AT&T slapped with covert spying lawsuit
/v3-uk/news/1993229/at-t-slapped-covert-spying-lawsuit
01 Feb 2006, Iain Thomson , V3
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is taking AT&T to court claiming that the US comms giant helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct illegal domestic spying operations.
The suit alleges that AT&T gave the NSA direct access to its databases of communications records, including detailed information about its customers' phone and email correspondence.
"AT&T's customers reasonably expect that their communications are private and have long trusted AT&T to follow the law and protect that privacy. Unfortunately, AT&T has betrayed that trust," said EFF senior staff attorney Lee Tien.
"At the NSA's request, AT&T eviscerated the legal safeguards required by Congress and the courts with a keystroke."
The lawsuit also alleges that AT&T gave the government unfettered access to its 300 terabyte Daytona database of caller information. Daytona is one of the largest databases in the world.
The EFF also alleges that, by opening its network and databases to wholesale surveillance by the NSA, AT&T violated the privacy of its customers and its customers' telephone and email correspondents, and has broken longstanding communications privacy laws.
The lawsuit further alleges that AT&T continues to assist the government in its covert surveillance of millions of Americans.
The EFF said that it is suing to stop this illegal conduct on behalf of a nationwide class of AT&T customers.
Do you agree?
violated the privacy
if Qwest could protect their customers why didn't AT&T and Bellsouth?????????
Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws,
In a statement released this morning, the lawyer said that the former chief executive made the decision after asking whether "a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request."
no warrant had been granted and that there was a "disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process,"
"the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."
Posted by m, 12 May 2006