Top Secret: We're Wiretapping You
What do you get when you combine government incompetence and records keeping of illegal wiretapping? You get the following article at Wired.com.Top Secret: We're Wiretapping You
By Ryan Singel Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Mar, 05, 2007
The lawsuit is poised to blow a hole through a bizarre catch-22 that has dogged other legal efforts to challenge the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance.
Since the 2005 Times story, and subsequent acknowledgment of the surveillance by the Bush administration, some 50-odd lawsuits have sprung up around the NSA program, taking on the government and various telecom companies who are allegedly cooperating in spying on their customers, including BellSouth, Verizon and Sprint.
Justice Department and phone company lawyers have asserted that the plaintiffs in those cases don't have legal standing to sue, because they have no proof that they were direct victims of the eavesdropping. At the same time, the government claims it doesn't have to reveal if any individual was or was not wiretapped because the "state secrets privilege" permits it to withhold information that would endanger national security.
02:00 AM Mar, 05, 2007
The lawsuit is poised to blow a hole through a bizarre catch-22 that has dogged other legal efforts to challenge the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance.
Since the 2005 Times story, and subsequent acknowledgment of the surveillance by the Bush administration, some 50-odd lawsuits have sprung up around the NSA program, taking on the government and various telecom companies who are allegedly cooperating in spying on their customers, including BellSouth, Verizon and Sprint.
Justice Department and phone company lawyers have asserted that the plaintiffs in those cases don't have legal standing to sue, because they have no proof that they were direct victims of the eavesdropping. At the same time, the government claims it doesn't have to reveal if any individual was or was not wiretapped because the "state secrets privilege" permits it to withhold information that would endanger national security.
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