February Saturday 25th 2006 (02h32) :
Verizon Faces New $20 Billion Suit over NSA Spying Complicity
Upping the ante in what may be a high-stakes legal battle, an Upstate
New York lawyer filed a $20 billion class-action lawsuit against
Verizon last week, charging that the company violated customer
confidentiality in aiding warrantless eavesdropping by a federal spy
agency.
The civil suit is the second to challenge corporations for helping the
National Security Agency carry out a secret order by the president to
spy on communications between people in the United States and parties
overseas without first obtaining warrants.
The New York Times first revealed the existence of the NSA surveillance
program in December. The Bush administration continues to defend it as
a necessary and permissible tool in the "war on terror," but most legal
scholars who have addressed the matter disagree with the
administration's interpretation of executive privileges.
In a statement announcing the suit last Friday, lawyer Michael S.
Pascazi in Fishkill, New York called the NSA program "the largest
invasion of privacy ever devised." Citing media reports, Pascazi
alleged that Verizon provided the spy agency with communications
records of customers and non-customers alike, violating consumer trust
and numerous laws. The suit was filed on behalf of all people who have
used Verizon facilities to communicate while the NSA program had access
to Verizon's databases.
In addition to allowing the NSA to tap into its communications lines,
the suit alleges that Verizon continues to provide "unfettered" access
to its massive databases containing communication records. Pascazi is
asking for $20 billion in damages.
As previously reported by The NewStandard, at the end of January, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a similar suit against AT&T,
alleging, in part, that the telecommunications giant is acting in
"collaboration" with the NSA in what EFF lawyer Kevin Bankston termed
"the biggest fishing expedition ever devised."
The two lawsuits join parallel efforts by three groups seeking court
orders to halt the program. Shortly after the surveillance efforts were
revealed, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy
Information Clearinghouse and Center for Constitutional Rights filed
separate suits against the administration.
http://www.zmag.org/content/newstandard.cfm?itemid=2855
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2855
By : New Standard News
February Saturday 25th 2006
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=10594
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