NSA sued for privacy violations

[mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL COM>]

From: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson () techreports jpl nasa gov>
From: Udhay Shankar N <udhay () pobox com>
To: cryptography () c2 net


http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/19991205/tc/19991205067.html

Sunday December 05 04:30 PM EST
Privacy group sues NSA over spy net
Robert Lemos, ZDNet

Americans could learn more about the degree to which the secretive
National Security Agency -- the government body charged with cracking
codes and protecting critical information -- has been spying on U.S.
citizens, if a suit filed on Friday by the Electronics Privacy Information
Center garners results.

"The charter of the National Security Agency does not authorize domestic
intelligence gathering," said Marc Rotenberg, director of EPIC, in a
statement on Friday. "Yet we have reason to believe that the NSA is
engaged in the indiscriminate acquisition and interception of domestic
communications taking place all over the Internet."

The questions arose from reports to the European Union last year that the
United Kingdom and Australia, among other countries, had cooperated with
the United States to collect electronic communications across national
borders. In the report, the spy network was dubbed "Echelon."

"We are concerned less with Echelon in particular and more with the NSA's
eavesdropping practices in particular," said David Sobel, general counsel
for EPIC.

'Interesting questions'

On Friday, EPIC filed a suit in federal court to free up documents
regarding the legal justification for any surveillance that NSA had
performed regarding U.S. citizens. These same documents were requested
earlier this year by the House Intelligence Subcommittee, but the NSA
refused to provide them.

"There are a lot of interesting questions about the NSA's activity, and it
raised a few eyebrows when they stonewalled the House subcommittee," said
Sobel.

In early June, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the
NSA, asking for the same documents requested by the House subcommittee,
and the NSA replied that it would provide the documents by Oct. 30.

The court filing comes after the NSA missed that deadline. The NSA has 30
days to respond to the court filing.

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