “It could make it impossible for Americans whose privacy has been violated illegally to seek meaningful redress.”
The words “privacy” and “pre-emption” tend to arouse powerful emotions, especially for wireless carriers being sued left and right and state public utility commissions wishing to retain some jurisdiction over the cellular industry.