"4:27 P.M. ET Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.
"The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities,' U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said."
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Judge dismisses lawsuit over phone records
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Right, but, the EFF lawsuit goes on:
From Wired, http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71432-0.html
"Under Thursday's ruling, the lawsuit will continue, allowing the San Francisco-based EFF to begin obtaining documents through discovery from AT&T.
In a legally unprecedented move, the judge also wants to appoint an outside expert with a high-level clearance who can review such evidence to evaluate whether its release would compromise national security.
Walker also denied AT&T's motions to dismiss the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs can't prove they were monitored by the program, and that the company can't be sued for helping the government in good faith.
EFF legal director Cindy Cohn applauded the judge's decision, which came as the Senate Judiciary Committee is preparing to consider a bill that would move all lawsuits over government spying to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington.
"We think this shows the regular court system can handle these cases, and that as an open and free society, our regular court system should handle these cases," Cohn said.
Recognizing that his ruling would be controversial, the judge is allowing both AT&T and the government to immediately appeal his ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
While both are widely expected to do so, neither announced such plans immediately."
So, in other words, we're still not going to find out anything about this. It will either get put in some secret court or more likely the appeal will grant the motion to dismiss.
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