California Conservative

Via ABC Chicago

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit that sought to bar AT&T from giving the government telephone records without warrants, saying it would require disclosures that would “adversely affect our national security.”

Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said disclosing whether AT&T had given such records to the supersecret National Security Agency in its hunt for terrorists would violate the government’s right to keep state secrets.

“The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government’s intelligence activities,” the 40-page opinion said.

Kennelly ruled in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on behalf of author Studs Terkel and others who claimed their rights had been violated by disclosure of the phone records to NSA.

The ACLU are naturally upset! They will most likely appeal.

The KOS Kidz (over)react:

Democracy just died ladies and gentleman. Your judicial branch just refused to provide any oversight and deferred to the executive branch. In its place facism has risen. ATT is now more powerful than the judicial branch of the government, under the protection of the executive branch.

AJ Strata thinks thinks more of these bogus lawsuits will get the boot.

Cross posted from Stop The ACLU

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 8:23 am and is filed under ACLU, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.