There have been many fallouts from the NYTimes original ‘revelations’ regarding the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, fallouts that I’ll remind everyone of at the end of this post. Today, we learn that as a result of the USAToday’s rehashing of an old NYT story about NSA datamining, that Verizon is being sued. Via AP:
TRENTON, N.J. - Two New Jersey public interest lawyers sued Verizon Communications Inc. for $5 billion Friday, claiming the phone carrier violated privacy laws by turning over phone records to the National Security Agency for a secret government surveillance program.
Attorneys Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer filed the lawsuit Friday afternoon in federal district court in Manhattan, where Verizon is headquartered.
The lawsuit asks the court to stop Verizon from turning over any more records to the NSA without a warrant or consent of the subscriber.
“This is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we’ve ever seen in the United States,” Afran said of the NSA program.
USA Today reported on Thursday that the NSA has been building a database of millions of Americans’ everyday telephone calls since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Verizon, along with AT&T Corp. and BellSouth Corp., complied, the newspaper reported.
The lawsuit against AT&T has been ongoing since January of this year, thanks to the original NYT article on this ’scandal’:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications.
In December of 2005, the press revealed that the government had instituted a comprehensive and warrantless electronic surveillance program that ignored the careful safeguards set forth by Congress. This surveillance program, purportedly authorized by the President at least as early as 2001 and primarily undertaken by the NSA, intercepts and analyzes the communications of millions of ordinary Americans.
In the largest “fishing expedition” ever devised, the NSA uses powerful computers to “data-mine” the contents of these Internet and telephone communications for suspicious names, numbers, and words, and to analyze traffic data indicating who is calling and emailing whom in order to identify persons who may be “linked” to “suspicious activities,” suspected terrorists or other investigatory targets, whether directly or indirectly.
But the government did not act-and is not acting-alone. The government requires the collaboration of major telecommunications companies to implement its unprecedented and illegal domestic spying program.
AT&T Corp. (which was recently acquired by the new AT&T, Inc,. formerly known as SBC Communications) maintains domestic telecommunications facilities over which millions of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications pass every day. It also manages some of the largest databases in the world, containing records of most or all communications made through its myriad telecommunications services.
The lawsuit alleges that AT&T Corp. has opened its key telecommunications facilities and databases to direct access by the NSA and/or other government agencies, thereby disclosing to the government the contents of its customers’ communications as well as detailed communications records about millions of its customers, including the lawsuit’s class members.
Needless to say, lawsuits such as these will likely hamper efforts in the future for our security agencies to get telecommunications companies to agree to datamining call patterns in search of unusual calling patterns that might be a link to potential terrorist activity.
What other fallouts have we experienced as a result of the overall leaking of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program? Let’s take a look:
- Why it was important to keep the cat in the bag
- Link between disposable phone sale surge and NSA leak?
- Intelligence officials: NSA leak has undermined ability to fight terrorism
- NSA ’scandal’ fallout: convicted terrorist conspirators wanting cases thrown out
One has to wonder: when we get attacked again - and I say when, not if, because I do believe it will happen again, will the people who cheered and lionized the jerks who leaked this information to the press continue to assert in the face of the obvious that “we were just doing our jobs as American citizens to keep our government honest!!!!!!!!!!!!”? If so, the response to that should be: “Oh hell no you weren’t. You deliberately targeted the administration’s policies on national security for political gain. Are you feeling good about that today?” (That’s the clean, ladylike version. The ’street’ version isn’t suitable for posting on this blog.)
On a related note, Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston visited the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland yesterday. Watch the video of her visit as she defends the NSA here. Good stuff.
Continuing blogger coverage of this latest NSA ’scandal’ can be read at the following blogs: Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy, Blog For All, Betsy Newmark (who links to this defense of NSA datamining written by Richard Falkenrath - former deputy homeland security adviser and deputy assistant to the President)
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Unfortunately the ONLY thing that seems to matter is how big of a mutant ray-gun blast of negativity can be shot directly at the Bush Administration. Again and again and again. Over and over and over. I think the reason is simple. See your next column, re: Love Affair with Bill Clinton. It would seem, according to the current POTUS ratings, that there is an ever-shrinking minority of us who don’t believe that the eight years endured with the Clinton Administration were a prime example of perfect government!
It matters not that the Clinton Administration participated in far more scandalous schemes, tarnished the image of the White House, that Bill Clinton was one of only two presidents to ever been impeached [Richard Nixon was not one of the two], blah, blah, blah. That the Clinton Administration did, on a far more enormous scale, what the Bush Administration is doing now is thoroughly ignored by the MSM:
During the 1990’s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.
On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has instituted “a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices” when it “secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without [obtaining] court-approved warrants.”
But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
In February 2000, for instance, CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:
“If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency.”
NSA computers, said Kroft, “capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told “60 Minutes” that the agency was monitoring “everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.”
Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling “60 Minutes” that agency operators “can listen in to just about anything” - while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat.
The “60 Minutes” report also spotlighted Echelon critic, then-Rep. Bob Barr, who complained that the project as it was being implemented under Clinton “engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens.”
One Echelon operator working in Britain told “60 Minutes” that the NSA had even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.
Still, the Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under Bush had been unprecedented, at one point citing anonymously an alleged former national security official who claimed: “This is really a sea change. It’s almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches.”
[From Newsmax.com, December 18, 2005]
Ann Coulter nailed it in a recent column [Conservatives Need a 12-Step Program to Manhood, see Townhall, May 10, 2006]. Putting it bluntly, and not verbatim, the gist of what Ann said is that is it time for our GOP to put some balls on and quit prancing around patting each other on the back whilst snickering to each other that “we” are better than “them” by not resorting to “their” methods. Bullshit. It’s time to start playing the same game. The Republicans are playing Candy Land and the Democrats are playing Grand Theft Auto. If we seriously don’t want ANOTHER Clinton Administration, then it is high time for our GOP to make some significant changes in the strategy they will use to prevent it!
Comment by Beth T. @ 5/13/2006 - 3:25 pm
- Monday night will probably set the tone for the rest of the Bush term, act as a prelude to the fall Congressional elections, and maybe even have some effect on 2008. The WH knows what the people want. Many of us in the GOP ranks have emailed them portions of various posts, so there can be no mistake what the voters want. Its a question of whether they’re smart enough to weight the hispanic vote against the 50 times larger Conservative base.
- If Bush doesn’t dramatically seize this opportunity, then I think hes pretty much done for as far as doing anything positive for Republicans running this time around. If he does what Americans want he could ratchet up his popularity numbers 20 to 30 points overnight. If hes smart he can hit two out of the park, by taking steps to absolutely secure the border, and let the Dems make themselves look foolish and even weaker on terrorism with the upcoming Hayden comformation hearings. T
The Dems are on the wrong side of the biggest issue to voters, and they know it, but so far the Reps havn’t taken any advantage of it. The Dems hope and pray it stays that way, because if they stay in the weak on terror position theres no way they can win the WH.
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/13/2006 - 6:18 pm
Yesterday Dianne (If I say anything stupid just call my office) Feinstein was on TV shaking her head, and saying how this will have “far reaching effects” on Haydens nomination. Yes sweetie, Oh my G_d, the phone companies actually keep a record of you calls and BILL you…..Who knew!…. But thats not the worst….Your Dentist knows you name and Address so don’t piss him off…..(The Dembulbs obviously have become totally confused and unhinged…. Priceless)…..
- Bang
Comment by Big Bang Hunter @ 5/14/2006 - 10:20 am
I wonder if they ever heard of a phone book….
Comment by sanity @ 5/14/2006 - 5:46 pm
Michelle Malkin wrote, “The two lawyers filing suit are named Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer. OpenSecrets.org shows that a lawyer from Princeton, NJ named Carl Mayer donated $4,000 to Ralph Nader in the 2004.
A search also shows that Mayer contributed $5,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaigm Committee in 1997”
Oh really. I would’ve never guessed.
Comment by Baklava @ 5/14/2006 - 10:34 pm