WTW: Another Lawsuit to Stop the Connecting of the Dots

Aren’t we lucky to live in a country where a minority group (size, not racial) can not only TELL us what they think our Rights should be, but will sue the pants off of entities to force those views on the Majority? And, in doing so, diminish the safety of the US citizens?

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.

Blah, blah, blah. "President Bush, you should have connected the dots in the less then 8 months you were in office." "How dare you connect the dots, Election Stealer-in-Chief Bush!"

Again, I’ll ask: was anyone harmed by this, if it did occur? Other then terrorists who would be more then happy to slit the throat of every person involved with EFF and the lawsuit, just for being infidels, of course.

You can quote me precedent, but, I read the 4th Amendment and all I see is that a warrant is needed to physically search a US Citizen (or a foreign national applying for citizenship) or their property.

And, guess what? Most of those wirelines are privately owned. Ooooooooh! What you say is going over the lines of others. I do know a bit about the privacy statements for telecom, having worked in the business since 1994. Let’s see if AT&T’s says anything about this.

Reading.

Nope. Only thing they will not do is "we will not disclose your customer identifiable information to third parties who want to market products to you."

If the gov’t, at any level, actually wants certain information, they must get a subpoena. But, they do not have to get one or a warrant if a telecom company allows them to do what EFF suggests.

And, BTW, Truthout showed that this program was authorized as far back as 1998. Who was President then?

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2 Responses to “WTW: Another Lawsuit to Stop the Connecting of the Dots”

  1. Maggie says:

    Almost 300 million Americans..for the sake of argument let’s assume only 10% (30 million) have a land line or a cell phone. They make only five calls a day. Why that’s 150 million calls per day!

    Gee, I really believe the hundreds of thousands of spies it would take to listen to ALL those calls are really listening to the one my husband makes to let me know he’s on his way home.

  2. Exactly. Right now, the wireless penetration is around 55%. 165 million people with wireless phones. The wireline percentage is obviously higher. Somehow, I do not think that all the “spy” agencies together would have the time to listen to everything, nor would they probably care.

    Of course, the way libs talk on the phone, the US Secret Service might have an interest.

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