AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and Youtube will be named in the suit, attorney says
Steven Nelson
US News & World Report
6/11/2013
Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of American customers on an “ongoing, daily basis.”
Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government’s PRISM program.
According to the slideshow, the PRISM program allows government agents direct, real-time access to the servers of nine major tech companies, including AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube…
…”This case challenges the legality of Defendants’ participation and conduct in a secret and illegal government scheme to intercept and analyze vast quantities of domestic telephone communications,” says the lawsuit against Verizon, which also names as defendants President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA director Keith Alexander and federal judge Roger Vinson, the FISA court judge who approved the leaked April order…
Read the entire article at U.S. News
The 24-page phone-records lawsuit is here.
At the ACLU, Reform the Patriot Act | Section 215
What is Section 215?
- Section 215 allows the FBI to order any person or entity to turn over “any tangible things,” so long as the FBI “specif[ies]” that the order is “for an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”
- Section 215 vastly expands the FBI’s power to spy on ordinary people living in the United States, including United States citizens and permanent residents….
Update: Napolitano: ACLU Lawsuit May Expose Gov’t for What It’s Done
…According to Napolitano, the lawsuit is “right on the mark.”..
…“The fact that this has been happening in secret, the fact that more than half the country is being watched by America’s domestic spies is potentially the greatest single violation of the Constitution by the federal government in the history of the country,” Napolitano said of the surveillance program.
“This lawsuit that the ACLU filed … may expose the government for what it’s done which is the opposite of what we hired it to do. We hired it to enforce the Constitution, to protect our freedoms, and instead it has done the opposite.”…
Also, ‘The surveillance scandal is a direct result of our national denial about jihad’
Update 2: Edward Snowden, the NSA, PRISM and All That
…there are a lot of unindicted criminals in positions of authority at the highest levels of our government, whose appetites for power are much greater than their respect for the laws, and who thinks that anyone who resists them ought instead to be treated as a crime suspect, if not a criminal. So, no, I don’t trust them at all. Yes, go ahead and make an example of Edward Snowden, because to stipulate that this were still a legitimate government, it would be legitimate to punish him for what he has done. Let’s not pretend, though, that Snowden is the issue, or that these NSA programs are the issue, or that even American citizens’ security is the issue. The Issue is whether or not the government that represents itself as representing and serving us, our interests, and our wishes, legitimately does anymore, and what is to be done about it if it no longer does…
