US govt may appeal in AT&T wiretap case
PrintEFFed up again
Posted in Music and Media, 9th November 2006 14:33 GMT
Free whitepaper – Dell solid state disk (SSD) drives
The US government and AT&T have been granted an opportunity to argue for dismissal of their case concerning the mass wiretapping of phone and email traffic, Reuters reports.
The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the defendants' motion for dismissal, originally rejected by US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker back in July, will be heard.
The case was initiated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in January, and alleges that AT&T gave the NSA unlawful access to citizens' phone and email records in a massive, warrantless, electronic dragnet.
The District Court had ruled that the government could not seek dismissal on grounds of revealing state secrets, essentially because the spy program has been mentioned enough times in the press and cited by enough public officials that it can't be regarded as a secret. The government argues that there are enough details thus far undisclosed that a court case would threaten national security.
Or at least, now it can try. ®
Free whitepaper – Migrating to the new Dell Management Console
Managing desktop software for fun and profit
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Enabling The Agile Data Center
Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter