Monday, May 22, 2006

And speaking of the ACLU....

Studs Terkel and the Ill. ACLU filed suit in federal court today to get AT&T to stop (assuming they're doing that) sending its customers phone records to the National Security Agency.

From AP:

A lawsuit filed today on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other Chicago-area professionals seeks to stop AT&T from giving customer phone records to the National Security Agency without warrants.

USA Today reported on May 11th that AT&T and other phone companies complied with an NSA request for millions of phone records after the September 11th attacks.
AT&T has said it's obliged to assist government agencies responsible for protecting the public, as allowed within the law.

Harvey Grossman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois says the NSA program could interfere with the ability of lawyers to deal with their clients and doctors to communicate with patients. He says people will be less inclined to speak by phone if they think the government collects lists of the numbers they are calling.

I have a correction to make. Studs Terkel is a tape-recordist, not an author.

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