Thoughts on Pellicano and government wiretapping
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This is insane.
I try not to go into politics here because if you wanted that, you'd wouldn't be reading a blog about TV shows and movies. Although it is tangentially related since this is some big, dirty Hollywood scandal that literally nobody cares about except the corrupt, disgusting federal government. I don't care about it myself, in general, except the part where the notion of a fair and just legal system and the rule of law in the United States no longer applies to extremely powerful and rich corporations, yet still apply quite harshly to powerless citizens, even bad ones that knowingly break the law deserve to be treated the same as our political and corporate elite in a court of law.
Terry Christensen may go to prison for 10 years for doing 1/1000th of what AT&T did, while the telco got a free pass.
I'm not an anti-government anarchist by any means, this isn't some rant about how corporations have replaced the government (we're getting there..) or how The Man is bad and the laws are unfair or any of that bull.
I simply want the richest and most powerful people and companies to be held to the same standards that regular people are, otherwise folks this ain't a democracy or a free society anymore.
It's a kingdom at best.
According to Nikki Finke, who loves this stuff apparently, Christensen -- who I know literally nothing about -- was found guilty "on one count of wiretapping and one count of criminal conspiracy" which could result in a decade-long jail sentence. Now, a rational person might wonder why one man who violated wiretapping laws could serve ten years in federal prison while George Bush and virtually every major telecommunications company in the country did this not once, not a couple of hundreds of times, but thousands upon thousands of times over the course of nearly six years, and they won't even have to defend themselves in court, much less be placed in legal jeopardy and be punished for their crimes -- crimes against the people and the Constitution as opposed to violating the privacy of some dudes ex-wife a couple of times.
Now I really don't care about Terry Christensen or Anthony Pellicano and if they really did violate wiretap laws then I'm happy they'll be going to prison for it. That's the way our legal system is supposed to work, they get punished for their crimes (fair and just) and nobody is above the law (rule of law.) Except if you're a billion dollar corporation that contributes millions to political campaigns, then you get your own personal law passed by Congress that forgives your unprecedented crimes against the American people.
For whatever else Christensen did, I'm pretty certain he didn't spy on millions of Americans for six years making tens of millions in profit and I'm dead certain congress isn't going to pass a law just for him anytime soon.
While I can't get behind the "this case is crap because nobody died" line of thought, the dismissed juror had a perfectly reasonable point in asking why Christensen or Pellicano should be found guilty of breaking laws that the government itself and the big telcos broke for six years without punishment or even significant legal proceedings.
Though it may not go anywhere, any fair court should be open and sensitive to such pleas. If powerful corporations and government officials aren't held to the fire like its citizens are, this is a country and a society no longer worth being proud of or defending, or worth participating in, in any meaningful way.
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