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Wiretapping Lawsuit Against AT&T Dismissed
BalanceOfJudgement writes "A major victory by the federal government was won today when a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against AT&T for providing phone records to the federal government. From the article: 'The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities'" Not to be confused with the EFF case, this case was filed by the ACLU on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who argued that their constitutional rights had been violated by the actions of AT&T and the NSA.
One has to ask one's self who the true enemies of this country are.
I really don't have all of the details so I can't actually say for sure whether this lawsuit would have uncovered information that could have decreased the United States' ability to combat terrorists, however, the truth is I DON'T CARE. There are a lot of things that COULD be done to increase security in the States, but many of them would be worse than the very things they would seek to eliminate. From what I know I would argue that this is probably one of them, though again, I don't know the true details. In a free country you simply can't have allegedly illegal government programs that aren't subject to claims of illegality. There's an argument to be made for suspending such things in times of true emergency, distant conflicts with various terrorist organizations likely to last indefinitely not being one.
More than likely there is an extensive spying program with relatively poor and easily avoidable detection methods and that's the reason it is being so well protected. Only the atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt is helping them "fight" terror, the program itself probaby doesn't do much besides producing false positives. If the details were made public it would almost certainly be cancelled even if it was legal.
Haiku for you!
'The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities'
In other words, "adversaries of this country" can safely assume AT&T disclosed large quantities of telephone records. In the unlikely event that they didn't, our adversaries will surely and prudently prefer err on the side of caution.
Citizens of this country, by contrast, have been denied even the semblance of justice, as their own government tramples over their rights.
If that isn't victory for the "adversaries of this country" I don't know what would be.
Not only that, but the rest of the world is watching and drawing its own conclusions.
It is. I know a fairly good number of highly technically skilled people - including myself - who are staying away from the USA and are turning down invitations to speak at conferences, coach upper-level management and other opportunities.
My current policy is that if my skills are so valuable that you want the entire board of directors to attend for two full days, then you can fly them somewhere outside USA borders as well. Canada would do, or a nice place in the carribean.
I'm not going to enter the USA for the forseable future, and neither are many of my friends.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org