this is not fucking funny.

at&t has recently posted and quickly rescinded new marketing copy on their online billing website in honor of getting retroactive immunity for spying on americans without warrants (thanks boingboing):

Ms. Suspicious Has Nothing to Hide.

Well, she has a little to hide, but her love of Online Billing isn't one of them. She and the other Online Liberation Movement members have all made online billing work for them, whether they need simplicity, convenience, flexibility, or just peace of mind.

hilarious, right?

for those who don't get the joke, this is a play on the amendment to the foreign intelligence surveillance act, an act that sounds like it's meant to be used to spy on...you know, foreign nationals.

sadly, this has led to bush-era warrantless wiretapping of american citizens, because, you know, anybody could be a terrorist. naturally, since sorting the wheat through the chaff is difficult, they figured that the best way to spy on the right people is to spy on everybody. it got to the point where at&t had an 'orwell room' where 'a copy of all internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.'

so now, despite that we know all about the orwell room and all of that, we're going to give the telecom companies a free pass, and let them go retroactively for the shit that they pulled. obama supported the compromised bill that wound up passing. the progressive left, especially the netroots, feel betrayed, but keith "it's deep but i don't think it's playable" olbermann is defending obama's position, rationalizing it thusly:

With that preamble out of the way, here goes. John [Dean, former watergate conspirator and current bush critic] said his reading of the revised FISA statute suggested it was so poorly constructed (or maybe so sublimely constructed) that it clearly did not preclude future criminal prosecution of the telecoms - it only stopped civil suits.

I have repeated his observation each night since. Maybe I didn't sell my conviction of its conclusiveness. I think John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds (maybe 26 Keith Olbermanns).

Thus, as I phrased it on the air tonight, obviously Obama kicked the left in the teeth by supporting the bill. But anybody who got as hot about this as I did would prefer to see a President Obama prosecuting the telecoms criminally, instead of seeing a Senator Obama engender more "soft on terror" crap by casting a token vote in favor of civil litigation that isn't going to pass since so many other Democrats caved anyway.

so, i dunno about you guys, but here's where i stand.
1) i'm not upset with obama for his centrist shift - yet.
2) the progressives are having trouble coming to grips with the fact that in a democracy, you're just gonna have to win over the people who don't think like you.
3) at&t are a bunch of assholes.

any thoughts?