AT&T Sued Over NSA Eavesdropping

~~ A new twist in the NSA wiretap mess.

Did Ma Bell do it with Big Brother ?!?!

~~~TP

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AT&T Sued Over NSA Eavesdropping
Wired News::
By Ryan Singel
04:03 AM Jan, 31, 2006

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T Tuesday, accusing the telecom company of violating federal laws by collaborating with the government's secret, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens' phone and internet usage.

The suit, (.pdf) filed by the civil liberties group in federal court in San Francisco, alleges AT&T secretly gave the NSA access to two massive databases that included both the contents of its subscribers' communications and detailed transaction records, such as numbers dialed and internet addresses visited.

'Our goal is to go after the people who are making the government's illegal surveillance possible,' says EFF attorney Kevin Bankston. 'They could not do what they are doing without the help of companies like AT&T. We want to make it clear to AT&T that it is not in their legal or economic interests to violate the law whenever the president asks them to.'"