Journal SPAM: "Everybody in the country" was Subject of Illegal Wiretap 5
"I think the administration would be very loath for folks to realize that ordinary people were being surveilled," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lead lawsuit, against AT&T.
A prime goal in the litigation is to find out who the decision makers were, said Don Migliori, a partner with Motley Rice in Providence, R.I., a plaintiffs' attorney who is working on the lawsuit against Verizon. The plaintiffs intend to request not just government documents but also e-mails, including who contacted whom and when -- the very sort of "meta-data" that the administration is accused of mining as part of its surveillance program.
Peter Eliasberg, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney involved in cases against AT&T and Verizon, said that if the cases proceed, the plaintiffs could submit an interrogatory to the carriers seeking answers to the questions: Did you turn over customer phone records en masse to the government? Did you receive a warrant or a subpoena?
Answers to those questions, he said, might reveal that "everybody in the country" has had their phone calls "combed through, and lots of people will be outraged."
The uncertain, high-stakes nature of the litigation -- in which the plaintiffs are seeking not only disclosure to a judge of internal documents that might prove their allegations, but also a court ruling that the surveillance and collection of call records harmed millions of people -- helps explain why the administration is so adamant in supporting a Senate-passed bill aimed at strangling the lawsuits before they can proceed, according to government officials and privacy advocates.
There's a small part of me (Score:2)
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Then, there's the awful prospect of winding up like the Buttle family, in Brazil.
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Proof of many Anti-American Activities (Score:2)
If the cases are allowed to proceed... (Score:1)
Look ma, no congress! But with "friends" like them, who needs enemies?