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DOJ still wants spy suit against
Verizon tossed
Anne Broache
CNet
Friday Aug 31, 2007
Much has been made of an
El Paso Times interview last week in which Director
of National Intelligence Mike McConnell acknowledged the "private
sector" has assisted in the president's so-called
Terrorist Surveillance Program. Some opponents of the phone-call-and-email-snooping
regime promptly
pounced on the remarks, suggesting they implicate telephone
companies like AT&T and Verizon, which have been accused in numerous
lawsuits of consumer privacy violations and illicit
cooperation with the Bush administration.
"Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed,
it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell told the paper,
according
to a transcript. He didn't, however, mention any firms by
name.
Excerpt from the Justice Department's
August 29 brief in Verizon/MCI case
Arguably revelatory statements like those have prompted new
questions about the Bush administration's ability to continue
evoking
the "state secrets" privilege in the various cases against
the telcos, which are currently pending before U.S District Judge
Vaughn Walker in San Francisco federal court.
(Article continues below)
The McConnell interview may play a role in Walker's courtroom
on Thursday afternoon, when he's scheduled to hear arguments about
dismissal of a set of now-consolidated class
action suits against Verizon and then-separate MCI. Those
companies have been accused of operating a content surveillance
"dragnet" and of turning over subscriber records to the NSA without
a warrant. (Verizon, for its part, has publicly
denied providing such information to the spy agency.)
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in those suits recently submitted
the McConnell transcript for the court record, in an attempt to
blunt the government's contentions that proceeding with the case
will endanger national security by exposing state secrets.
Not so, the Bush administration countered in a Wednesday court
filing seen by CNET News.com. The Justice Department attorneys
argue McConnell's statements did nothing to change the fact that
it hasn't ever confirmed any of the activities alleged by the
class action plaintiffs--and has, in fact, denied the existence
of any sort of "dragnet." The arguments made by the class action
plaintiffs rest on nothing but "speculation," the attorneys wrote.
In the Justice Department's view, litigating the case would still
require exposing how the program actually does work--which, it
says, would in turn endanger national security.
Verizon declined to comment, but its attorneys have also argued
in recent court filings that the state secrets privilege must
apply. Walker, for his part, has so far declined
to grant that immunity in a related high-profile case against
AT&T, and a federal
appeals court panel recently indicated unwillingness to side
with the government on that front.
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