WaPo: Wiretapping Lawsuits May Illuminate Methods of Spy Program

[babylonsister]

Lawsuits May Illuminate Methods of Spy Program

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 14, 2007; Page A01

In 2003, Room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown San Francisco was filled with powerful data-mining equipment for a "special job" by the National Security Agency, according to a former AT&T technician. It was fed by fiber-optic cables that siphoned copies of e-mails and other online traffic from one of the largest Internet hubs in the United States, the former employee says in court filings.

What occurred in the room is now at the center of a pivotal legal battle in a federal appeals court over the Bush administration's controversial spying program, including the monitoring that came to be publicly known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Privacy

An entire industry has mushroomed during the past decade because of the ability of companies to gather and make sense of public records, criminal histories and other electronic details. What are they doing with it?

Tomorrow, a three-judge panel will hear arguments on whether the case, which may provide the clearest indication yet of how the spying program has worked, can go forward. So far, evidence in the case suggests a massive effort by the NSA to tap into the backbone of the Internet to retrieve millions of e-mails and other communications, which the government could sift and analyze for suspicious patterns or other signs of terrorist activity, according to court records, plaintiffs' attorneys and technology experts.

"The scale of these deployments is . . . vastly in excess of what would be needed for any likely application or any likely combination of applications, other than surveillance," says an affidavit filed by J. Scott Marcus, the senior Internet adviser at the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005. Marcus analyzed evidence for the plaintiffs in the case.

In the first of two lawsuits before the court, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group, alleges in a class action that AT&T collaborated with the NSA to operate a "dragnet" that illegally tracked the domestic and foreign communications of millions of Americans. The second case centers on the disbanded al-Haramain charity and two of its attorneys, who say they were given -- and then forced to return -- a Treasury Department document showing that they had been the focus of NSA surveillance.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/13/AR2007081301113.html

[bigtree]

1. here's a counter to your article

Secrecy Could Shield Wiretap Law From Constitutional Challenges, Justice Official Says

A federal appeals court in Ohio dismissed one such challenge last month because the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups could not prove the government had listened to their conversations. The court did not rule on whether the program was constitutional.

Unless the government decides to release information about its wiretaps — as part of a criminal case, for example — the Justice Department said Monday the constitutional question may never be answered.

A senior Justice Department official made the comments at a briefing before a hearing Wednesday in San Francisco, where lawyers are trying to challenge the program's legality. The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the pending litigation, said such challenges must first clear a difficult hurdle.

"They would have to somehow get, through discovery or admission from government, that they had in fact been surveilled," the official said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293191,00.html?sPage=fnc.politics/executivebranch


They are simply stunning in their brazen obstruction of justice.

(sorry about the Fox link, it's AP)

[babylonsister]

2. The spin put on each and every story, depending on who's writing

it, is unreal. And we wonder why we never feel like we get the truth. What IS the truth?:crazy:

[bigtree]

3. well, the administration is in charge of whatever evidence there is

of whoever they wiretapped or intercepted communications.

It's perverse in our democracy to have the Justice Dept. acting as so much of a shield of the administration. Catch-22. If it weren't the Justice Dept., it would be the stacked courts which would serve as that shield of the Executive. That may be a necessary function of the balance of power, but it's an effective cover for a tyrannous regime like the one in power.

We need a deep throat with smoking documents.