EFF Files Surveillance Lawsuit Against NSA, Bush, Cheney

Grant Gross, IDG News Service
PC World
September 18, 2008

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), U.S. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other government officials, alleging that an NSA electronic surveillance program continues to illegally spy on U.S. residents.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, alleges that the NSA is conducting mass surveillance on U.S. residents, even as Bush and other officials say the program only targets U.S. residents when they communicate with overseas terrorism suspects. Filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit is a class-action complaint on behalf of all residential customers of AT&T's telephone and Internet services.

The lawsuit alleges that the NSA has installed equipment to conduct mass surveillance at AT&T telecom facilities in San Francisco; Atlanta; Seattle; Los Angeles; San Diego; San Jose, California; and Bridgeton, Missouri. "We allege a nationwide network of such NSA vacuum-cleaner surveillance facilities that would indiscriminately collect communications of all of the people who use AT&T's network," said Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at EFF. ...

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