The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) recently
announced that they've gained new support for their legal campaign against the government's warrantless domestic surveillance program: three former NSA analysts. According to the EFF, the three analysts are going on the record to confirm the agency, with the help of phone companies like AT&T and Verizon, are intercepting nearly all United States communications in real time in violation of the law. The claims support earlier claims by an AT&T whistleblower that the telco was giving the NSA
wholesale access to Internet and voice traffic via specially designed monitoring rooms. From the EFF:
"For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We're extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program."
It continues to be amusing that the press continues to get often hysterical about smaller scale privacy invasions (CarrierIQ being the latest), but the largest law-breaking domestic surveillance program ever conceived doesn't seems to bore the national technology press.
