The Electronic Frontier Foundation has won the first of what will be many battles in their court fight alleging AT&T is handing over customer phone and Internet data wholesale to the NSA without a court order. We sat down with the EFF's Media Relations Coordinator Rebecca Jeschke and Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl to discuss as much of the pending case as they could.

BBR: Critics consistently charge that no laws are being broken by AT&T, or that somehow existing laws stretch to fit AT&T's alleged activities. Can you specify exactly what laws your class action lawsuit accuses AT&T of breaking for our readers?

RJ: We believe that AT&T violated the federal Telecommunications Act and the Electronic Privacy Communications Act. You can find more detail with citations, etc, in our complaint (pdf link -Ed.).

Also, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, (50 U.S.C. § 1801 et seq., (FISA)) provides the exclusive statutory framework for the use of electronic surveillance in the context of foreign intelligence gathering. It prohibits surveillance in the United States of communications to or from a person in the United States, unless authorized by statute. With limited exceptions, this means that the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) must authorize such surveillance.

BBR: What are those exceptions?

KO: There are a couple of exceptions to FISA's requirements, but none are applicable to the warrantless surveillance program at issue in our litigation.

50 U.S.C. §1805(f) of FISA provides that the Attorney General may in emergency situations authorize electronic surveillance, but only if a FISA judge is informed at the time of the Attorney General’s authorization, and only if an application for a FISA warrant is made to a FISA judge "as soon as practicable, but not more than 72 hours after the Attorney General authorizes such surveillance." The surveillance must end after 72 hours, unless a FISA warrant is obtained.

50 U.S.C. §1802 authorizes the Attorney General to approve warrantless surveillance for up to one year, but only if the electronic surveillance "is solely directed at - the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers," or "the acquisition of technical intelligence - from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power," where "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party. . . ."

50 U.S.C. §1811 authorizes warrantless electronic surveillance in the fifteen days following a declaration of war by Congress.

BBR: Late last week the EFF won a court victory with a federal judge allowing the inclusion of insider AT&T documents provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein, though the documents must remain sealed. Will they ever be revealed to the public?

RJ: AT&T has been instructed to work with us to come up with a redacted - edited - version of the documents. We hope that will be available soon.

BBR: A recent Wired News article proclaims: "Several high-level network experts who reviewed the documents, which Klein has provided to civil liberties groups and The New York Times, say the pages may not be the smoking gun that Klein believes them to be." The piece alleges what Klein saw was Narus hardware configured simply to manage bandwidth and network security threats. Thoughts?

RJ: We cannot comment on Wired's claims at all because of the court order.

BBR: Without these documents, would you be able to proceed?

RJ: Yes, we would be able to proceed without these documents.

BBR: How is your case tied to the USAToday allegations that three telcos are handing over customer calling records?

RJ: Our case against AT&T alleges datamining of both phone and Internet communications. The USA TODAY article bolsters our claims about phone communications.

BBR: Will we see additional class action lawsuits against other telcos?

RJ: Right now, there are no other lawsuits in the works. We have specific information about AT&T, and if we were to discover evidence about other telcos, then we would consider new litigation.

BBR: The DOJ would like to see this case dismissed because it could expose "state secrets". What are your thoughts on the likelihood of this happening?

RJ: It's all up to the judge. But we feel our case does not put state secrets in jeopardy, and that the public interest demands that it go forward.

BBR: Last Wednesday morning, you had the first court hearing in the class action lawsuit against AT&T. How did it go? What kind of time-frame are we looking at with this court battle?

RJ: We were pleased that the judge allowed the use of the sealed documents, and very happy that AT&T was instructed to work with us to come up with a redacted version. However, we wish that the full documents were unsealed. The next important court date is June 23, when the judge will hear the motions to dismiss the case from both the government and AT&T.

BBR: In your opinion, do new laws need to be passed to ensure a proper system of checks and balances when it comes to domestic surveillance?

RJ: The law is very clear, and doesn't need to be changed. AT&T should have simply followed current law.

More detail on the EFF's case against AT&T can be found here.