Verizon sued for sharing info with NSA
By Marguerite Reardon
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 15, 2006, 3:16 PM PDT

http://news.com.com/Verizon+sued+for+sharing+info+with+NSA/2100-1036_3-6072483.html?tag=nefd.top

Verizon Communications is the latest big phone company to be sued for 
allegedly violating privacy laws by handing over phone records to the 
National Security Agency for a secretive government surveillance program.

On Friday, two attorneys from New Jersey--Bruce Afran and Carl 
Mayer--filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Manhattan, where 
Verizon is located. Afran said Monday that AT&T and BellSouth, which is 
in the process of being acquired by AT&T, may also be added to the suit.

The NSA has been building a database of millions of Americans' telephone 
calls since shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, 
according to an article that appeared last week in USA Today. Verizon, 
AT&T and BellSouth supposedly complied with government officials, while 
Qwest did not, the article stated.

The lawsuit filed Friday claims that Verizon violated federal laws and 
the First and Fourth Amendments by turning over the records to the 
government. Specifically, Verizon is being sued for violating the 
Communications Act of 1934, the Electronic Communications and Privacy 
Act and the 1986 Stored Communications Act. Each of these federal 
statutes limits how much information phone companies can reveal without 
a customer's consent, or without a search warrant or subpoena.

"Federal law prohibits the phone companies from giving records to the 
government without a warrant," said Afran, who is an attorney in private 
practice and also a professor of law at Rutgers University. "There was 
no warrant, nor was there any attempt to get warrants, which is in 
violation of the constitution and the Telecommunications Act."

Verizon could be fined $1,000 for each violation of the 
Telecommunications Act, Afran said. If the case is certified as a class 
action, damages could reach $50 billion, he said.

Verizon has not confirmed or denied participation in the highly 
classified NSA program. But it did issue a statement on Friday.

"Verizon puts the interests of our customers first and has a 
longstanding commitment to vigorously safeguard our customers' privacy," 
the company said. "Verizon will provide customer information to a 
government agency only where authorized by law for appropriately defined 
and focused purposes. Verizon does not, and will not, provide any 
government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide 
information to the government under circumstances that would allow a 
fishing expedition."

AT&T is already being sued over similar allegations that it has passed 
along private customer information to the NSA. In January, the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for privacy 
rights on the Internet, filed suit against AT&T in a federal district 
court in San Francisco for also handing over customer data to the NSA.

On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss 
the class action lawsuit against AT&T. The government claims that its 
legal brief and two affidavits from senior intelligence officials that 
accompanied the motion are classified, preventing even the parties to 
the lawsuit, EFF and AT&T, from seeing them.

Attorneys for the EFF have vowed to continue with the lawsuit.

"We don't think our lawsuit will compromise national security," said EFF 
staff attorney Kevin Bankston. "And we dismiss vigorously any claims by 
the government that it does. AT&T is breaking federal and state statues 
by giving private customer information to the NSA."

The EFF is looking for the court to impose an injunction on AT&T so that 
it stops sharing customer information with the NSA, and it is also 
asking for $1,000 in damages to be paid to all residential AT&T 
customers both of its phone service and Internet services, Bankston said.

A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday to determine whether evidence that 
EFF claims to have against AT&T can be unsealed. AT&T claims certain 
documents should not be unsealed because they compromise the company's 
trade secrets.


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