Watchdog Group Takes On Telecom
Immunity Law
"The administration is attempting to sweep under
the rug the massive illegality of the program"
By
Kenneth Corbin
Internetnews.com, October 17, 2008
go to original
See Article I.1 Illegal
Domestic Spying
| |
Ready for prime time: EFF lawyers
(from left) Kevin Bankston, Cindy Cohn, Shari
Steele, and Lee Tien find themselves in a
legal battle with the nation’s largest
telecommunications company—and the White
House.
Source: Gary Laufman,
callalawyer.com
|
A digital-rights advocacy group is challenging a
controversial law that granted immunity to telecom
providers that participated in the government's domestic
surveillance program.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) yesterday
filed a brief with a federal court in California seeking
to overturn the amendment to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA), which shields companies such
as AT&T from lawsuits for disclosing their customers'
communication records to the government.
Lawyers for the group are claiming that the FISA
Amendment Act (FAA), signed into law earlier this
year, gives the executive branch more power than the
U.S. Constitution provides, running counter to the
idea of a separation of powers. Under the law, the
U.S. attorney general can intervene to dismiss a lawsuit
against a telecom provider by certifying to the court
that no law was broken. The EFF contends that job
properly belongs with the judiciary.
"Our constitutional argument is that the Congress
and the executive have overstepped their bounds,"
Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney with the EFF, told
InternetNews.com.
The U.S. District Court in San Francisco is scheduled
to hear the challenge on Dec. 2. A spokesman for AT&T
declined to comment.
The EFF has been at the forefront of the legal opposition
to the warrantless wiretapping program. Along with
the American Civil Liberties Union, the group is coordinating
litigation in 47 cases involving the government's
surveillance activities.
In the principal case, Hepting vs. AT&T, the
EFF is representing AT&T customers seeking an
injunction against the surveillance and statutory
damages from the telecom giant.
President Bush has defended the program as a necessary
weapon in the war on terror, and said that it is subject
to periodic review to ensure that it protects Americans'
civil liberties.
Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey filed
a certification (PDF) with the California court calling
on the judge to dismiss all civil cases against the
communications providers working in concert with government
surveillance agencies.
"While confirming the existence of the [Terrorist
Surveillance Program, the administration's official
name for the effort], the government has denied the
existence of the alleged dragnet collection on the
content of plaintiffs' communications," Mukasey
wrote.
Bankston sees it differently.
"The administration is attempting to sweep under
the rug the massive illegality of the program,"
he said. "It does involve a massive content vacuum
sucking up millions upon millions of communications
from innocent Americans."
Frustrated with the slow progress of the litigation
against the telecoms, the EFF last month filed a lawsuit
against the president, vice president, the National
Security Agency and other officials and agencies involved
with the program.
Bankston said his group will call on the next Congress
to repeal the FAA.
The latest movement on the domestic surveillance
front follows revelations from two military whistleblowers
about excesses in the foreign eavesdropping program.
Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, two former
military intercept operators, last week told ABC News
that they routinely listened to recorded conversations
of military personnel, aid workers and other Americans
in the Middle East. Kinne and Faulk said that many
of the conversations were salacious in nature, involving
phone sex or "pillow talk." The whistleblowers
described how they would flag these conversations
for their coworkers and joke about their contents.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said the charges were "extremely disturbing,"
and pledged to launch an investigation.
