CHICAGO - A lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other professionals seeks to stop AT&T from giving customer phone records to the National Security Agency without a court order.
The plaintiffs, who also include a doctor and a state lawmaker, said they rely on confidentiality in their work and are worried their clients will be less likely to phone them if they think the government collects lists of the numbers they are calling.
The six plaintiffs, whose legal team includes lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, claim the telephone giant violated the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which prevents phone companies from releasing records to the government unless there is an emergency.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court, seeks to include all Illinois AT&T customers as plaintiffs in a class action. The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages.
"Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans," Terkel said in a statement. "When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far."
Harvey Grossman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said the NSA program could interfere with the ability of lawyers to deal with their clients and doctors to communicate with patients.
The plaintiffs besides Terkel are State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago; Rabbi Gary Gerson of Temple B'nai Abraham Zion in Oak Park; Diane Geraghty, a Loyola University law professor; attorney James Montgomery, former corporation counsel for the City of Chicago; and Dr. Quinten Young, a doctor and advocate for health care reform.
The action follows similar lawsuits filed in other states.
The first thing to note here is that the ACLU is throwing its support in this lawsuit. This could negate the telecom's desire to have this lawsuit tossed out due to its "frivolous" nature. Also with the ACLU involved, we could expect their PR department to push their own spin on this issue. Already we now have the impression that the NSA could use its program to spy on doctors and lawyers in their dealings with clients. Finally, we've got some noteworthy individuals suing the telecoms here--an oral historian, a state representative, a law professor, and a corporate attorney. These are professional citizens--not your average blue collar factory workers here. So this is going to be an interesting lawsuit, especially if they can combine this suit with the other state lawsuits filed against the telecoms.
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