We Sue AT&T for Assisting the NSA's Warrantless Wiretaps

EFF Sues AT&T to Stop Illegal Surveillance

Telecom Collaborated with NSA to Spy on Customers

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T Tuesday, accusing
the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of
its customers by collaborating with the National Security
Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap
and data-mine Americans' communications.

The NSA program came to light in December, when the New
York Times reported that the president had authorized the
agency to intercept telephone and Internet communications
inside the United States without the authorization of any
court.  Over the ensuing weeks, it became clear that the
NSA program has been intercepting and analyzing millions of
Americans' communications, with the help of the country's
largest phone and Internet companies.

Reporting has also indicated that those same companies--and
AT&T specifically--have given the NSA direct access to
their vast databases of communications records, including
information about whom their customers have phoned or
emailed with in the past. And yet little has been
accomplished by this illegal spying: recent reports have
shown that the data from this wholesale surveillance has
done little more than waste FBI resources on dead leads.

...

In the lawsuit, EFF alleges that AT&T, in addition to
allowing the NSA direct access to the phone and Internet
communications passing over its network, has given the
government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte
"Daytona" database of caller information--one of the
largest databases in the world.

The full complaint.

More on EFF's suit.

This release.

Comments

[Pat Berry]

Right freakin' on.

[D.Manchester]

I have been working on translating some of the publicly available PDF's on this issue into html. They are here: http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/house_nsabrief_docs_012006.html

Here are the legal briefs and stuff:

LAWSUITS: Pending Litigation re Warrantless NSA Wiretapping
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION:

Here is the EFF's Class Action Complaint against AT&T.

http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/att-complaint.html


AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION


Here is the ACLU's Complaint for Declatory and Injunctive Relief against the NSA.
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/aclu-nsa-complaint.html

FOIA

Here is the ACLU'S Pentagon Spying FOIA February 1, 2006, seeking from the Pentagon records from Talon, CIFA, MX of infiltration, intimidation, dirty tricks, and spying on Richard Hersh, The Truth Project, Inc., Patriots for Peace, Ft. Lauderdale Friends, Melbourne Florida Counter Inaugural, Broward Anti-War Coalition, Jeff Nall, Maria Telesca-Whipple, and others.
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/PentagonSpyingFOIA_020106.html

ISSUES BRIEFINGS

Here is the ACLU's October 30, 2003 Issues Briefing THE MATRIX: Total Information Awareness Reloaded - DATA MINING MOVES INTO THE STATES with addendum, Shane Harris' February 23, 2006 National Journal report, TIA Lives On.


http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/aclu_matrix_report.html

I put a lot of work into these...the ACLU Complaint has lots of internal navigation. You can go directly to any page from any page (60 pages), or directly to any of the 195 paragraphs of the complaint from the table of contents, a click away from any page.

I hope these, and the other documents on this site are of useful to You.

Cheers,

-dcm