George Antunes
Mon, 15 May 2006 11:34:48 -0700
Page 7A Lawsuit over phone records may grow Lawyer: BellSouth, AT& T customers want to join action
By Andrea Stone USA TODAY 05/15/06 http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060515/a_nsa15.art.htm WASHINGTON A lawyer who sued Verizon last week on claims it violated privacy laws by turning over calling records to the National Security Agency said Sunday that customers of AT&T and BellSouth want to join the lawsuit. New Jersey public-interest lawyer Bruce Afran said he and Carl Mayer, an associate of consumer activist Ralph Nader, will decide this week whether to expand the federal lawsuit they filed Friday. It seeks to stop Verizon from providing any more records without a warrant or a subscriber's consent. This program is without question the largest intrusion into civil liberties committed by any American administration, Afran said. If other telecommunications companies are named, it may be the largest class-action ever filed, he said. The lawsuit seeks $1,000 for every violation of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, or at least $50 billion for Verizon customers alone. The lawsuit was filed one day after USA TODAY reported the NSA has secretly collected call records of tens of millions of phone company customers since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Reaction to the USA TODAY story dominated TV talk shows Sunday: National security adviser Stephen Hadley said he would not confirm the USA TODAY report on CBS' Face the Nation but said the government's intelligence programs are legal. He noted that the newspaper said the program does not involve recording or listening to conversations. These are business records that have been held by the courts not to be protected by a right of privacy, he said. There are a variety of ways in which those records lawfully can be provided to the government. Democrats disagreed. Such data collection is probably illegal, said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a member of the Judiciary Committee, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Rep. Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS, This is a lawless White House, out of control with respect to a program like this. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said on ABC there is no question that the collection program will be central in Thursday's confirmation hearing for Gen. Michael Hayden to be director of the CIA. The American people need to be assured that their government is, in fact, following the law, not just protecting the security interests of our country, but also the constitutional rights of individual Americans, Hagel said. Hayden, who was NSA director from 1999 to 2005, would have directed the collection and surveillance programs when he headed the agency. President Bush defended government intelligence programs in his radio address Saturday. The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities, Bush said. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list medianews@twiar.org To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]