Fergie's Tech Blog

Call Records Suits Meet with Spying Suit in Court Today

Ryan Singel writes on 27B Stroke 6:

Telecoms, rights groups, and the government will square off today in an San Francisco court room in the continuing battle over whether telecoms are liable for helping the government spy on American's overseas phone calls and domestic phone records without getting warrants. It's the first hearing in the case after the government's surprise announcement in January that its efforts to eavesdrop on cross-border phone calls, when one party is suspected to have links to terrorist groups -- would be overseen by the very court it avoided getting warrants from since 2001.

While the action in San Francisco has mostly been about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T, some 46 other cases making similar allegations against other telecoms such as Bellsouth, Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon have been combined into 5 distinct, but related actions. Today, the court will decide if its landmark ruling in July, which said that the EFF suit could proceeded despite the government's assertion that it would damage national security because the government has admitted the program exists, applies also to the other cases.

posted by Fergie @ 2/09/2007 03:42:00 PM