A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something - Harold Coffin
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Judge tells US administration to release telco snooping records
A BEWIGGED lady judge told the U.S. Government to release all records of telephone industry lobbying contacts by December 10. The date is in time for a congressional debate on President Bush's push to protect largest telephone firms from suits over "secret 'Big Brother' snooping”.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston granted an injunction sought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents customers in a lawsuit against AT&T. The suit accuses the company of illegally giving a federal agency unlimited access to phone calls, e-mails and customer databases for the government's program of monitoring communications between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists.
EFF's suit is also supported by the claims of whistleblower, Mark Klein, a former technician for AT&T. Klein testified before Congress earlier this month and said there are 15 to 20 rooms with dozens of people taking data directly from a splitter on the fibre. He says the White House has portrayed this as a narrow problem. When actually EVERYTHING on the Internet is being looked at by the National Security Agency. Klein is obviously opposed to changing the law to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that would protect them from such court challenges.
In August of this year, EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting records of recent communications on the immunity issue between the office of National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell, telecommunications companies, and members of Congress. McConnell's office has not provided any records and has told the foundation its review should be finished by December 31, which is after lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the immunity issue.
Madam Illston says sooner is better than later. Her ruling showed she agreed "the administration is dragging its feet in making relevant information available," said David Sobel, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The EFF suit against AT&T is just one of about two dozen suits against telecommunications companies over the wiretapping program. All those cases have been consolidated in San Francisco's Federal Appeals Court. µ
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Nothing to fear if you are innocent?

Look up John Stalker. Wiki gives a quick synopsis. 

A part of our "Security Services" needed to stop his enquiry. The rest is history.
Gee, it really helps me sleep better at night knowing some numbnuts at AT&T and NSA are drawing paychecks listening to my grandmother's telephone conversations just in case she decides to use her bedpan as an IED. Not only is this an invasion of privacy and an abuse of power, but it is also a colossal waste of resources... There have got to be smarter ways of fighting terrorism than listening in on the calls of millions of Americans, most of which have nothing to hide, so why bother listening in the first place?
Power plants (and other industrial type production facilitys) are not connected to the grid in traditional ways. It is possible to run power plants, sewage treatment plants, milk bottling companys, and more remotely but these type of systems are not in place for several reasons. Banks (you can get banks that are 100% online now) have dedicated data lines that are independent of the internet (I acidentally unplugg'd a large NatWest link once DOH..).

The issue with the lawsuit however is that there was no public consent and what was done is actually against the law. The problems are huge, be it from stolen account data, to who your gonna go pokka pokka that night.
Don't forget, in Canada, government is really a couple of lumberjacks who meet at the local Swiss Chalet on weekends.

Or at least that is about as big as it should be....
I'm amazed though that anyone can be surprised by the notion that everything online, or for that matter in the area of eletrical communications, is monitored. 

Don't they realise what it means, to have yourself a connection to anything where you send any data? Yes, it's easily recorded. Moreso now that storage is cheaper and chips are faster.

Most of the internet - was developed by the US military in the first place.
It does look to any outside observer, that like anything that is centralised into one particular type of service, it's set up to ensure it can be more easily disrupted and controlled.

Which is ironic given that is just what a terrorist would want. Take the energy grid - what happens if most peoples homes are reliant on the one grid and it does go down - they all lose power. Same way if you get most people to rely on the net for things like banking, and get most banks to rely on computer-only records, then it makes it all the easier to control and disrupt that.

Computers are great, there'll be no arguements from me against that. But they really should never be the system relied on for important stuff - they should be back-ups for under-structures that kick into place, should there be any problems.

Take that 'fuel crisis' we had here in Britain not too long ago - all it took was marginal panic, and so many people bought up so much fuel and supermarket stocks, that there literally were empty shelves - in the only places available for most people to buy any food from. No deliveries, because there was a fuel crisis.....

Too easy to disrupt systems that are not locally-based and not self-sufficient. Computers, machines, should be for back-ups - and fun.
@Glenn

Always the same stupid phrase "I don't do anything suspicious and have nothing to hide." Better think about protecting citizens from stupid governments, you know who I mean ...
Oh really? If you don't have anything to hide you won't mind if the police search your house once a week then. Or install cameras in your house. Just so they can make sure nothing is going on if they think they need to. 
After all you have nothing to hide do you?

It's your attitude that will destroy our rights in the end.
That sort of blind obiedence shown by someone as stupid as Glenn, eh?

Lesson #1 from the US Constitution, don't trust government. That's why the govt isn't allowed to troll through your personal life "for your own safety". Or trample the constitution like a herd of migrating Caribou.

Next time the puck comes flying towards your head Glenn, duck!
@Glenn

Whether I have something to hide or not isn't the point. Here in the US it's been held for many years that electronic communications falls under the 4th amendment. It's also illegal for telephone companies to share ANY information about their subscribers, much less allow for direct monitoring of their communications, without a warrant.

The actions taken by my government, no matter how much you may or may not agree with them, are illegal and the push to grant retroactive immunity shows that the bush administration knows this and is trying to protect themselves and the private companies that helped them.

Benjamin Franklin (not Thomas Jefferson) is attributed with the following:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Even if the source is completely false, the message it sends is true enough. It's a slippery path to walk down, once you've given an inch they'll continue to take a mile whenever they feel the need. I'm not willing to give up the ideas that make up the core of this country in order to save it.
It's people like you (Glenn) that allow tyrants to rise to power. Having a government that monitors your calls, computer usage and travel is a small step away from having a secret police force and mysterious disappearances of those that don't agree with gov't policy.
I don't even know where to start...

First, if it were an ideal world, and the gathered information is processed automatically and merely used for what you think it's should be used, and there was no way to abuse it for anything else, yes, you would probably be right. But reality is different.

To give an example, Echelon was used for international industry espionage. In one case it made it possible to get an US patent before the European inventor could get it, as the time of filing counts and not the time of invention. I don't know how many terrorists attacks it prevented, but probably not much, if any.

Information is power, and you basically say that they can have as much of it as they want, you trust them ('them' being those who have access to it). Power tends to be abused, especially if there's no control over how it's used. It's rarely voluntarily given away again.

So keeping that in mind, it's not the question if you trust a certain institute to handle that power well, but all people from that institute, not only now, but basically forever.

"If your not planning anything malicious then really you should have nothing to hide."

What about privacy? Or things you might prefer to keep hidden, even if they're not malicious? Why are you wearing clothes anyway? Having walls in your house? Put letters in an envelope?

What makes you think that you're the one knowing what they're looking for and what's malicious according to them? What if they change their mind, and suddenly it's not okay to have certain ideas, or be what you are? (Communism, homosexuality, Christianity, loving the colour blue, whatever.)

So in the end everyone wanting to keep something secret like the government, companies and terrorists will all use encryption, but the hapless people out there, "having nothing to hide", will be the one being monitored.

Tell me, how does that improve the situation in any way? Is that a safer world?

---

(Of course they're an incompetent bunch and Google works better than agencies' internal search systems, so the impact won't be as big. But it won't stop bad people doing something malicious either.)
@ previous poster.
Ever heard of corruption and abuse of power?

The problem is that the people that get to wield that sword, are indeed people.And in case you had not noticed 100% of all corruption and abuse of power is committed by people.with or without badges.You see, once that door is opened, there 100% will be abuse for private gain.And we, you and everyone else have no way to protect ourselves, other than stopping/changing/reducing/adapting our daily communication.Thats exactly what that particular government wants. 
This is not about catching terrorists.Its about power, and getting more of it.

But who protects us from those that would shred the Constitution, Bill (or Charter) of Rights, etc. ? They're doing more harm than good. By a factor of at least ten to one.
In an age where people from terrorists from foreign lands and each countries "home grown" terrorists seem like they can spread their $hit all over everyone else, I think the government has every right to monitor telephone and ISP conversations. One of the responsibilities of government is to protect it's citizens from internal and external threats. 

If your not planning anything malicious then really you should have nothing to hide. The only thing I'd be a bit concerned over is identity theft from employees working at these listening posts.

Just the view of one electrician in Canada.