DOJ to drop bomb on EFF vs. AT&T Options

[pebkac]

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/

The federal government intends to invoke the rarely used "State Secrets Privilege" -- the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb -- in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class action lawsuit against AT&T that alleges the telecom collaborated with the government's secret spying on American citizens.

Wow. Dubya's covering his own and his partners' asses.

[Spectatrix]

are you upset at the fact that you're being spyed on, or that it wasn't done "the legal way" and done "the other legal way"???

I don't *like* the idea of being spied on, but I recognize that some amount of domestic spying is necessary.

I'm upset that the spying wasn't done using well-established legal methods. By going warrantless with the whole mess, it's legally ambiguous. If the courts decide that the president has the power, legally, to issue warrantless wiretaps, then fine. Right now, though, I think its legality is still very much up in the air.

I'm bothered that they wiretapped without warrants because that suggests that they may not have had strong enough evidence to get warrants for many of the wiretaps that were authorized. With the FISA court being as lenient as it is, that's a pretty bad implication.