Yesterday I talked about Microsoft’s stealthy updating and what that means to Windows user. This post in the same vein. This is about AT&T and the US government illegally wiretapping Americans. In 2005, it was reported that the NSA has been illegally intercepting communications since about 2001. Shortly after this story broke, the EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T for these actions. AT&T claimed it was only doing what the gov’t told them to do, but the judge rejected it.

Here is an email I received from the EFF on the case:

At a packed San Francisco hearing today [August 15th], the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) defended your Fourth Amendment rights and urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let our class-action lawsuit against AT&T go forward. The case demands that AT&T stop illegally assisting the National Security Agency to snoop on its customers’ telephone and Internet communications.

There’s much more at stake here than stopping the Bush Administration’s illegal spying and holding the telco giant accountable, though. The President is arguing that thin claims of “state secrets” can trump the courts’ constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law.

Without judicial review, there’s no way to protect ordinary citizens against government abuses of power. No president, now or in the future, should be allowed unfettered authority to evade the courts and trample on your freedom. As Judge Vaughn Walker wrote in rejecting the government’s claims at the lower court, “The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.”

Privacy and freedom is definitely something we as Americans take for granted and think we’re entitled too. But if we sit idle too long, they might just disappear faster than we think. We need to fight for our freedoms. Call your senator or representative to stop the spying. Or at the very least, donate to EFF so they can fight for us.

Sure it might be cliché to mention it, but think 1984. A world where Big Brother is everywhere. How far are we really from that now?