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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (372454)	2/29/2008 7:24:55 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576698

"Now consider Hepting v. AT&T" Ok, let's consider it. What is the suit alleging? The allegations are that AT&T allowed and assisted the NSA to install equipment to monitor the data traffic across their network in San Francisco and at least 6 other major centers on the West Coast. Now, the NSA claims that they are only monitoring foreign traffic, but the allegations are they have installed equipment capable of far more. In fact, the equipment appears to be capable of monitoring all traffic in real time. Which is a bit more than just logging the phone numbers. This is a violation of several laws if it is done without a warrant. Now, it might be true that they are only doing what they are claiming. But, then why install that kind of capability? Because it wasn't cheap. "The suit gets wilder still. Not only does it ask for at least $1,000 for each class member for each of two alleged types of violation, but on each of two other counts it asks the companies for at least $100 per alleged victim per day of violation — plus punitive damages and attorney’s expenses." And all are the damages as stipulated in the various laws governing the situation. The stated intent of this particular suit is to show AT&T that it isn't in their interest to violate the law at the behest of the government. A "potential grand liability of $7.243 trillion" doesn't seem to be in the economic interest of AT&T I would think...