San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Wednesday, demanding any information about telecommunications companies' efforts to get off the hook for their role in the government's illegal electronic surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans.

Congress is currently considering granting amnesty to the telecoms — a blatant attempt to derail lawsuits aimed at holding the companies responsible for knowingly violating federal privacy laws with warrantless wiretapping and the illegal transfer of vast amounts of personal data to the government. EFF represents the plaintiffs in Hepting v.

AT&T, one of dozens of class-action suits accusing the telecoms of violating customers' rights by illegally assisting the National Security Agency with this domestic surveillance.

News reports have described an elaborate lobbying campaign by the telecoms to drum up support for legislation that would hold them unaccountable for their actions, and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has publicly voiced his support for amnesty. But McConnell's office has not yet responded to EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to disclose records about this lobbying activity.

"Congress is debating amnesty for the telecoms right now cialis chicago — amnesty that could imperil judicial review of a very controversial government program, as well as threaten class-action lawsuits that impact millions of Americans,"

said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "We deserve to know what kind of lobbying has gone on behind the scenes before lawmakers make this critical decision."

EFF's suit asks for the immediate disclosure of ODNI's telecom lobbying records, including any documents concerning briefings, discussions, or other contacts officials have had with representatives of telecommunications companies or members of Congress. This lawsuit comes just two weeks after EFF filed a similar FOIA suit against the Department of Justice for withholding records on telecom lobbying.

For the full complaint:

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/foia_C0705278/ODNI_complaint.pdf

For more on our FOIA work:

http://www.eff.org/issues/foia

For more on EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T:

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att

For this release:

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/10/17

Oct 15, 2007 5:27:00 PM

Major U.S. telephone carriers refused to answer questions from the Democratic-led Congress about their possible participation in President Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, according to documents released by lawmakers Monday.

At issue are reports that surfaced last year that some big telephone companies allowed the U.S. government access to millions of telephone records for Bush's antiterror efforts following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Officials from AT&T, Verizon Communications and Qwest Communications International told the House Energy and Commerce Committee they could not discuss specifics about their companies' roles in any such effort.

The phone companies said it would be illegal for them to discuss the kind of program lawmakers were asking about without permission from the Bush administration.

AT&T "essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive relating to government surveillance activities," AT&T General Counsel Wayne Watts said in a letter to the committee.

"Unfortunately, under current circumstances, we are unable to respond with specificity to your inquiries," Watts added in the letter to the panel headed by Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat.

Bush has demanded retroactive immunity from liability for telecommunication firms that participated in warrantless surveillance as part of any new bill to revise the laws governing the tracking of suspected enemy targets.

House Democratic leaders have refused, saying the administration must first explain what these firms did before they will even consider granting immunity.

The phone companies' responses to Dingell were sent to the committee on Friday.

The companies said they had policies in place to protect customers' privacy, but also said federal law authorized them to help the government investigate criminals and terrorists.

Verizon said phone companies had been targeted in a number of class action lawsuits filed after the government program was revealed in news reports.

"In the context of this litigation, we have been informed by the Department of Justice that we cannot confirm or deny Verizon's role (if any) in the alleged programs," said Verizon executive Randal Milch.

Democrats vowed to push the administration for answers.

"I look forward to meeting with representatives of the administration in short order, and I am hopeful that they will be forthcoming with the information Congress needs to properly evaluate this program," Dingell said.

Also on Monday, House cialis 20mg tablets Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said he had sent a letter to administration officials asking for details about "potentially unlawful surveillance activities before 9-11" and allegations that the government had retaliated against Qwest earlier for refusing to participate in the surveillance program.

Former Qwest chief executive Joseph Nacchio refused the government's request up until he left the company in 2002, his lawyer has said.

In his request to the phone companies earlier this month, Dingell asked them to describe how government requests for customer information are made and how the records are disclosed. He also asked if the government tried to install equipment on phone networks to intercept Internet traffic or presented a subpoena ordering the companies to install or permit such equipment.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires the government to obtain orders from a secret FISA court to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States.

After the September 11 attacks, Bush authorized the interception without warrants of communications between people in the United States and others overseas if one had suspected ties to terrorists. Critics charge that program violated the FISA law, but Bush argued he had wartime powers to do so.

In January, Bush put the program under the supervision of the FISA court. Terms of the oversight have not been made public. In August, Congress, under pressure from Bush, expanded the power of federal authorities to conduct warrantless surveillance in the tracking of enemy targets.

Democrats want to tighten that law with additional oversight by Congress and the secret court created by FISA.

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October 3, 2007

The Washington Times

Time is running out for the Internet taxation moratorium. The current ban expires Nov. 1, after which states and municipalities can swarm Internet users with new e-commerce levies (and they will). There is even talk of taxing individual e-mail messages. Congress should extend the ban.

This widely popular legislation has been extended twice over nine years and has enjoyed wide bipartisan support. It flew through the Senate by a 93-3 margin when it was renewed in 2004. Everyone from Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, to bill sponsor George Allen, Virginia Republican, supported it. In the House, its 134 cosponsors included figures across the spectrum, from Rep. Marty Meehan, Massachusetts buy tadalafil cialis Democrat, to Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican. The merits of the moratorium have not changed much.

So why the delay? The short answers are dueling legislators and the accompanying congressional foot-dragging. Groups such as the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Governors Association want a short extension; grandfathered privileges for the nine states that tax e-commerce; and a narrowing of definitions. Last week, Rep. John Conyers, Michigan Democrat, introduced a bill containing those and extending the moratorium through 2011. This follows Mr. Conyers' apparent rejection of a bill by Rep. Anna Eshoo, the California Democrat who represents Silicon Valley, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, to make the ban permanent. (We prefer a permanent ban.)

A ban expiry would be a serious disservice to consumers, not to mention a drag on a high-performing sector of the economy. Some on the left are swayed by the argument that the Internet tax moratorium places a disproportionate tax burden on low-income Americans because it is the wealthy and middle class, not the poor, who spend online. This is more than a bit of tax-and-spend revenue hunger. The disparity is likely to lessen in the future, as the costs of computers and online access continue to fall.

There is no compelling reason for this commonsense legislation to expire, other than to fill the grubby hands of state and local politicians. On behalf of consumers, businesses and for economic prosperity generally, Congress should renew the moratorium on Internet taxes.

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September 20, 2007

Newsweek's top story today exposes the desperation of the telecommunications companies in light of cases like EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T, which accuses the telecom giant of assisting in the illegal surveillance of millions of Americans. The telecoms and the Administration are heaping pressure on Congress to get a 'get out of jail free' card for their role in helping the government spy on their customers:

The campaign—which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms—has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community—or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant.

The telecom's worries are telling. Our case is representing a class of U.S. residential customers, and does not include any terrorists – just ordinary folks who use the phone and email. The per person penalties are quite reasonable – If the telecoms were not spying on millions of innocent Americans, there is no way for the liability to become "crippling."

Moreover, the Administration obtained prospective immunity in the so-called Protect America Act earlier this year. If the telecoms are only operating under the extremely broad parameters of the PAA, there is no liability reason to stop cooperating moving forward. And yet they are so worried about liability, they threaten to terminate their cooperation.

To achieve in Congress what they could not achieve in court, the telecoms are not holding back:

Among those coordinating the industry’s effort are two well-connected capital players who both worked for President George H.W. Bush: Verizon general counsel William Barr, who served as attorney general under 41, and AT&T senior executive vice president James Cicconi, who was the elder Bush's deputy chief of staff.

Working with them are a battery of major D.C. lobbyists and lawyers who are providing "strategic advice" to the companies on the issue, according to sources familiar with the campaign who asked not to be identified talking about it. Among the players, these sources said: powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (who represent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spaulding who is representing Sprint), former Democratic Party strategist and one-time assistant secretary of State Tom Donilon (who represents Verizon), former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick (whose law firm also represents Verizon) and Brad Berenson, a former assistant White House counsel under President George W. Bush who now represents AT&T.

Against these lobbyist Goliaths, we need as much grassroots support as we can muster. Join EFF, and call Congress today to help stop the spying.

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Read Newsweek's report:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20884696/site/newsweek/page/0/

For more on EFF's case against AT&T:

http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att

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Judge deals blow to Patriot Act

best cialis prices Arial”>By Declan McCullagh, News.com

Published on ZDNet News: Sep 6, 2007 1:11:00 PM

A key portion of the Patriot Act is unconstitutional and violates Americans' free speech rights, a federal judge said Thursday in a case that could represent a bitter setback for the Bush administration's attempts to expand its surveillance powers.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the section of the Patriot Act that permits the FBI to send Internet service providers secret demands, called national security letters, for customer information violates the First Amendment and unreasonably curbs the authority of the judiciary.

FBI agents can use NSLs to surreptitiously obtain logs of American citizens' e-mail correspondence, a list of Web sites visited and queries submitted to search engines, without obtaining a judge's approval in advance. NSLs can also be used to obtain bank and telephone records. They are supposed to be used only when an investigation is allegedly relevant to a terrorist investigation.

FBI's surveillance push

The Patriot Act expanded the FBI's use of national security letters, which are secret and powerful demands for business records. The FBI can use them to obtain an itemized list of all the e-mails sent and received by the target of the NSL, and it can seek information on individuals communicating with that person. It can even discover the Web sites an American citizen has visited and queries submitted to search engines. The use of NSLs increased dramatically after September 11, 2001, as you can see by these partial figures made available by the Justice Department's inspector general (click for PDF). Each row represents the total NSL requests made during that calendar year.

2000: About 8,500

2003: 39,346

2004: 56,507

2005: 47,221

In a 106-page decision (click for PDF), Marrero said the gag orders that can accompany NSLs are not "sufficiently narrowly tailored" to survive First Amendment review. In addition, he said, the law's attempt to limit judicial review "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers" and "reflects an attempt by Congress and the executive to infringe upon the judiciary's designated role under the Constitution."

Marrero barred Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller from issuing NSLs, but delayed the effective date of the prohibition for 90 days to give the Bush administration a chance to appeal.

Although the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, it declined to confirm its plans on Thursday. A spokesman said only that "we're reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time."

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which applauded Thursday's ruling. "Courts have a constitutionally mandated role to play when national security policies infringe on First Amendment rights," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "A statute that allows the FBI to silence people without meaningful judicial oversight is unconstitutional."

A report published in March by the Justice Department's inspector general found "serious misuse" of NSLs on the part of the FBI. But because unlawful use of NSLs is not a crime–unlike conducting an unlawful wiretap, which is a federal felony–no prosecutions were brought. Also in March, The Washington Post published a first-person account by the president of an Internet company who received an NSL. "I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government" for the past three years, the writer said.

In an odd twist, this is the second time that Marrero, a judge in the Southern District of New York, has struck down NSLs as unconstitutional.

The first ruling came in September 2004, when he ruled that the NSL portions of the original version of the Patriot Act enacted three years earlier were unconstitutional.

After the Justice Department appealed, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked Marrero's order from taking effect during the course of the appeal. But before the appeal was complete, Congress rewrote portions of the Patriot Act including the NSL section, which led the appeals court to send the case back to Marrero to evaluate whether the revisions passed constitutional muster.

Such letters are not new. Before the Patriot Act was enacted a few weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they could be used in investigations of suspected terrorists and spies. But after the change to the law, the FBI needed only to say that a letter may be "relevant" to a terrorist-related investigation. No court approval is required.

NSLs to telecommunications firms originated with a 1986 law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which permitted them only in relation to an investigation of "an agent of a foreign power." That once-strict requirement was broadened in 1993 and again by the Patriot Act eight years later.

The most recent changes to NSLs came in mid-2006 with the revisions to the Patriot Act. It said that senior FBI officials could forever prohibit the recipient from disclosing the existence of the NSL "to any person" other than their lawyer with five years in prison as a punishment

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