EFF Sues AT&T Over NSA Wiretapping 746
Omega1045 writes "Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit against AT&T for helping the National Security Agency execute illegal warrant-less wiretaps against American citizens.
From the article: 'The lawsuits alleges that AT&T Corp. has opened its key telecommunications facilities and databases to direct access by the NSA and/or other government agencies, thereby disclosing to the government the contents of its customers' communications as well as detailed communications records about millions of its customers, including the lawsuit's class members.'"
Re:Not illegal. (Score:5, Informative)
They already have the power to do these things without a warrant so long as they go back and get the warrant within 72 hours. This gives them the ability to act on a lead immediately without the hassle of waiting on a judge. They don't want to do even THAT much -- they want whatever they are doing to be SECRET and to be UNACCOUNTABLE for it. Ultimately, I believe we will find that it is going well beyond communications where one side is 'al qaeda' and the other side is in the U.S. I think if we get to see what they are REALLY doing, we'll find investigations against anti-war and anti-Bush organizations and their members.
Direct link to TFA...? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/ [eff.org]
Seems like BoingBoing.com is trolling for hits with several recent articles. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, but I'd wish the Slashdot editors to prefer primary content to secondary sources being framed within ad bars on all sides....
Re:What ever happened to ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not illegal. (Score:2, Informative)
Nonsense. Congress knew nothing about it. The wiretaps were "authorized" by the Office of Legal Council, an arm of the Justice Department full of appointed judges, appointed by. .
Nor was there a lot of agreement within the OLC about the legality of the wiretaps:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11079547/site/newswee
These are the same people who said that just because we signed the Geneva Convention doesn't mean we're bound by it, but can still bitch about anyone else not obeying it, because it's the law.
I've not seen that anywhere.
Really?
http://www.rense.com/general69/legit.htm [rense.com]
Well, now you have.
KFG
Re:What ever happened to ... (Score:5, Informative)
Jeez, a couple weeks of Doublespeak ("terrorist surviellance program") and a whole bunch of people forget what the hubbub is all about.
Re:What ever happened to ... (Score:2, Informative)
The "in plain sight" rule is what you are talking about. If a crime or items related to a crime are in plain sight, there's no need for a warrant (or a search for that matter). That has nothing to do with probable cause.
Probable cause is why you can be stopped by the police... if they don't have it, they are either guessing (bad) or harassing you (bad). What is needed for a warrant is a judge... the judge will review the application and see if there is probable cause.
The problem with wiretaps is that they always require a warrant (under FISA, it can be a secret warrant, even approved after the fact) unless it is against someone outside of the US, or withing 15 days of the beginning of a declared war.
Neither of those thresholds were met.
There were no warrants, no intentions to get warrants, and the government has admitted they don't even know who all the people were which were surveiled, so it is impossible they had a reasonable cause to suspect them all.
In other words, it was illegal, on the face of it, but because it was approved by the President and implemented in secret, there was no chance for review.
So now that people know, they can sue those companies which participated in it without the proper warrants.
Re:If AT&T is innocent, they have nothing to h (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gotta Love Lawyers... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For the love of all that's good... (Score:1, Informative)
300 terabyte ? (Score:2, Informative)
That's 8,796,093,022,208 bit X 300 OR 1,024 Gigabyte X 300 OR if you prefer 1,048,576 Megabyte X 300.
That's 307,200 Gigabytes(GIGS). I think they either don't know how to optimise their data or they have a hell of it.
Re:Not illegal. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:you serious? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Nice, Except (Score:4, Informative)
The Fourth Amendment has two clauses - 1. no unreasonable search and seizures, and 2. the warrant clause. Not all searches and seizures require a warrant. For example, searches incident to arrest, "open container" vehicle searches, and (importantly for this discussion) foreign intelligence signals intelligence.
What's more, not all searches and seizures are forbidden, only those that are unreasonable. The interception of the communications of known foreign enemies of the US is per se reasonable.
Re:Illegal and extremely scary if you know about F (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Direct link to TFA...? (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, boingboing doesn't appear to be doing anything they haven't been doing for years - collecting interesting stuff from the internet and putting it on boingboing. It's like slashdot, only with interesting stuff and fewer idiots doing the writing. I can only guess that random users have been submitting things to slasdot that they saw on boingboing more often - I haven't noticed any of it coming from the boingboing editors.
Join EFF (Score:4, Informative)
Great except (Score:1, Informative)
Once cool thing about the US (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There you go, case closed. (Score:3, Informative)
"In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."
-- G. W. Bush, Radio Address, Dec 2005
Now lets look at that Constituion, shall we?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
-- Former 4th amendment to the US Constitution (now obsolete)
Oh, and I should point out that "the people" has been interpreted not just to mean US citizens. See Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21, 32-4 ('82).
Re:Once cool thing about the US (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's about time EFF got back into the news! (Score:4, Informative)
The EFF found a few subscribers of AT&T to allege violation of their First and Fourth Amendment rights, and have asked every similarly-situated subscriber to be joined to make it a class-action suit. The EFF is not in fact suing the government itself, the named plaintiffs (and potentially the millions of unnamed members of the class) are. The EFF is just providing the lawyers.
The standard would likely be lower for suing AT&T, which could be as simple as breach of a privacy contract.
No, AT&T is obligated to give up information on their subscribers in response to any lawful government order, private privacy agreements notwithstanding. That's why they can comply with ordinary secret wiretap orders without telling you, and you can't sue them for breach of contract.
The complaint alleges, first, that AT&T acting as an agent of the government violated the plaintiffs First and Fourth Amendment rights by not securing a warrant for a wiretap and mining AT&T's "Daytona" database. Obviously, the Court could not find for the plaintiffs without finding that the President has no constitutional or statutory authority to order wiretaps of this nature without a warrant. Additionally, it would need to find that AT&T was acting as the government's agent, and not merely complying with an order it thought, or had good reason to think, was legal.
This is a tall order, especially with regard to finding AT&T an agent of the government. I suspect it's the equivalent of the following: you work at the DMV, and a policeman comes in, shows you his badge, and asks you to run the plates of a certain car and tell you the owner's address, because he's investigating a certain crime. He's asked you to do this many times before, you know for a fact he works for the PD, and you know for a fact the crime he mentions exists, because you saw it on the news. But -- alas -- it turns out the cop was not acting officially. He was merely sneakily finding out where his ex-girlfriend was living. So the ex-GF sues you for violating her Fourth Amendment rights. Is the Court going to back her up? Mmm, sounds unlikely. Sounds like you were just doing your job and responded to what any reasonable person would think was a legal order from law enforcement. The ex-GF has a case against the cop, sure. But not against you. Similarly, I 'spect a Federal judge is going to tell the EFF the plaintiffs might have a case against the United States, but not against AT&T.
The complaint alleges, second, that AT&T violated FISA because they knew, or should have known, that the government order to wiretap without a FISA warrant was illegal, notwithstanding that it was signed by the Attorney General of the United States or his representative. Um, sure. Good luck with that one, boys.
The remaining counts are a couple of Hail Marys alleging violation of the usual wiretap laws -- which relies on AT&T's defense that it was obeying a legal (or apparently legal or legal at the time) order not holding up -- and for violating California's business code because AT&T deceived subscribers into thinking their communications would not be monitored illegally by the NSA.
I would be shocked if the EFF expects to prevail on this at any level, except maybe barely possibly at the trial court level if they do get venue in San Francisco and can seat a load of ACT-UP activists on the jury. But, mmmm, any way it turns out, it's very good publicity. Look how long this comment thread is...
Re:Maybe I just need some higher learning.. but... (Score:3, Informative)
No. The Telecommunications Privacy Act (TCPA) specifically prevents common carriers and local exchange carriers from this activity.
And, technically, the rank-and-file employees of the USPS don't have that ability either. Only Postal Inspectors, who are fully deputized federal law enforcement officers, have that ability.
Re:I'm out too (Score:1, Informative)
Yet another AC here (wanna know something about tyranny of opinion? take a look at who goes AC).
Anyway, you asked the question didn't you? And as so many others you seem to vehemently believe that there are no conceivable valid answers to that question. But is that the case? Or could it be that a large proportion of those voicing their opinion have no practical experience or knowledge and as such go into the oh so typical traps of couchpotato quarterbacking. I swear most act like they would make any bureaucrat from hell proud in their total lack of realism and practicality.
I'm not discussing whether or not what was actually done (which we have rather few details about) was/is legal or not. You can find excellent discussion about that in replies by others (the thread where susanno is modded up) and it should be obvious that with the limited amount of information we have it is not clear-cut either way. No, what I'm posting about is whether or not it is conceivable that the use of FISA becomes impractical for valid reasons.
Sometimes seconds count and not just one second but hours, days, weeks and even months of seconds. By this I do not mean that those involved necessarily couldn't have managed to put in motion a FISA-approval during the first 72 hours, only that those involved have much more important things to do. Yes that mostly includes inordinate amounts of attentive waiting.
Counterargument: that can be solved by throwing manpower onto it.
Counter counterargument: possibly for individual cases although both in individual cases and generally speaking there is a big argument against this because we're talking about covert surveillance -- increasing the number of people involved will always be a security risk in itself simply because of the increased numbers and the increased amount of information and details retransmitted. In other words: there are valid reasons why the puzzlers love throwing machines rather than people at problems...
So far I'm not saying that the above arguments might be present in all cases, but if there is any justification at all then at least enough of the cases have a high degreee of probability of including those arguments. Many enough to make FISA impractical.
Let's say you find three laptops, seven mobile phones, 20 SIMs, and a satelite phone after a priority raid in Afghanistan. The foundation aren't known for their IT provess and the laptops run w95/98 and the phones are all standard consumer models. Nada encryption. In total something close to 300 phone numbers are found locally on the devices and the CID/SIM tracking coughs up something like 3000 unique numbers from past calls. All the data is sent to the puzzlers who adds it in the bin and starts crossreferencing which results in the adding of let's say 100 numbers to the watchlist. The watchlist is always on.
You do not know which of those 100 numbers, if any, are ever going to be used, if the present user will have any connection at all with the previous use of that number and so on (although the crosschecking has removed the obviously uninteresting ones). You cannot ask FISA for a warrant yet both because you can't and must not for security reasons give FISA all the numbers on the watchlist (far more than 100) and because most of the numbers on the watchlist will never be used before they fall of the list and lastly because no wiretapping has taken place at this point in time. Neither is it always possible to determine (at the time before the number is used) if the number is inside or outside the US
As time goes on some of the numbers on the watchlist are used and tapped. In many cases it will become obvious after a small amount of analysis that it doesn't belong on the list and is taken off.
But let's say we cherrypick a situation where the number is known to be inside the US and owned by a US citizen and has been in this citizens possesion for years. T