Request denied to unseal AT&T records in spy case

Media companies lost a bid to unseal documents in a lawsuit accusing AT&T Inc. of helping the National Security Agency to spy on U.S. residents.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a ruling filed in San Francisco federal court, allowed six news organizations to join the lawsuit.

He denied their request to unseal records filed in April in the case, saying the documents weren't sufficiently related to the legal proceeding.

The documents at issue came from Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician. Klein said last year that cables and equipment installed at an AT&T office in San Francisco in 2003 for the NSA "were tapping into" circuits carrying customers' dial-in services.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/03/its_too_secret_.html

(Excerpt): AT&T told an appeals court in a written brief Monday that the case against it for allegedly helping the government spy on its customers should be thrown out, because it cannot defend itself -- even by showing a signed order from the government -- without endangering national security.

A government brief filed simultaneously backed AT&T's claims and said a lower court judge had exceeded his authority by not dismissing the suit outright.

Because plaintiffs' entire action rests upon alleged secret espionage activities, including an alleged secret espionage relationship between AT&T and the Government concerning the alleged activities, this suit must be dismissed now as a matter of law," the government argued in its brief (.pdf).

The telecom giant and the government are appealing a June ruling in a federal district court that allowed the suit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the telecom to proceed, despite the government's invocation of a powerful tool called the "states secrets privilege," which allows it to have civil cases dismissed when national secrets are involved.

Links to the government and AT&T briefs at the above link, as well as a lot more analysis.

Basically, AT&T saying they can't tell people whether or not they gave the government information about them without them harming national security, and the government backing them.

Now that I'm an AT&T customer (not by choice), it wouldn't bother me if AT&T said "yeah, we have the NSA full access to our network, and this is why and what they are doing", but all of this crap about "we can't tell you" is a bunch of crap - everybody knows AT&T was/is helping the NSA, so they've scared off any potential criminal/terrorists.

it wouldn't bother me if AT&T said "yeah, we have the NSA full access to our network, and this is why and what they are doing"

They may not have choice in the matter, at least not in what they can say publicly. Don't forget this is a legal case and they have liabilities and agreements to defend. This was a lawyers' statement to the court, a legal matter and one relating to national security.

a bunch of crap - everybody knows AT&T was/is helping the NSA

A bunch of crap happens in the courts today, our legal system demands it and depends on it. What you see is just lawyers doing and saying what lawyers do and say in such cases. I don't get agitated about it.

The crux of the issue, though, if "everybody knows" - what's the real point of the lawsuit, if not get the details of actual NSA intercepts, and the only reason there was a lawsuit to begin with was after "everybody knew" - a Catch-22. The lawsuit was completely political, liberal (not libertarian) in nature - it's just a way to get to NSA, which they cannot successfully sue, through a lawsuit against AT&T. Liberals made it a practice that anything they don't like politically, whether legislated, administrated or voted by the people, they will overturn in "friendly" courts, often in San Francisco (where EFF is based) or Massachusetts (where EFF was based before).

I must say I've been very disappointed with EFF in recent years, as much as I was very happy when they started originally. Their focus changed substantially from libertarian into a technology equivalent of ACLU (EFF refers to "Digital Civil Liberties"), and except few activities, mainly related to DRM/DMCA and RIAA, I haven't seen much good coming from them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation

Even more liberal is the splitter group CDT -- staffed with lawyers from ACLU and Democrat Senators and campaigns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Democracy_and_Technology

The bigger issue is this: The NSA has access to AT&T's infrastructure, but are they going after very specific people (email, voice, etc., of specific targets - people who have met certain conditions), or are they just fishing.

If they are just fishing, I have a huge problem with that. It's well-known and generally accepted that traffic coming in and out of the US is monitored.

If on the other hand, the NSA is listening in on a conversation between your spouse and you, and there is no reason for them to do so, other than they have access to AT&T's infrastructure and can, then there is a huge problem.

This issue is political, not "criminal", as it involves a policy of US agency, not individual, and should have been kept quiet in Washington - the program was known and monitored by limited number of Congresspersons of both parties and subject to FISA Court restrictions. Noone found anything wrong with the program (except the likes of Feingold of Campaign Finance Reform fame and Schumer - far from paragon of personal liberties as Steele's credit report and identity theft scandal has shown. If the people who worried about privacy concerns of the program desired to check implementation, they could do so without disclosure leaks to newspapers for base political purposes to harm administration, and blowing the valuable program itself.

I suspect NSA has better things to do than monitor conversations between me and my spouse, but I fully expect "someone" to listen at any given time and I behave accordingly... I don't mind so much when something is done for legitimate national security purposes, especially when something like that can easily be done by law enforcement / drug enforcement / other enforcement agencies legally, and by private eyes, apparently, illegally as in "pretexting".

We can play "who is going to monitor the monitors of the monitors" games all day long, but, short of discontinuing this kind of programs altogether, this particular issue should not and will not be solved by one or the other liberal group suing a "conduit" of the legal and legitimate, while secret, government policy (AT&T) in a "friendly" venue, just because they want to find a runaround way to harm NSA. It will only create problems in the future as these kinds of surveillance programs become hardened and more difficult to uncover by the same government they're supposed to work for, and then real abuses will be more difficult find. There is a fine line in a mix between "perfect" liberty and "perfect" security, but this kind of nuisance lawsuits are only done for political posturing, publicity and fund-raising, not getting something real done. If there is anything that needed to be done in NSA case, I object to a group self-promoting and futile METHODS of going after "conduit" of legitimate government policy, rather than trying to change aspects or the whole of the policy, if they find them objectionable.

We can talk about what was initially going into Clinton's V-chip technology, and what Clinton tried to with Carnivore, we can talk about Inslaw, but the NSA's TSP clearly is not that all-encompassing (even according to enemies of administration who termed it "domestic spying program").

Anyway, this case just caught my attention because these kind of lawsuits have nothing to do with underlying NSA issue, rather just trying to exploit it and cash in on it politically or financially, sort of like "I could be Anna Nicole Smith's child's father"...

One, you completely ignored my post and the use by liberal groups of the phony lawsuit against conduit AT&T to try and damage perfectly legal and legitimate policy, just to get at administration, while thinking nothing about disclosing details of the program that has been successful in preventing terrorism.

Two, your use of "regardless of the fact that we have done nothing" implies that you don't differentiate between the crime and investigation and prosecution of it, and terrorism prevention. Remember the cries of "why didn't we do something, how could we not know before 9/11? The terrorists were right here." Well, we have been limiting the tools available to terrorism prevention, overseas and in the homeland while the same or even more intrusive tools have been available to and used by agencies like DEA and ATF.

I'd think libertarians would not object to rather unintrusive and bi-partisanly monitored tools be available for the prevention of terrorism rather than enforcement of alcohol, tobacco and firearm laws; liberals, apparently, would do the opposite - that's the difference. Liberals have given us some of the most restrictive laws in terms of speech and behavior that are supposed to make us "safer" from ourselves, yet wouldn't accept legal techniques used to prosecute what they consider "unacceptable" or "criminal" behavior in order to keep themselves safe from the people (terrorists) who hate their way of life and are intent on killing them. Strange, but I guess they only care about power, liberty be damned.

I didn't mean to ignore your post, I'm just stating that I don't like the idea of a government agency having that kind of access to civilian communications, because I think it will be eventually abused, and tied into systems like this. It may not happen now, but you can't tell me that the liberals won't try and push it to be used for much more than it is.

I'm completly fine if they have the proper warrants and oversight and are going after a particular target.

I'm not fine where a vacuum cleaner/fishing approach is used. We might as well setup roadblocks and have the feds search every single car that goes by, because it's the same thing - having access to the raw data/communications, rather than going to AT&T and saying "I need information on these IPs and these phone numbers, and here's the search warrant" sets off all kinds of flags.

You're talking about a policy of federal government that should be decided on the government level through Congressional legislation or even courts if they have jurisdiction in such matter (outside of FISA or something similar).

This issue should not be played with via a bogus lawsuit against private company with public oversight that has simply been a conduit of the policy.

If these groups think that such a program shouldn't exist or should be limited in what it can do (which is a moot point now), they can advocate this to Congress just like they are invited to do on many other issues. Their lawsuit against AT&T exposes their true intentions, which are to harm an administration which committed no specific violations of the legal program.

It's like Fitzgerald proceeding with "investigation" after the WH while he knew from the start that a) no crime has been committed, and b) who was the one who "didn't commit" the "no-crime".

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