Last week, President Bush urged Congress to grant major telecom companies legal immunity for any assistance they gave to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program. In this FAQ, we examine the issues behind telecom immunity, as well as the ramifications it could have for future government-telco cooperation.

What do telcos need immunity from?

Lawsuits — in 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on the conversations of people residing in the United States, including American citizens who contacted suspected terrorists internationally through phone or e-mail. In the wake of these revelations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued AT&T for participating in the NSA’s warrantless spying program.

What does EFF’s lawsuit allege?

The main claim is that AT&T violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on calls made from within the United States to foreign terrorist suspects. FISA states that the government may only employ warrantless wiretapping if it is directed at “communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers” or at the “acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power.”

In other words, the government can only use warrantless wiretapping against foreign targets communicating through foreign networks. Any wiretaps of communications involving U.S. citizens, legal residents or corporations require that the government get a warrant, as FISA states that warrantless wiretaps can only be used if “there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party.”

More broadly, the suit also alleges that AT&T violated its customers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and free association and their Fourth Amendment rights to be free from warrantless unreasonable searches.

Are there any other suits pending?

According to a report in USA Today, Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth all agreed to turn over the call records of tens of millions of customers to the NSA without a court warrant. Two attorneys in New Jersey sued the three companies for allegedly violating privacy rights contained within the Communications Act of 1934, the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act and the 1986 Stored Communications Act. There are other suits that have been filed against these companies that allege similar infractions.

Whitepapers

• Accelerating a Diverse Mix of Traffic Across the WAN
• Boost Productivity While Cutting Costs with Next-generation Collaboration
• Deploying Virtualized NetWare on Linux Whitepaper
• Driving Business Success Through Workgroup Choice and Flexibility
• Toward More Flexible, Next-Generation Collaboration Solutions
• Collaboration Tools and Organizational Success Whitepaper

View more LANS & WANS whitepapers

Webcasts

• Creating a high performance workplace with wireless networking
• Harnessing the power of communications to increase workplace performance
• How to cut IT costs with wide-area data services (WDS)
• Making data centers the IT strategic focus
• Protecting assets and employees with IP Video Surveillance
• Stay out of the headlines: Detecting and preventing network intrusions

View more LANS & WANS webcasts

Special Reports

• Ethernet Services: WAN options mature
• Keeping Spam at Bay
• Get More From Your WAN
• WAN Optimization: How to rev up sluggish applications
• IP address management in 2008 - six things to know
• Network World Executive Guide: Perfecting Application Performance Management

View more LANS & WANS special reports