Eavesdropping Suit Stays Alive

Jacob Sullum | July 21, 2006

Yesterday a federal judge in San Francisco refused to dismiss the Electronic Frontier Foundation's suit against AT&T over its participation in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. The Bush administration had argued that allowing the case to proceed would threaten national security. "The government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communications content," U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker wrote. "Because of the public disclosures by the government and AT&T, the court cannot conclude that merely maintaining this action creates a 'reasonable danger' of harming national security."

Comments

Rich Ard|7.21.06 @ 2:03PM|#

And Julian Sanchez gets the gold!

|7.21.06 @ 2:19PM|#

Shouldn't the gold go to the post that gets more comments?
and right now, this one is winning.

|7.21.06 @ 2:20PM|#

I am voting 9.2 on this thread.

|7.21.06 @ 2:25PM|#

The FISA judges were barred from scoring this event due to a conflict of interest.

|7.21.06 @ 3:20PM|#

Um, very funny thoreau. I read it twice before I got it.
(I am posting this mostly because we are falling behind. The other thread figured out the competition.)

Warren|7.21.06 @ 3:30PM|#

Do I understand this correctly? Did the judge say, "Anything the government does is legal, as long as they deny doing it"?