EFF Sues President Bush Over Internet Surveillance

[DemonGoddess]

I get this newsletter in email, and this article is interesting.

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EFF Sues President Bush Over Internet Surveillance

Mike Sachoff | Staff Writer

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against

President George W. Bush and others in his administration for the

illegal surveillance of emails and telephone calls without a warrant.

The suit also names the National Security Agency (NSA), Vice

President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, and

former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

The lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, is aimed at ending what the EFF says is

"the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans

and holding accountable the government officials who illegally

authorized it."

Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by

former AT&T employee Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies

of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled

by the NSA.

EFF attorneys filed a suit against AT&T in 2006 alleging that US

telecoms giants had opened its network to the NSA without warrants.

This year Congress passed legislation giving telecommunications

firms immunity from spying lawsuits. The case is now stalled in

federal court.

"In addition to suing AT&T, we've now opened a second front in

the battle to stop the NSA's illegal surveillance of millions of

ordinary Americans and hold personally responsible those who

authorized or participated in the spying program," said Senior

Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

"For years, the NSA has been engaged in a massive and massively

illegal fishing expedition through AT&T's domestic networks and

databases of customer records. Our goal in this new case against

the government, as in our case against AT&T, is to dismantle this

dragnet surveillance program as soon as possible."