EFF Sues NSA, President Bush, and VP Cheney 267
VisualE writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will file a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.
The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance."
Re:Big (Score:2, Informative)
Plenty.
DONUT??? (Score:5, Informative)
If you were ever planning to donate to the EFF at all, now might be a good time.
http://www.eff.org/support/ [eff.org]
Rattling their sabers... (Score:0, Informative)
After all, what is the EFF?
A loose coalition of lawyers who are absolutely useless.
Re:Big (Score:5, Informative)
There's a nice long list of cases they won [eff.org], but somehow the fact that Orlowski cited half a dozen where they'd lost (including at least one where they'd dropped the case because they'd won a victory in a related case that made it irrelevant) started the meme that they always lose.
Re:Big (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big [waste of time] (Score:4, Informative)
EFF=Soros Front Organization (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Big (Score:5, Informative)
The EFF does not of course always win, but it does frequently and has effected quite a bit of change to bad law as a result.
http://www.eff.org/victories/ [eff.org]
Outlines just some of the major victories.
The EFF also sometimes engages in cases where probability of victory is lower, but we judge that the case must be fought, and that public benefit will come just from the fighting, and the hearing of evidence in open court. Of course we hope to win, but we also know that even if we don't win, there are other upsides.
This case (and the case vs. AT&T) get much of their benefit simply by having a court examine this illegal wiretapping program. Part of our message is that this program has not been subject to review by the courts, and that in of itself is bad.
The ACLU won early victory but fell down due to standing. We have well established evidence of massive interception of traffic. While some might think there is only an illegal wiretap if the government listens to you, it is unlawful for them to even intercept your communications, even if they toss them away later. Warrants must name specific targets, and it is the job of phone companies to isolate the traffic of targets and hand it over under lawful warrants. The government does not get to just intercept all the traffic and pull out what it desires.
Re:DONUT??? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Big (Score:5, Informative)
Either way, they're pretty tenacious and well known, they may even have as much or more public recognition by now than the ACLU.
Hint: Go OUTSIDE into the light son. Outside... Just once in a while. Ask people (real people, not people on /. or IRC) if they even know who the EFF is. Ask them if they know who the ACLU is. Seeing as you'll be doing this you might want to bring along a flyer or someting so you can explain what Linux is, what open source is, and then explain what the word freedom means to those people. It'll be good for you. You might even get a tan.
Re:How about Pelosi, Reid and Obama? (Score:3, Informative)
They didn't vote for nor conduct the program in its current form. They just voted for the a bill that didn't hold telcom companies accountable for being duped by the government. (Obama didn't even like that part, but felt it was a necessary compromise to get the otherwise beneficial bill through.)
In other words, he compromised his alleged principles and voted for a completely unconstitutional bill.
No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. [wikipedia.org]
Conversely, a form of ex post facto law [wikipedia.org] commonly known as an amnesty law may decriminalize certain acts or alleviate possible punishments (for example by replacing the death sentence with life-long imprisonment) retroactively.
Re:Big [waste of time] (Score:3, Informative)
No, they gave the telcos (AT&T, etc.) immunity.
However, the Constitution [wikipedia.org] specifically forbids Congress from writing any ex-post-facto [wikipedia.org] laws, which includes retroactive immunity.
That means anyone who voted for the telecon (no typo) immunity bill [slashdot.org] has broken their oath of office to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
I'm sure plenty of people will still vote for Obama even though he willfully voted for an unconstitutional bill (not that McCain is any better). It just shows you that neither party is a true opposition party when it comes to screwing over the American people.
Re:Big (Score:3, Informative)
They lost the 2600 case, and the Blizzard v. bnetd case -- so hypertext links are not free speech, the DMCA interoperability exception applies only to "program to program" interoperability and not "program to data", software which violates protection mechanisms are not free speech, and reverse-engineering a product by examining its output is copyright infringement.
Re:Big [waste of time] (Score:5, Informative)
No, it does not include retroactive immunity.
These are the ex post facto laws, according to the Supreme Court in Calder v. Bull :
-----
1st. Every law that makes an action , done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action.
2nd. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed.
3rd. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender.
----
A law making something NOT a crime when it was a crime when committed is not covered.
(incidentally, the Supreme Court has pretty much chipped the 3rd one away to nothing since Calder v. Bull)
Re:Big [waste of time] (Score:4, Informative)
Because the ex-post-facto thing is one way. If the law made it easier to convict, it would be ex post facto. Since it makes it harder to convict -- that is, you still need all the same evidence that you needed before to convict, PLUS you need the lack of this letter -- it is not covered.
So did I (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"News for Nerds" vs "Editorial for Nerds" (Score:1, Informative)
NSA Document Collection at Civiblog (Score:1, Informative)
I converted a bunch of widely scattered pdfs to web pages with links a while back, all relating to this issue.
The collection is here:
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/nsa.html
The downloadable collection is here:
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/012006_HouseDemJudBriefing.zip
EFF v. ATT Complaint (initial filing):
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/att-complaint.html
ACLU v. NSA :
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/aclu-nsa-complaint.html
- dcm