Blow to EFF and ACLU’s Efforts to Leak Secrets

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have been trying to leak national secrets to the press and to America’s enemies by bringing lawsuits against AT&T to get them to divulge what information, if any, it gives to the National Security Agency.

A federal judge last week ruled in EFF’s case to not dismiss the lawsuit in San Francisco. But in Illinois, a judge threw out the case on the grounds of National Security. It will be interesting to see where the appeals courts sit on this issue.

From the San Jose Mercury News here:

Judge dismisses lawsuit over phone records

CHICAGO – Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.

“The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government’s intelligence activities,” U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.

Justice Department attorneys had argued that it would violate the law against divulging state secrets for AT&T to say whether it had provided telephone records to the supersecret spy agency.

The ACLU argued that the practice was no longer secret, because numerous news reports had made it clear that phone records had been given to the agency.

But the judge said the news reports amounted to speculation and in no way constituted official confirmation that phone records had been turned over.

In his ruling, Kennelly noted that he had received written statements from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander in his chambers, with ACLU lawyers not allowed to be present.

It is interesting to note that the reason behind the judge’s ruling is secret and cannot be divulged to the ACLU. Ha.