Judge to AT&T and NSA: Bullshit

The Man has been dealt a stunning blow by a federal judge in San Francisco, who today rejected the administrations attempt to kill EFF's class action lawsuit against AT&T (the one that says that AT&T is helping the NSA to illegally spy on the communication of Americans.) Hooray EFF!

The Man was adding insult to injury by, in this case, attempting to curtail Americans' right to question the government by trotting-out the old "state secrets privilege", stating that if terrorists even knew of the existence of such a program, the program would be less effective, leading immediately to giant jihadist ninja robots raining fire and destruction on Main Street USA. All of which sounds odd because the sooper seekrit NSA program has been widely reported in the MSM and the blogosphere for, like, months.

p.36, "To defer to a blanket assertion of [state] secrecy here would be to abdicate that duty, particularly because the very subject matter of this litigation has been so publicly aired. The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security."

p.39-40, "If the government's public disclosures have been truthful, revealing whether AT&T has received a certification to assist in monitoring communication content should not reveal any new information that would assist a terrorist and adversely affect national security. And if the government has not been truthful, the state secrets privilege should not serve as a shield for its false public statements. In short, the government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communication content."

p. 68, "Moreover, because the 'very action in question has previously been held unlawful,' AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal."

Take that The Man!

27B Stroke 6, and of course the EFF have interesting things to say about today's ruling, which of course the government is appealing.