U.S. judge refuses blanket stay
of surveillance lawsuits

By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service

February 21, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - A federal judge in San Francisco Tuesday turned down a government request for a complete stay for the time being of more than three dozen surveillance lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies.

The lawsuits charge that the corporations - including AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. - aided the National Security Agency in alleged illegal warrantless surveillance of Americans' phone calls and e-mails.

The first of the lawsuits, known as the Hepting case, was filed in San Francisco in January 2006 against AT&T by four Californians represented by lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Later, more than three dozen other lawsuits filed by citizens and groups in courts around the country were transferred to U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco for purposes of judicial efficiency.

The U.S. Justice Department asked Walker to suspend proceedings in all the cases until a federal appeals court rules on its claim that the Hepting case should be dismissed because national security secrets might be revealed.

Federal lawyers argued that the same danger of revealing state secrets applies to the other cases and therefore all cases should be stayed until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issues a ruling, expected later this year.

But Walker said in a brief order Tuesday that plaintiffs in the Hepting case can go ahead with "limited and targeted" efforts to gather evidence, so long as the questions to be asked of AT&T don't overlap with issues in the appeal.

The judge also said he will stay proceedings in the other cases only if both plaintiffs and defendants agree to it. If the plaintiffs do not agree, the defendant companies must file preliminary responses to the lawsuits by March 29, the judge said.

Kurt Opsahl, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney representing the plaintiffs in the first lawsuit, said, "The government wanted to put this case in the deep freeze."

"Instead," Opsahl said, "the court has invited us to move forward with some targeted questions. We're glad to accept that invitation, which will allow progress while respecting the government's national security concerns."

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