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."
How can you sue? (Score:5, Insightful)
when you can't legally get at the evidence?
The plaintiff's need to prove they were harmed in some way. And proving they were harmed will require divulging state secrets.
Case dismissed.
I hold little hope of anything meaningful. (Score:3, Insightful)
When everyone in power is such a successful (not necessarily good) lair how can we even have a justice system?
Yea... (Score:1, Insightful)
Thats going to "work"
If those bastards can steal an election and every freedom American's have then what makes you think this piddly lawsuit is going to do anything?
We need lead, of a different form. Both for US foreign image and those of you having to live it.
Re:woot! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:woot! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How can you sue? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was ever a story destined to get the "goodluckwiththat" tag, this one is it.
If we can't throw anyone in jail for torturing US citizens in blatant violation of all laws, morals, ethics, and good judgment, how can we possibly hold someone accountable for spying on our phonecalls?
Sure, we all know it's completely, obviously, 100% illegal for the government to spy on Americans' phonecalls without bothering to get warrants. But this country operates in a reality distortion field. We used to hold our politicians accountable to the law. But now anytime a politician does something illegal, prosecuting them is somehow "political" and some narrowminded partisans will leap to any politician's defense regardless of how much wrong they've done.
Prosecuting a politician is indeed political. But please punish them in a manner that's appropriate to the crime. Bill Clinton deserved a fine or probation for his perjury. George Bush deserves 25 years to life for ordering innocent people imprisoned and tortured without any due process.
Re:Big (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just what they want you to think.
Either way, they're pretty tenacious and well known, they may even have as much or more public recognition by now than the ACLU.
Even if they lose this one (or don't entirely get their case), they'll still win. They've backed up some significant cases and have become well known for it, and this will only make them more popular.
In some eyes, the EFF, for what they stand for, may never be wrong, and they could quickly turn into a religion of legal sorts. Especially considering that the targets, the "general unpopular undoers of society", have already had sights set on them many times and even though the law assumes they're in the right or not so in the wrong, they're pariahs and nothing they can do can prove to the people they're not bad guys.
There's a lot of 'little guys' that have gotten hurt by the unfairness of the law when they're weighed against corporations, and it's really building up. The EFF could be one of many outlets for a meta-ideology when people really do start fighting back.
Anyways, I'm just saying this so I can say "Holy shit, I was right?!" later if it really turns out that way.
Re:Big (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have anywhere near the recognition outside of the IT industry that the ACLU has.
Most of what you wrote about the EFF applies to the ACLU, also.
If they are redundantly making a case, they ought to be careful about it - the ACLU and EFF should certainly be cooperative towards each other, IMO.
Re:Isn't this where... (Score:1, Insightful)
There's no +1: Funny, But Sad mod. There should be.
Re:It will be interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy, they just won't do anything about it, no one will report it, no one will care, and life will continue as it always does.
We will never hear of the story again, mark my words.
"News for Nerds" vs "Editorial for Nerds" (Score:4, Insightful)
News =
"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 what they allege to be 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."
- Alaska Jack
Re:Big (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, that nice long list of cases does not disprove my assertion, that they lost plenty of cases.
Don't be throwin stones from your glass house - your assertion of the unnumbered 'plenty' aint shit without a cite.
At least he did better in one post than you have in two.
That list doesn't have their losses I notice.
Ah, so it is up to him to prove your point too? No wonder lawyers have such a piss poor rep.
Re:How can you sue? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we don't. The details are still pretty shadowy. For example: do you know whether or not you, personally, were spied upon? Did a human end up reading your unencrypted emails? All we really know is that they had a capacity to do so, and were trying like crazy to spy on someone. Who? U.S. Citizens? Foreigners? We don't know.
This is what the compromise was (Score:2, Insightful)
Why don't people understand that the bill that granted "telecom immunity" really was a compromise because it added the requirement that the president personally authorize the action? This bill is what opened him up to liability--now the EFF is able to sue the government agencies and officials even if they can't win against AT&T.
Re:THIS JUST IN! EFF WINS! AWARDED . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd kill for a 5% stake in AIG right now. With the government backing an 85 billion dollar loan to AIG, most of their business still being successful (including a 20-50 billion dollar airline business), there's a good chance that the government is going to make a profit on this transaction. If I had 5% of that pie, I could retire an immeasurably wealthy man once this all blows over!
Re:How can you sue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did a human end up reading your unencrypted emails
This may be the crux of the issue. Does it matter? They most certainly illegally searched, but did a human do it? I cannot answer that definitively. My question is this: is it still an illegal search if a human did not see it but the search was carried out by a program instead? I would posit that indeed it is still illegal. No warrant right? That is illegal. So who broke the law then? I don't quite know that, but the law was broken.
Re:Alternate title.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a good plan to me.
Re:Big (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a suggestion in what you write that "reverse engineering ... is infringement" because we lost the case. In cases such as these, there was a plaintiff declaring this to be so. This seems to imply that the defendants might have won had we not gotten involved, which is surely not not true. We may have wasted resources, of course.
But I hope nobody thinks you can win them all. If you win them all, you are in fact not at the edge, and we try to only take cases on the edge. In spite of that, we win a lot.
Re:Big [waste of time] (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the Constitution [wikipedia.org] specifically forbids Congress from writing any ex-post-facto [wikipedia.org] laws, which includes retroactive immunity.
WRONG!!! the ex-post-facto clause means that you can not create a law and then charge people for what are now crimes that were committed prior to the passage of the law. It does not address the decriminalization of an act in the past. If that were the case, a presidential pardon would be unconstitutional.
Re:Big (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgot to add: The Blizzard case did not rule that reverse engineering is infringement. Rather, it hinged on whether they could enforce a "no reverse engineering" cause in the click-to-agree EULA on the games. We're going to see a lot more cases in the future (not just involving EFF) about what clauses in click-to-agree contracts are valid, I think I can predict.
Re:WTF? (Score:1, Insightful)
The Supreme Court in Nixon v. Fitzgerald (No. 79-1738), has said "The President's absolute immunity extends to all acts within the "outer perimeter" of his duties of office."
An interesting read on this is below as well....
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3820 [afterdowningstreet.org]
Re:Big (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have anywhere near the recognition outside of the IT industry that the ACLU has.
No they don't, but have they started to get a reputation in the legal industry? The reason I ask (and hope that somebody can answer) is because the ACLU has become publicly known more because of how long it's been around than its recent cases. I imagine that the EFF could be in the position that the ACLU was in a few decades ago. I imagine that the legal professionals, who watch cases more closely and see patterns much sooner than the public would, might see the EFF as an up and coming organization.
Either way, I sincerely hope that they win this case. Our civil liberties have been eroded enough since 9/11, thank you very much, and I for one wouldn't mind a few legal cases putting the fear of constitutional restrictions into the heart of our next president.
Re:Alternate title.. (Score:3, Insightful)
When I first read the headline I was about to make a smart ass remark about that. However it would have made me a hypocrite.
I think the spying was illegal.
I didn't think it was right to sue the companies.
However Suing the Government for performing an illegal action should be common. That is what makes America great. If we can successfully sue and win against the President of the Uninted States. Really shows who is working for who.
Re:Big [waste of time] (Score:5, Insightful)
You are incorrect. Calder V. Bull deals with Article 1 Section 10 which deals with STATES. Article 1 Section 9 deals with CONGRESS of the US.
Of course that doesn't stop any court, including the supreme from changing the meaning of words in the constitution.
Don't you remember when Scalia recently went on ABC [bbc.co.uk] saying that not all torture is cruel and unusual punishment?
If you don't think that giving retroactive immunity to corporations who spied on American citizens wasn't what the framers had in mind when they wrote in Article 1 Section 9, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." you must be smoking something.
Please go read what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the judicial branch and maybe you'll be able to get a somewhat clearer picture.
Also remember that the supreme court has ruled that how much wheat you can grow on your own land is "interstate commerce" and can be regulated by congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn [wikipedia.org]
Re:It will be interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
We will never hear of the story again, mark my words.
No... we will, but no one else will. They won't hear of it this time either, of course... but why go out of your way to actively try to silence what very few will hear anyway?
Reintroduce what the ancient Greeks did. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we should reintroduce a practice done in one of the ancient Greek city states (Sparta or Athens). When the city leader left office they held a "trial" based on the actions he took while in office. If his tenure was unpopular enough, they banished him for a period of time. It was a normal and automatic part of leaving office. If we did this, where could we banish Bush?
Re:Big (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, of course we differ, but in one respect you are clearly wrong. What will come of this, at a minimum, is that a court will consider what was done, and will examine the evidence of EFF witnesses. The court may rule against us, the court may rule that the case can't proceed due to state secrets, but at a minimum there will still have been a court. Right now we have unilateral action by the executive branch.
Re:It will be interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama taught constitutional law [factcheck.org] for 12 years, and is a staunch supporter of civil liberties. Beyond that, he just seems like a pretty reasonable, thoughtful person [huffingtonpost.com].
I've heard a lot of outcry, particularly on slashdot, that he voted for telecom immunity. But as the grandparent noted, that bill was a FISA ammendment, and Obama has since voted twice, on 2/12 and 7/09, to revoke telecom immunity. I don't completely agree with his stance on this, but he did say that he supported the ammendment [washingtonpost.com] because it put the power back in the hands of legislation, as opposed to the president's.
Also, as others are noting, Obama's plans tend towards ensuring accountability in the government through the use of technologies which make their actions visible. Specifically, he wants to create publicly accessable databases and websites [barackobama.com] to display this information. I don't have the same kind of confidence in McCain's ability or desire to do something concrete about this.
Personally, I just think Obama is smart enough to pick the battles that he can win. From what I've read, seen and heard, it's pretty clear to me what his goals are, and I have to say this is the first time I've ever found myself trusting, liking, or agreeing with a politician to any significant degree. I think Obama will do a fine job as president.
This predates Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I don't care for his poor leadership. It is important to point out that the NSA's version of carnivore was in development before Bush took office.
Re:Big (Score:3, Insightful)
Well yeah? There ARE NO GIRLS on the internet. If you see one it is a trap.