EFF: Endangering National Security

Well, our friends at EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are back again and still trying to endanger the lives of Americans. First, they tried to stop airports from asking for people’s identification. Now they are suing AT&T to attempt to force them to stop allowing the NSA to use their data to track down terrorists and persons with ties to Al-Queda within the United States. From Information Week here:

A group that claims to protect electronic freedoms is suing a private telecommunications company in a class action lawsuit that claims the company gave the National Security Agency direct access to massive amounts of communications data.

“The government did not act alone and is not acting alone,” lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a complaint filed against AT&T Tuesday. “The government requires the collaboration of major telecommunications companies to implement its unprecedented and illegal spying program.”

The suit claims that the NSA program is illegal, that AT&T serves many millions of customers contacting people in foreign countries through their long distance and Internet services and that it appears AT&T has been giving direct access to customers’ personal and protected data at least since 2001.

The complaint, filed in the Northern District of California on behalf of an unknown number of customers nationwide and in the Sunshine State, alleges that the company’s conduct violates several federal competition and privacy rules as well as First and Fourth Amendment rights.

The program is not illegal. And I am very happy that our government and the US corporations are working together to fight the minions of Mohommed and their evil intentions to destroy Americans. EFF is playing a dangerous game here with the lives of US citizens, and I predict a loss in the lawsuit. I also think that they are dangerously close to violating the rules of operating their non-profit organization by engaging in obvious political actions.

Its also cute that the EFF tries to associate the AT&T logo with the Death Star. I wonder if Lucasfilm gave them permission to use that image? Oh well, I stole the logo from EFF’s site without their permission. I’m sure that’s okay, because the EFF believes that information should be free.

See also this post.