I want to sue my phone company for releasing my personal info

[Astronuc]

"military and state secrets privilege."

Why does that sound like the Soviet Union.

I don't think "military and state secrets privilege" covers criminal or otherwise illegal activity.

Where does one draw the line with respect to domestic surveillance. Certainly, intelligence gathering methods and information, e.g. which persons are suspected of involvement with terrorist organizations, and how that was determined should be secret, but that still doesn't preclude oversight vis-a-vis something like FISA courts.

Suppose one has a Muslim friend who just happens to a common name, something equivalent to "John Smith". Does this entitle the government to investigate one because of one's association with "John Smith". No! Would anyone who knows a John Smith be subject to arbitrary and capricious investigation. No! There is such a thing as "due process" with procedures and formalities, e.g. judicial oversight.

 

[Evo]

So, were only 4 companies asked for call records? Qwest is tiny in comparison to Sprint. When they say Verizon, do they mean MCI? MCI is now Verizon. And why Bellsouth instead of SBC? SBC was 10 times larger than BellSouth before they bought AT&T.

 

[russ_watters]

Wait, I found it.

ECPA permits the government to compel two kinds of information using a subpoena.

But this program wasn't compulsory. Ie, that law tells what info they must give if subpoena'd. That doesn't necessarily imply that they can't simply turn it over on request. What we're looking for is what information, if any, the phone company can voluntarily give.

 

[russ_watters]

This is one significant distinction between civil and criminal law. In a civil case, the burden of proof is shifted.

No, it isn't. It is just reduced. The burden is "a preponderance of the evidence" instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt".

 

[Evo]

According the the USA Today article, the government has contracts with and is paying AT&T, Verizon and Bellsouth for the information. I finally had a chance to read the entire article.

 

[SOS2008]

Thu May 11, 12:00 AM ET

The Nation -- Two months after the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance of American citizens, only three corporations--AT&T, Sprint and MCI--have been identified by the media as cooperating.

----------

Despite the President's rigorous defense of the program, no company has dared to admit its cooperation publicly. Their reticence is understandable: The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation of the government officials who leaked the NSA story to the Times, and many constitutional scholars and a few lawmakers believe the program is both illegal and unconstitutional. And the companies may be embarrassed at being caught--particularly AT&T, which spent millions advertising its global services during the Winter Olympics. "It's a huge betrayal of the public trust, and they know it," says Bruce Schneier, the founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a California consulting firm.

Corporations have been cooperating with the NSA for half a century. What's different now is that they appear to be helping the NSA deploy its awesome computing and data-mining powers inside the United States in direct contravention of US law, which specifically bans the agency from collecting information from US citizens living inside the United States. "They wouldn't touch US persons before unless they had a FISA warrant," says a former national security official who read NSA intercepts as part of his work for the State Department and the Pentagon.

----------

...today's global telecom market includes dozens of companies that compete with AT&T, Sprint and MCI for telephone and mobile services, as well as scores of Internet service providers like Google, Yahoo! and AOL that offer e-mail, Internet and voice connections to customers around the world. They are served by multinational conglomerates like Apollo, Flag Atlantic and Global Crossing, which own and operate the global system of undersea fiber-optic cables that link the United States to the rest of the world. Any one of them could be among the companies contacted by intelligence officials when President Bush issued his 2002 executive order to obtain surveillance without FISA approval.

Nobody's talking, though. Asked if AT&T, which was recently acquired by SBC Communications, is cooperating with the NSA, AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp said, "We don't comment on national security matters." He referred me to a recent AT&T letter to Representative Conyers, which stated that AT&T "abides by all applicable laws, regulations and statutes in its operations and, in particular, with respect to requests for assistance from governmental authorities." MCI, which was acquired in January by Verizon, and Sprint, which recently merged with Nextel Communications, declined to comment. Attorney Gidari, who has represented Google, T-Mobile, Nextel and Cingular Wireless (now part of AT&T), believes that "some companies, both telecom and Internet," were asked to participate in the NSA program. But he suggests that only a limited number agreed. "The list of those who said no is much longer than most people think," he says.

The NSA, some analysts say, may have sought the assistance of US telecoms because most of the world's cable operators are controlled by foreign corporations. ...The NSA could get access to this traffic by sending a submarine team to splice the cables in international waters, as the agency once did to the Soviet Union's undersea military cables. But that is an extremely expensive proposition, and politically dicey to boot--which is where the US telecoms come in. "Cooperation with the telcos doesn't make NSA surveillance possible, but it does make it cheaper," says Schneier, the technology consultant.

----------

History proves a good guide to how the NSA would go about winning cooperation from a telecom company. When telephone and telegraph companies began assisting the NSA during the 1940s, only one or two executives were in on the secret. That kind of arrangement continued into the 1970s, and is probably how cooperation with the NSA works today, says Kenneth Bass III, a Justice Department official during the Carter Administration. "Once the CEO approved, all the contacts [with the intelligence agencies] would be worked at a lower level," he says. "The telcos have been participating in surveillance activities for decades--pre-FISA, post-FISA--so it's nothing new to them." Bass, who helped craft the FISA law and worked with the NSA to implement it, adds that he "would not be surprised at all" if cooperating executives received from the Bush Administration "the same sort of briefing, but much more detailed and specific than the FISA court got when [the surveillance] was first approved."

Those executives, all of whom hold security clearances, meet at the White House once a year--Vice President Cheney was the speaker at their last meeting--and hold quarterly conference calls with high-ranking officials. ...AT&T also makes no bones about its national security work. When SBC was preparing to acquire the company last year, the two companies underscored their ties with US intelligence in joint comments to the FCC. "AT&T's support of the intelligence and defense communities includes the performance of various classified contracts," the companies said, pointing out that AT&T "maintains special secure facilities for the performance of classified work and the safeguarding of classified information."

MCI, too, is a major government contractor and was highly valued by Verizon in part because of its work in defense and intelligence.

----------

There's another group of companies, largely overlooked, that could also be cooperating with the NSA. These are firms clustered around the Beltway that contract with the agency to provide intelligence analysts, data-mining technologies and equipment used in the NSA's global signals-intelligence operations. The largest of them employ so many former intelligence officials that it's almost impossible to see where the government ends and the private sector begins.

----------

Are firms that cooperate with the NSA legally culpable? Bamford, who is not a lawyer but probably knows more about the NSA than any American outside government, says yes. "The FISA law is very clear," he says. "If you don't have a warrant, you're in violation, and the penalty is five years and you can be sued by the aggrieved parties." Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, adds that US law "not only prohibits unauthorized wiretapping; it also prohibits unauthorized disclosure or use of illegally wiretapped information. As long as you were doing that, you're potentially liable." Schneier, the technology consultant, harbors no doubts either. "Arguing that this is legal is basically saying we're in a police state."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060511/cm_thenation/20060320shorrock

One must assume that the intelligence community has researched all avenues, which means they have approached all such companies -- certainly domestically. The telecoms that have government contracts are easier to pinpoint, that's all.

While soldiers are dying to protect our so-called freedoms, we are actually losing our freedoms right here at home due to hunger for power and capitalist greed. Can Congress do anything about it? No:

Senators Edward Kennedy and Russell Feingold--have attempted to obtain information from companies involved in the domestic surveillance program. But they've largely been rebuffed.

The only way to stop the abuse is to put an end to the Bush/Cheney cabal.

 

[franznietzsche]

And of course, as expected, the DOJ has stepped into quench the filed lawsuits, claiming 'State Secrets'.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004659.php

 

[SOS2008]

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In times of war, open societies have been willing to accept the need for secret spy services. Americans now spend upwards of $40 billion a year on intelligence. Given a hard choice between security and privacy, most Americans would probably choose to sacrifice some of the latter to get more of the former. The harder question is whether the techno wizards at the NSA, overwhelmed by tidal waves of digital data, searching for tiny poisonous fish in a giant sea, can provide true security from another 9/11.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12779087/site/newsweek/page/2/

A. The "war on terror" is a war with no end. It is not a a temporary loss of privacy, but possibly an infinite loss. Then one must ask, "what are our soldiers dying for?"

B. Americans want their government to do what ever is necessary to catch terrorists, but not at the exclusion of the Constitution, Rule of Law or human rights.

C. There is no proof the exchange for privacy results in security, and at a high cost not only in civil liberties but in tax dollars too.

We were told "that eavesdropping or "data collection" had been narrowly focused on Al Qaeda terror suspects." However, when we learn that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of phone calls WITHIN the United States, we know the "data collection" is not focused on Al Qeada terrorists," but on innocent and unsuspecting American citizens.

Ultimately what angers Americans is that Bush has lied to them once again. Americans know they cannot trust this administration to protect civil liberties, or anything.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

No, it isn't. It is just reduced. The burden is "a preponderance of the evidence" instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Civil procedures allow victims to prevail more often than do criminal ones for several reasons. There is no presumption of innocence. In criminal court, guilt must be established “beyond a reasonable doubt”; that is, it must be a virtual certainty that the defendant is guilty. In civil court, liability is established by “a preponderance of the evidence”; that is, it is more likely than not that the plaintiff’s account is accurate.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0408f.asp

On the other hand

A plaintiff generally has the burden to prove a case,

http://law.enotes.com/everyday-law-about/overview-american-legal-system

I saw a couple of links that stated that there is a presumption of innocence, but apparently this gets muddy since the defendant is not under threat of losing his or her civil liberties. I don't know what exceptions allow for a shifted burden of proof though. I thought this was the norm but apparently not so. There may also be a dinstiction between contract and tort law.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

And of course, as expected, the DOJ has stepped into quench the filed lawsuits, claiming 'State Secrets'.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004659.php

However, that was for the wiretapping, not the wholesale release of private records. Your link links to the ATT class-action suit in question.
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It seems that the admin supporters are playing to the trivial argument that since stripped of the names of the customers, the phone companies escape liability in turning over the records. The obvious counter-argument is that the names are easily obtained if desired.

Has anyone seen if there are any limitation whatsoever on what the NSA can do with the information given that it was volunteered by the phone companies? I think two talking heads on CNN have claimed that there are absolutely no restrictions now. And I'm not asking what the "trust-us" folks are actually doing right now, I am asking for the worst case potential threat. That is the real issue here. Can they legally track all calls to and from Democratic hearquarters? Can they track all calls to and from Bush's political enemies? Apparently they can now legally do so.

 

[franznietzsche]

However, that was for the wiretapping, not the wholesale release of private records. Your link links to the ATT class-action suit in question.
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/

It said the motion was to dismiss that suit against ATT, so I'm not sure that that is a distinction with a difference. Unless I'm missing something.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It said the motion was to dismiss that suit against ATT, so I'm not sure that that is a distinction with a difference. Unless I'm missing something.

I'm not sure what you're saying. The suit mentioned in your link was filed in January. The release of phone records of all users is another issue and only came up this week.

 

[franznietzsche]

I'm not sure what you're saying. The suit mentioned in your link was filed in January. The release of phone records of all users is another issue and only came up this week.

Ok, I didn't catch that.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Ok, I didn't catch that.

Good! I don't think the DOJ can get in the middle of this one since the alleged violations of civil liberties are, in and of themselves, separate from the spy programs.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

BellSouth, AT&T added to NSA lawsuit

..The complaint, filed in Manhattan District Court, is asking that the companies pay $200 billion in fines to their 200 million subscribers.

Attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran said that since the lawsuit was filed Friday they have been overwhelmed with calls from people wanting to join the suit.

They are violating federal law, which mandates a minimum penalty of $1,000 for every person whose records have been disclosed," Afran said, adding that many who have called his office are "outraged" by the government's and phone companies' actions[continued]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/16/NSA.suit/

Join the Legal Fight Against Big Brother Corporations

On Friday, May 12, 2006 I, along with fellow public-interest lawyer Bruce Afran, filed the first lawsuit challenging the domestic spying operation conducted by the Bush White House, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the major phone companies.

We are seeking to permanently enjoin an Orwellian Big Government/Big Business snooping operation that monitors the calling habits of 200 million Americans. [continued]

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May06/Mayer17.htm

Telecoms deny illegally handing over call records

Three of the nation's largest phone companies deny that they improperly handed over their customers' domestic calling records to the National Security Agency.

AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon Communications said earlier this week that they were not approached by the NSA and asked to hand over records to the government.

Verizon said Tuesday said that it was "not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records." It went on to say that "none of Verizon's businesses--wireless or wireline--provided customer records or call data." [continued]

http://news.com.com/Telecoms+deny+illegally+handing+over+call+records/2100-7348_3-6073179.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

ACLU sues phone companies for turning over records to NSA

SAN FRANCISCO - Three chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union sued AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. in state court Friday to block the telecommunications companies from providing phone records to the federal government.

Two complaints filed in San Francisco Superior Court claim the companies violated state law by helping the National Security Agency assemble the largest database in the world.[continued]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/14678001.htm

 

[Ivan Seeking]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.[continued]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20535385/

 

[edward]

They seem to grant legal immunity to everyone they deal with. The private security companies in Iraq can actually get away with murder.

On the original topic, the ISP's are also selling information to the government. And selling is the operative word here. The government doesn't get anything for free.