Wednesday, February 01, 2006

EFF Suing AT&T Over the NSA Spying

Here's another suit similar to the one I wrote about from the ACLU. It also sounds like it should suffer from the same problem of the 'injury-in-fact' test. You can go back and re-read.
The U.S. government's efforts to conduct surveillance and gather data on the nation's citizens has been aided by huge U.S. companies, specifically AT&T (NYSE: T) Latest News about AT&T, which are privy to the telephone calls and e-mails of millions of Americans, according to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation Latest News about Electronic Frontier Foundation this week. Following last month's lawsuit against the White House administration and federal government filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups, the EFF is now suing AT&T, claiming the company made possible "the biggest fishing expedition ever devised," according to EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston. In the federal suit filed in San Francisco Tuesday, the EFF alleges AT&T gave the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) direct access to the company's "vast databases of communications records, including information about whom their customers have phoned or e-mailed with in the past."
You can see the EFF site on this topic here.

I guess I don't see how the EFF can sue AT&T for complying with federal regulations. Last I knew AT&T and all other service providers are required to allow this type of search and the infrastructure to do it. The requirement comes out of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act [CALEA].

They at least to take stands on Carnivore. They also address TIA.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.


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