Bronco_Beerslug
05-14-2006, 04:59 PM
Good!!!!!!!!! Sue the sh*t out every one of these corporate traitors!
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Verizon sued for $50 billion over wiretap program
By Leslie Wines, MarketWatch
Last Update: 11:31 AM ET May 13, 2006
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - AT&T Corp., BellSouth Corp and Verizon Telecommunications are facing lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for the decision to turn over calling records to the government, the New York Times reported Saturday.
A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers.
Under telecommunications law, the phone companies are at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order, according to Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University
The telecommunications companies allegedly complied with an effort by the National Security Agency to build a vast database of calling records, without warrants, to increase its surveillance capabilities after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
AT&T (T: news, board) , BellSouth (BLS: news, board) and Verizon Communications (VZ: news, board) have insisted that they were vigilant about their customers' privacy, but did not directly address their cooperation with the government effort, the report said.
Verizon said it gave customer information to a government agency "only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes," but declined comment on any relationship with a national security program that was "highly classified."
"Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition," the company said in a statement on Friday.
A fourth telecommunications company, Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q: news, board) , rebuffed government requests for the company's calling records after 9/11 because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," according to a statement released by an attorney on behalf of the company's former chief executive, Joseph Nacchio.
The legal experts said consumers could sue the phone service providers under communications privacy legislation that dates back to the 1930s. Relevant laws include the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, and a variety of provisions of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, including the Stored Communications Act, passed in 1986.
The law governing the release of phone company data has been modified repeatedly to grapple with changing computer and communications technologies that have increasingly bedeviled law enforcement agencies, the report said.
Wiretapping has been tightly regulated by these laws. But in general, the laws have set a lower legal standard required by the government to obtain what has traditionally been called pen register or trap-and-trace information -- calling records obtained when intelligence and police agencies attached a specialized device to subscribers' telephone lines.
The restrictions still hold, said a range of legal scholars, in the face of new computer databases with decades' worth of calling records, according to the newspaper.
Leslie Wines is a reporter for MarketWatch in New York.
http://tinyurl.com/f6eg7
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Verizon sued for $50 billion over wiretap program
By Leslie Wines, MarketWatch
Last Update: 11:31 AM ET May 13, 2006
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - AT&T Corp., BellSouth Corp and Verizon Telecommunications are facing lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for the decision to turn over calling records to the government, the New York Times reported Saturday.
A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers.
Under telecommunications law, the phone companies are at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order, according to Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University
The telecommunications companies allegedly complied with an effort by the National Security Agency to build a vast database of calling records, without warrants, to increase its surveillance capabilities after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
AT&T (T: news, board) , BellSouth (BLS: news, board) and Verizon Communications (VZ: news, board) have insisted that they were vigilant about their customers' privacy, but did not directly address their cooperation with the government effort, the report said.
Verizon said it gave customer information to a government agency "only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes," but declined comment on any relationship with a national security program that was "highly classified."
"Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition," the company said in a statement on Friday.
A fourth telecommunications company, Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q: news, board) , rebuffed government requests for the company's calling records after 9/11 because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," according to a statement released by an attorney on behalf of the company's former chief executive, Joseph Nacchio.
The legal experts said consumers could sue the phone service providers under communications privacy legislation that dates back to the 1930s. Relevant laws include the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, and a variety of provisions of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, including the Stored Communications Act, passed in 1986.
The law governing the release of phone company data has been modified repeatedly to grapple with changing computer and communications technologies that have increasingly bedeviled law enforcement agencies, the report said.
Wiretapping has been tightly regulated by these laws. But in general, the laws have set a lower legal standard required by the government to obtain what has traditionally been called pen register or trap-and-trace information -- calling records obtained when intelligence and police agencies attached a specialized device to subscribers' telephone lines.
The restrictions still hold, said a range of legal scholars, in the face of new computer databases with decades' worth of calling records, according to the newspaper.
Leslie Wines is a reporter for MarketWatch in New York.
http://tinyurl.com/f6eg7