EFF Documentation Victory in Telco Spying Case

Krishna Dagli sent on a link to Ars Technica's coverage of an EFF victory in a court case related to the NSA/Telco spying scandal. "Judge Vaughn Walker ruled today that AT&T, Verizon, Cingular (now part of AT&T), Sprint, and BellSouth (also part of AT&T now) must all maintain any data or papers related to the NSA spying case that Walker is overseeing in California. The EFF had requested the ruling out of concern that documents would be destroyed as part of routine data deletion practices before the case could even progress to discovery."

That's nice...

[cthulu_mt]

...but if this Telecom immunity crap gets through its a moot point.

I hope the rest of you have called your Congressmen.

The EFF is Awesome

[explosivejared]

Granted, the EFF is a group of lawyers, but they are lawyers working for a better Internet. Sometimes they make me just want to cry. Hopefully this is just the beginning. The NSA has gone way beyond breaking the law. The ease at which they put people under surveilance and on watchlists flies in the face of the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and bills of attainder. This is great news.

Re:Congress is useless. Why bother.

[Anonymous Coward]

all time low since the war

Let us know when they manage to make it better than it was before the war started.

Re:Congress is useless. Why bother.

[sm62704]

Last time I checked

You checked? I call bullshit.

It's not a war, and they volunteered for it.

[FatSean]

Wow, after 5 years and almost a Trillion pissed away into the sand, things are improving slightly! Yeah, take that terrorists! Fuck with the big bad USA and 5 years later we might actually get something done! I feel for those who were already in when this idiotic aggressive invasion took place. Those who enlisted after? Tough shit on them for supporting an evil agenda and being too stupid to realize that they were being lied to. We shoulda cleaned up in Afghanistan, gone home and secured our borders, and stayed vigilant. Pre-emptive strikes are bad precedent.

No declaration of war was made, no conscription, no rationing, no sacrifices made except to our rights and liberty. If this 'terrorist threat' was as serious as the government and their military cheerleaders say it is, why isn't there conscription? Why don't we have the 1/2 Million men in Iraq that military guidelines stated was needed to succeed there? Why doesn't our dear leader require Americans to ration gasoline and food so we can afford to properly equip those soldiers? The whole idea of invading Iraq was stupid because it wasn't involved, and then to top it all off, they went in with no plan.

Because this conflict was not to secure America, but to enrich the already-rich Americans with connections to politics. I'm sorry over 4k soldiers have wasted their lives for this crock of shit, but hey, they did volunteer knowing that even if a nut-job was elected that they would have to follow orders.

Sorry if that puts some hurt on your sacred cows, but reality often does that.

Wanna take it a step further?

[Seakip18]

Here's a longer NPR part than the article [npr.org]

This whole thing just reeks of sketchiness. If congress wanted to show some actually fortitude, they should knock the immunity out, even if there is a veto by the President.

Winning a battle, losing a war?

[maroberts]

Judges generally grant motions related to discovery to be on the safe side, to limit chances of appeal later. Only the most unreasonable discovery requests are likely to be refused.

The EFF have to find something in that discovery to win their action, and that is the uphill battle....

Re:National Guard didn't Volunteer for it

[Macrat]

You know, those guys signed up to be called on when a disaster hits their home state. You know, like those tornadoes and hurricanes that hit and we have no resources for now.

Re:It's not a war, and they volunteered for it.

[saider]

Because this conflict was not to secure America, but to enrich the already-rich Americans with connections to politics.

I don't think it was started with this in mind, although those people did profiteer off of the war.

I believe this was a president, full of hubris, who thought that he could force democracy upon Iraq, and then use that as leverage to "solve" the middle east problem. He viewed himself as some great savior who would liberate them from dictators and be a celebrated hero (there is an interview of him stating this somewhere out there).

This war in Iraq was started for vanity, not profits.

Re:It's not a war, and they volunteered for it.

[Omestes]

Wow, an insightful comment connected to Iraq. I was about to propose some sort of neo-Godwin's Rule pertaining to Iraq too.

I think you absolutely right, the war is proof of the old adage about what the path to hell is paved with.

I've noticed that most of the anti-war crowd like to turn the world into some episode of Captain Planet, or any other cartoon, with definite villains out there doing conscious evil. I can see them picturing Dick Cheney wearing a metal gauntlet, petting his cat, saying "Next time inspector Liberty, next time", and flying away in the White House. I guess it is an easier world view, than having to contemplate that our leaders are just overly idealistic men, no different than us in their foibles, and just as prone to hubris as the next.

Iraq is a complex beast, and not prone to simple logic or characterizations (as are most things).

Re:It's not a war, and they volunteered for it.

[replicant108]

I think you absolutely right, the war is proof of the old adage about what the path to hell is paved with.

Would we be so quick to ascribe "good intentions" to the perpetrators of this travesty if they were foreigners?

Did Russia invade Afghanistan out of "good intentions"?

It seems that the Golden Rule of the western media is that the bigger the crime, the more pure our intentions were.