US Judge Orders Domestic Spying Cases to Proceed
    Agence France-Presse

    Wednesday 21 February 2007

    US officials failed to sideline dozens of domestic spying lawsuits on Tuesday as a federal judge ordered the war on terror-connected cases to proceed despite a pending appeal.

    San Francisco District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a brief written ruling that allowed evidence-gathering to commence conditionally despite protests by government lawyers.

    The government lawyers wanted Walker to halt the proceedings while they press the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse his decision last year not to toss out the first of the cases in the interest of national security.

    In what is the first of 48 domestic spying lawsuits consolidated before Walker, the Electronic Freedom Foundation sued AT and T on behalf of telecom customers.

    The EFF suit charged that AT and T let the National Security Administration (NSA) snoop on e-mails and telephone calls without warrants required to do such spying legally.

    The White House has confirmed that it authorized the NSA program to track overseas communications as part of "war on terror" attempts to uncover threats against the country.

    The case is being closely followed as a model after similar lawsuits on the same issue, involving Verizon, Sprint, Bell South, and AT and T, were ordered consolidated before Walker.

    "The government wanted this case to be placed in the deep freeze and this decision is allowing it to move forward." EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl told AFP.

    "We are very pleased. Now, we have to come up with our targeted set of questions."

    Walker imposed a "limited stay" intended to block the gathering of evidence that would interfere the appeal but leave him free to authorize other aspects of the "discovery" portion of the trial.

    "If plaintiffs propound a limited and targeted set of interrogatories the court will entertain plaintiffs' motion to lift the stay for the purpose of requiring a response," Walker wrote.

    Information would be handled delicately in light of arguments by US attorneys that the lawsuits threatened national security by risking exposure of anti-terrorism spying tactics.

    In July Walker rejected arguments by government lawyers that the suit be tossed out on the basis that it is groundless and that its hearing could threaten national security by revealing how authorities gather intelligence.

    The judge ruled the interests of justice outweighed the need to protect "state secrets".