CNN on the bill granting retroactive immunity to telcos that just passed the Senate:"The controversy over President Bush's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program also prompted calls for change in the FISA law. The so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) was ordered by the president after the 9/11 attacks. It allowed for spying on the communications between U.S. residents and people overseas if it was believed one of the parties was linked to terrorism. Telephone carriers now face lawsuits for assisting the government in eavesdropping on suspected terrorists after 9/11."
Almost. Except the reason the telcos wanted immunity in the first place was that they weren't just turning over information about suspected terrorists. Instead, AT&T siphoned off all electronic data that went through its Folsom Street plant in San Francisco to a room packed with advanced computer equipment and accessible only to representatives of the National Security Agency. We know this because an AT&T whistleblower has said so in a sworn declaration, uncontested in several years of litigation, that is the basis for the ongoing lawsuit Hepting v. AT&T (which itself is the principal basis for the telcos' expensive campaign to have their liability retroactively extinguished).
More succinctly: the story would be right if CNN replaced "assisting the government in eavesdropping on suspected terrorists after 9/11" with "assisting the government in collecting information on any American whose communications happened to be routed through AT&T's San Francisco operating plant." Probably just a typo.
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