After about 65 votes, visitors to FierceTelecom.com are leaning heavily (73 percent of them at least) toward the belief that telcos who allegedly participated in a government-sponsored domestic spying program should not be granted retroactive immunity.
We've got a tough crowd. I went against my own political leanings and personal inclinations and voted in favor of granting telcos immunity because we still don't know what exactly happened--whether or not telcos essentially were forced to participate because of the way the request for information was presented to them. I also think there's fervor to punish somebody for what happened and that telcos are taking more heat for this controversy than the Bush administration.
To be honest, I'm still struggling with what to think about all this, and I imagine a lot of you are, too. Would I feel the same way about this if I or someone in family were targeted by this program, or if my privacy were violated in a similar manner? I'd like to think so, but... In any case, I don't feel that a telephone company would be the entity I'd be most mad at about it. If a legal line was crossed by this program, that's obviously something that deserves punishment, but I don't see enough reason yet that telcos should be punished.
Take our poll now. We'll hold it open for the rest of this week. -Dan