NEW YORK - APRIL 25 - The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is urging a district court to release documents that are said to detail how AT&T has helped the National Security Agency (NSA) conduct domestic surveillance, according to a brief filed late last night.

This is the first time CCR has filed court papers in the class action lawsuit against AT&T, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began in January. EFF accuses AT&T of “violating the law and the privacy of its customers” by facilitating the U.S. government’s domestic spying.

“The public record proves that President Bush authorized an illegal and unconstitutional spying program, and we want to find out whether American corporations are helping him,” said CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman.

Mark Klein, who worked as an AT&T technician for 22 years, has released a statement describing the company documents. He explained it “appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet, whether that be people's e-mail, Web surfing or any other data.” The documents are currently under seal, with only the court and affected parties allowed to review them, because AT&T is arguing that the documents contain trade secrets.

CCR is asking the court to follow standard procedures to release the AT&T documents, in the interests of consumers, shareholders, regulators, the American public and CCR, which is suing President Bush for the illegal NSA domestic surveillance in a separate case (CCR v. Bush). The brief explains that “openness has a positive effect” on the function of judicial proceedings to determine the facts, and argues that the company documents can be redacted to protect genuine trade secrets and then released to the public as soon as possible.

“The public has a right to know whether companies are helping the government listen to their phone calls and snoop in their email. We are simply asking that AT&T play by the same rules as everyone else, with open court proceedings,” said Shayana Kadidal, one of the lead attorneys in CCR’s case against NSA domestic spying.

More information about the EFF case is available at the EFF website.

More information about the CCR case is available at the CCR’s website.

###