Feds dip their snouts back in EFF vs. AT&T wiretap case

Surprise, surprise. The US government has asked a California court to take a second look at a recent decision that allowed the EFF’s wiretap case to proceed against AT&T.

The government has already tried once before to meddle with the EFF’s case against AT&T. It had an earlier attempt to dismiss the EFF case shut down after the judge for the Northern District of California determined that the state secrets doctrine would not prevent disclosure of AT&T’s involvement (or, to be fair, possible non-involvement) in the NSA’s wiretapping scheme. Now, the government has asked to appeal that decision to the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.

You’ll remember, of course, that the plaintiffs in the suit, represented by the EFF’s cracker-jack legal team, allege that AT&T violated US constitutional and statutory law by diverting public telephone calls going through its San Francisco station into a “secret room” set up by the NSA that contained a pattern-matching computer. They also accuse the telco giant of turning over subscriber information to the Feds in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

The government, in its petition to the Ninth Circuit, calls the Northern District’s denial of the federal privilege a “highly unusual action.” And, after all, it must be quite unusual for this administration to not get its way in the courts, although they should be getting more used to it these days.

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