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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has filed suit against AT&T over the company's possible complicity with NSA spy programs, suffered a setback last month when the government invoked the "state secrets privilege" in an attempt to have the entire case quashed. The hearing over "state secrets" will take place on Friday morning, and the government has recently filed its final documents in the case. The claims made there are quite extraordinary; the executive branch basically claims that it is above judicial scrutiny.As the debate rages on in the courtroom, the news media continue to report on the size and scope of the program. In interviews with Salon, the former AT&T workers said that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret security clearance are admitted to the room, located inside AT&T's facility in Bridgeton. The room's tight security includes a biometric "mantrap" or highly sophisticated double door, secured with retinal and fingerprint scanners. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees working inside the room were "monitoring network traffic" and that the room was being used by "a government agency."The claim is similar to the one made in the EFF case, where a secret room was allegedly built at an AT&T facility in California. Though the existence of a secretive NSA spy program with direct links into the domestic US voice and data grids has now been well documented, it has so far proved impossible to turn up any hard evidence about what the spooks are doing with all their data, or even what data is being collected. All private attempts at learning if US citizens are being illegally spied upon have been stonewalled by the government, and the same fate looks likely to befall the EFF tomorrow in court. Stay tuned.
AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers' personal data with government officials. Moreover, AT&T (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service -- a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers' recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others. The company's policy overhaul follows recent reports that AT&T was one of several leading telecom providers that allowed the National Security Agency warrantless access to its voice and data networks as part of the Bush administration's war on terror. "They're obviously trying to avoid a hornet's nest of consumer-protection lawsuits," said Chris Hoofnagle, a San Francisco privacy consultant and former senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "They've written this new policy so broadly that they've given themselves maximum flexibility when it comes to disclosing customers' records," he said. It says the company "may disclose your information in response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process," omitting the earlier language about such processes being "required and/or permitted by law."AT&T is being sued by San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation for allegedly allowing the NSA to tap into the company's data network, providing warrantless access to customers' e-mails and Web browsing. AT&T is also believed to have participated in President Bush's acknowledged domestic spying program, in which the NSA was given warrantless access to U.S. citizens' phone calls. Gail Hillebrand, a staff attorney at Consumers Union in San Francisco, said the declaration that AT&T owns customers' data represents the most significant departure from the company's previous policy. "It creates the impression that they can do whatever they want," she said. "This is the real heart of AT&T's new policy and is a pretty fundamental difference from how most customers probably see things."
