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''Hepting v. AT&T'' is a United States class action lawsuit filed in January 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the telecommunications company AT&T, in which the EFF alleges that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency (NSA) in unlawfully monitoring the communications of the United States, including AT&T customers, businesses and third parties whose communications were routed through AT&T's network, as well as voice over IP telephone calls routed via the Internet. The case is separate from, but related to, the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy, in which the federal government agency bypassed the courts to monitor U.S. phone calls without warrants. ''Hepting v. AT&T'' does not include the federal government as a party. In July 2006, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California—in which the suit was filed—rejected a federal government motion to dismiss the case. The motion to dismiss, which invoked the State Secrets Privilege, had argued that any court review of the alleged partnership between the federal government and AT&T would harm national security. The case was immediately appealed to the Ninth Circuit. It was dismissed on June 3, 2009, citing retroactive legislation in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.〔〔 On October 9, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to review ''Hepting''.〔(Supreme Court closes door on warrantless eavesdropping suit )〕 The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, vowed to continue working on a similar case named ''Jewel v. NSA''. ==Background and allegation== It is alleged in the lawsuit that in 2002-2003, AT&T permitted and assisted the NSA to install a NarusInsight system in its San Francisco switching center (Room 641A), which was capable of monitoring billions of bits of Internet traffic a second, including the playback of telephone calls routed on the Internet, and thus in effect spying upon the entirety of the communication of many or all American citizens and businesses who use the Internet. A former AT&T engineer, Mark Klein, attested that a supercomputer built by Narus was installed for the purpose, and that similar systems were also installed in at least Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. ''Wired News'' (states ) Klein said he came forward "because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans' communications": :"Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA () And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of Internet communications of countless citizens." The EFF alleges in the suit that AT&T also allowed the NSA to data-mine hundreds of terabytes of client records which included detailed transaction records such as domestic numbers dialed since 2001, and all Internet addresses visited, as well as other content. The EFF's attorney Kevin Bankston states: :"Our goal is to go after the people who are making the government's illegal surveillance possible () They could not do what they are doing without the help of companies like AT&T. We want to make it clear to AT&T that it is not in their legal or economic interests to violate the law whenever the president asks them to." In its amended complaint, the EFF seeks injunctive relief against AT&T continuing such surveillance and damages allowed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, and other U.S. laws. It also seeks aggregated damages under each of four laws. These would exceed $100,000 for each instance of surveillance,〔(Electronic Frontier Foundation's Amended Complaint )〕 creating potentially ruinous liability for AT&T, considering the EFF's claims about the scope of AT&T's cooperation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hepting v. AT&T」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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