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EFF Sues AT&T Over NSA Wiretapping
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.'"
You cant just ignore something and hope it goes away, they are fighting the good fight within the system .. and are losing some ground, but I dont see anyone else trying as hard.
Do nothing. Roll over. Keep quiet. Don't stick your neck out. Hunker down. Give up. Deal with it. Surrender. Comply.
Is that what you'd recommend in the face of arrogance and tyranny?
.. get better when nobody bothers to object?
When has that ever happened?
Laws against warrantless spying on US citizens exist for a reason. History demonstrates that when the government has this power, they don't just use it on terrorists. First they use it on terrorists, but then they use it on drug dealers. Next come child pornographers. After that, conventional pornographers. Then, "radical" artists and dissidents.
Before long, they're spying on the modern-day heirs to the radical legacy of Martin Luther King and John Lennon.
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is good men do nothing.
I'd rather they kept plugging away, regardless of losses. If there's one less soldier on your side, it's all the more likely the other side will prevail.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The text of the EFF lawsuit requests damages of $100 per day for each day the violation occurred or $10,000 (whichever is greater) be paid to each class member. Sure beats getting a coupon for $10 off our next purchase of a bill of rights.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They have been spying on the Quakers, for fuck's sake. You know - the Protestant sect best known for militant PACIFICISM?!??
This is the litmus test for true American Patriotism. If you aren't outraged, you aren't a patriot. At best, you are a nationalist.
The Alternative is called picking your battles. The EFF is taking a Hail Mary pass approach to it's lawsuits. Sure taking on AT&T looks great and gets you a lot of press but you're just not going to win unless they make a huge tactical error.
Instead you take a page from the *IAA Big Book o' Lawsuits. Go after the bottom of the food chain (Grokster anyone?). Find cases where smaller independant or regional telecoms/isps have given up data, and go after them, building precedent to use for later cases.
From what I've read, there isn't much real knowledge of the NSA program. There is quite a bit of speculation though. We do not know if it was US Citizens, it may only be US Persons, or people simply living in the US and are not citizens. We do no know if it is real taps, or simple data mining. Data mining as in connecting the dots between known enemy phone numbers and connected calls inside the US. Since the administration apparently still used the FISA court in some cases, some have speculated that once enough dots were connected FISA would have to get involved so that calls could be monitored and recorded. Then again, why would it be illegal for the Commander in Chief to order taps on known enemies on the battlefield (the US is part of the battlefield)?
For a history of how the US government dealt with communication during wars, read up on Ben Franklin on the NSA web site. Interesting reading.
The Constitution does not allow for warrantless searches. Read the fourth amendment, it is pretty clear. This means that the president does not have the power to order them and the congress does not have the power to permit them.
A blog about stuff.
Ok, so I didn't comment when slashdot linked to the troll at the Register who likes to berate the EFF with false claims that we lose all the time, but since they are simply not true, it would be nice if people would check into that before repeating them, ok? This poster seems to claim there was some sort of big recent loss by the EFF, which is similar in pattern to the troll articles that cited lost cases that were not by the EFF to support the strange idea the EFF loses all the time. (There was a recent loss in case case personally brought and funded by John Gilmore, an EFF board member, in which the EFF itself had no involvement, and I presume that's what's being alluded to here.)
Bad enough I'm feeding the troll here, but please, don't repeat the trolls, that gets them really excited.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The "If you're doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about" position is completely correct, but you would be foolish to apply this maxim to any living person. Everyone does things wrong, everyone has something to hide, and everyone is a criminal. It's time that we recognized this in our public discourse instead of pretending.
Let me tell you two reasons to fear the side-stepping of FISA courts both dealing with the already scary nature of the secret courts. The first is that of about 19,000 applications for permission to wiretap from 1979-2004 only four have ever been rejected by the court. Obviously, in legitimate cases of security issues, the FISA court doesn't stand much in the way.
The second reason is that according to 50 U.S.C. Sec. 1805(f)(2), the Attorney General has up to 72 hours after starting wiretapping to get approval. If they get a legitimate hot tip, then they can start tapping immediately and get approval afterwards. If not approved, then the evidence can't be used in court but as mentioned above only 4 applications have ever been rejected.
Given that FISA extremely rarely rejects requests put before it and that you don't have to get permission before you can start, there are only two reasons possible why Bush doesn't want to go to the court.
Lastly, the President was NOT authorized by Congress to do this under any legitimate interpretation. He was given authority to use force against terrorists. He was not given authority to wipe his rear end with the 4th and 6th Amendments like he claims he is. If it even were possible for Congress to authorize this, then there are effectively no limits on what powers he may assume.
Incidentally, regardless of your stance for or against abortion, the limits of executive power is the number one reason to give a damn about Judge Alito. The man is a fascist who does not accept any reasonable limits on executive power and police power. Just look at two of his rulings. (1 2) (But hey, we can always rely on the media to cover the important stuff like his equivocation on abortion and the padding of his resume with an elitist, racist group, right?)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Taking a view of who wins and loses these lawsuits is a very myopic view, IMO. In the end, it is not who wins and looses but the precidents that are established, and these are often far more moderate than a simple loss might suggest.
For example, how many here actually went out and read the Supreme Court's opinion in the Grokster case? I did. And I was struck by how this was a real victory for the technology industry for two reasons:
1) The Supreme Court refused to revisit the Betamax precident.
2) The Supreme Court only allowed one to look for liability based on active inducement, so while this might not protect Grokster, Kazaa, etc who build their business models around the premise that people are going to violate copyrights, it does protect BitTorrent and others who build their business models arround legal uses of the technology. IMO, Betamax really wasn't intended to protect those who, in bad faith, actively encourage copyright infringement.
So while Grokster lost the appeal to the Supreme Court, the EFF did us all a service in helping to ensure that the previous precidents protecting our ability to invent new technologies and communiciations media continued to stand.
So you can't just look at raw numbers as to who the final judgements favored. You really have to read the opinions. The EFF is doing us all a great service in their representation. It is unfair to characterize them as harmful.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"But even beyond that, the matter is highly controversial and hotly debated. There's the question of the extent of the Executive's power to conduct military operations during wartime."
The matter is controversial, and there's no denying it's being hotly debated. The issues of law, however, are not so tenuous as you seem to think. Every argument that the White House has offered has been quite thoroughly refuted. About the simplest and clearest summary of these arguments can be found in Al Gore's speech on MLK day. And before anyone screams 'bias!': read the speech and weigh his statements on their merits. I'm not asking you to buy his conclusions, I'm asking you to consider his arguments and draw your own conclusions.
"You raid a cell in Pakistan, find a U.S. phone number on a computer there. In criminal justice terms, that's not probable cause to tap a phone line."
That almost certainly is probable cause, and because it's an espionage- and national security-related issue, the FISA court could readily be expected to issue a warrant for this.
In terms of spying on Americans, however, there must be a warrant. Article 4 of the constitution asserts this.
With regards to whatever 'War powers' the president might or might not have, he was explicitly denied the exercise of those powers in the US by Congress. When the White House asked the House to explicitly place US territory within the scope of the bill giving the president the right to use all means necessary, they refused. This is a matter of public record. It is therefore proven that Congress authorised no such program, and the warrant-less surveillance of individuals on US soil is illegal and unconstitutional.
Again, you're right to say that the issue of whether the president should conduct unwarranted surveillance on US soil is controversial and hotly debated. The issue of whether it is legal to do so today is not.
But back to the issue of whether AT&T is breaking the law - the details will have to come out before anyone can venture a reasoned opinion on this, I think. Even if AT&T's lawyers concluded that the unwarranted surveillance was illegal, they might still feel that the company had to comply with a US government order.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Vote
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
'If you're doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about" is not completely correct. I'm doing nothing wrong, but I nevertheless worry about the government doing something wrong. Governments exists to increase their power -- at the expense of freedom. Therefore, government should be limited wherever and whenever possible.
The whole point of a lawsuit, after all, is to try to prove that somebody did something illegal. In fact, if the EFF loses this case, it will establish a precedent that what AT&T did is not illegal.
Go on, go on... I know you can do it! The next logical step is... If the EFF /wins/ this case, it establishes what AT&T did was illegal! And possibly even the order itself! Maybe that's what the EFF is trying to do! Now you can argue that they do not have the track record to do this, but I can't see how you miss the whole point of their lawsuit... and get modded +5.
There's the question of the wisdom of arbitrarily curbing the Executive's constituional authority, which would make it more difficult for the Executive to fulfill its constitutional responsiblities.
Nothing arbitrary about it. Either the Executive has that power, or not. The courts tend to decide such matters. You seem to be trying to create grey areas where there are none. And dropping the word "constitutional" repeatedly in your statement seemingly supporting the Executive tapping whoever they want does not show it has that power. What next, the Executive can do whatever they want, no balances, no protections, no laws?
I hope that the EFF does lose this suit, thus bolstering Bush's case for Executive freedom of action in military matters during wartime
Oh good god, that /is/ what you're "arguing"! Sad when statements like these come from Americans, and then we tell the rest of the world that we're going to teach them how to run Republics, and what freedom is about. So the prez can tap whoever he likes without court approval? How about jail whoever he likes (if he calls them terrorists, of course)? Indefinitely? And as this DOJ has argued, these terrorists will just use lawyers to pass messages to other terrorists, so we deny them lawyers, too? In fact, we can't let anyone know we have them, so we take them in secret, and don't even admit we have them (of course, real terrorists would notice that their operatives have been "disappeared"... but don't confuse me with logic!). You know what would help the war? Internment camps! Hey, worked for us before! Let's jail everyone of the ethnicity we declare war on this week (of course, war wasn't really declared... but don't stop me, I'm on a roll!), and their lawyers, and anyone else who supports these terrorists... like those kids with their anti-war signs, and their anti-Bush signs. Hell, let's jail anyone with anti-Bush signs! You either with us or against us, ya know! Why does this all sound so familiar, though? I feel like I've read this all before... Oh, right, those history books, in the chapter usually titled "The Start of Great Police States".
You raid a cell in Pakistan, find a U.S. phone number on a computer there. In criminal justice terms, that's not probable cause to tap a phone line.
Don't be silly. Of course it is. Especially with our secret, rubber-stamp FISA court. The least we can do is keep track of what the Executive is doing. What next? A secret Executive? Nevermind, don't reply, it will just depress me.
Lies about crimes
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
Yes I can agree with that. Imagine the nerve of someone sworn to uphold the constitution thinking he can simply order a government agency to violate constitutional rights without consequence.
The government has always had the authority to monitor international communications without a warrant.
I will accept that statement only after you provide a citation to a legal theroy that propounds it. In contravention of your point, I cite the FISA of 1978, the FISA court which has, in it's ENTIRE HISTORY, declined only four requests for a wiretap.
Bush didn't make up that power.
I suggest he did, out of whole cloth. The solicitor general (Alberto Gonzales) has been quoted on CNN saying he and President Bush did not seek specific authorization from Congress on exactly this point because they didn't think they'd get it. So he made a wild power grab and got away with it for many years. Now the lights are starting to come on, and they are scurring away from it like cockroaches in the kitchen.
Just let me point out, if you substitute "Clinton" for "Bush", I suggest you'd be barking at the moon for not just removal from office, but criminal prosecution as well. I tell you true, if Clinton tried pulling something like this, I'd have screamed for his head.
It just happened that in the past those communications were generally broadcast radio transmisisons and not internet or telephone communications.
Ahhh. Therein lies the rub. It was still illegal even then. Look up the law on interception of communications absent a warrent. Now, "they" (in this case, the NSA, DIA, MI6, and ANZAC) have to touch what they want to snoop on. In the past, they could just stick a wire in the air and break the law. Now they have to have cooperation. Regardless, it was still illegal since 1932.
The power hasn't changed, only the technology.
I argue that they never had the legal power. Tech has changed, that is self evident. That they have the absolute power is obvious. They can kill you if you refuse to cooperate. And likely bill your family for the bullet too. Doesn't make it legal.
Also, the communications in question are phone calls originating overseas
Incorrect. NSA is tapped directly into the Datona database. This includes ALL calls made through the PTSN, internal to the US, external, either initiated from inside or outside the US, and most Internet connections. They have SUGGESTED they were interested in only overseas initiated calls, however, I question if that is the case, and if it is, if they have the legal authority to do so even then.
by known Al Qaeda members.
Again, this is incorrect information. These are not "known" members of a terrorist orgisanation. These are SUSPECTS, some of them citizens (although I strongly believe that we should NOT be making distinctions about what civil liberties (aside from voting and holding office) should be granted to a non-citizen verus a citizen while within US jurisdiction. We then in turn expose ourselves to having to prove at every street corner that we are citizens. Think a Nazi SS Trooper shouting "PAPERS!" at every bus stop, airport (oops, too late!), train station, and highway blockade. And God help you if you don't have official permission to go to another city.)
If the NSA wasn't monitoring those conversations, it would be gross negligance and they would be ignoring their duty to the country.
Part of their duty is to make sure they aren't breaking the law themselves while trying to get the "bad guys". That's how you tell a good guy from a bad guy. The good guys always obey the law. The bad guys don't. It is an important distinction to remember. Or else you'll just have to accept someone is a "good guy" because they tell you to. And if they don't, they take you to jail.
I would probably agree that there should be oversight on this program to make sure there are no abuses,
T
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
And that's the huge gaping hole in your argument. How do you know they are calling known or suspected terorists, when your government refuses to let anybody know who they are tapping on what basis but just ask you to trust them?
Do I really have to point out to you that the US has at least once had a president who had no qualms about wiretapping his political enemies for political gain (Nixon, in case you completely lack history knowledge)? What makes you think you can trust the current and all future governments not to do the same.
Keep in mind that regardless whether you think Bush is an asswipe or a true American hero, he will not be president forever, and any expansion of presidential powers will be there to exploit for future presidents too unless something is done to stop it.
The scary part here is not that Bush wants to wiretap, but that he so obviously KNOW that these wiretaps are wide reaching, considering that he's decided it's worthwhile to avoid asking for permission from a court that hardly ever says no to any request, and where the requests can be filed after the fact.
It takes an extreme naivety to think even for a second that nothing is fishy there.
If these are truly people calling suspected terrorists, then warrants for these wiretaps would be granted with no problems.
So why again, is it necessary to bypass the oversight measures put in place by congress?