Comment by timschmidt

> doesn't claim to have been there when it was implemented

"After 9/11, they took one of the programs I had done, or the backend part of it, and started to use it to spy on everybody in this country. That was a program I created called Stellar Wind. That was seperate and compartmented from the regular activity which was ongoing because it was doing domestic spying. All the equipment was coming in, I knew something was happening but then when the contractors I had hired came and told me what they were doing, it was clear where all the hardware was going and what they were using it to do. It was simply a different input, instead of being foreign it was domestic." - William Binney

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc

> The EFF doesn't claim anything like what you're claiming.

2. This case challenges an illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (the “NSA”) and other Defendants in concert with major telecommunications companies (“Defendants” is defined collectively as the named defendants and the Doe defendants as set forth in paragraphs 25 through 38 below).

3. This program of dragnet surveillance (the “Program”), first authorized by Executive Order of the President in October of 2001 (the “Program Order”) and first revealed to the public in December of 2005, continues to this day.

4. Some aspects of the Program were publicly acknowledged by the President in December 2005 and later described as the “terrorist surveillance program” (“TSP”).

5. The President and other executive officials have described theTSP’s activities, which were conducted outside the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) and without authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”), as narrowly targeting for interception the international communications of persons linked to Al Qaeda.

6. The Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence have since publicly admitted that the TSP was only one particular aspect of the surveillance activities authorized by the Program Order.

7. In addition to eavesdropping on or reading specific communications, Defendants have indiscriminately intercepted the communications content and obtained the communications records of millions of ordinary Americans as part of the Program authorized by the President.

8. The core component of the Program is Defendants’ nationwide network of sophisticated communications surveillance devices, attached to the key facilities of telecommunications companies such as AT&T that carry Americans’ Internet and telephone communications.

9. Using this shadow network of surveillance devices, Defendants have acquired and continue to acquire the content of a significant portion of the phone calls, emails, instant messages, text messages, web communications and other communications, both international and domestic, of practically every American who uses the phone system or the Internet, including Plaintiffs and class members, in an unprecedented suspicionless general search through the nation’s communications networks.

10. In addition to using surveillance devices to acquire the domestic and international communications content of millions of ordinary Americans, Defendants have unlawfully solicited and obtained from telecommunications companies such as AT&T the complete and ongoing disclosure of the private telephone and Internet transactional records of those companies’ millions of customers (including communications records pertaining to Plaintiffs and class members), communications records indicating who the customers communicated with, when and for how long, among other sensitive information.

11. This non-content transactional information is analyzed by computers in conjunction with the vast quantity of communications content acquired by Defendants’ network of surveillance devices, in order to select which communications are subjected to personal analysis by staff of the NSA and other Defendants, in what has been described as a vast “data-mining” operation.

12. Plaintiffs and class members are ordinary Americans who are current or former subscribers to AT&T’s telephone and/or Internet services.

13. Communications of Plaintiffs and class members have been and continue to be illegally acquired by Defendants using surveillance devices attached to AT&T’s network, and Defendants have illegally solicited and obtained from AT&T the continuing disclosure of private communications records pertaining to Plaintiffs and class members. Plaintiffs’ communications or activities have been and continue to be subject to electronic surveillance.

14. Plaintiffs are suing Defendants to enjoin their unlawful acquisition of the communications and records of Plaintiffs and class members, to require the inventory and destruction of those that have already been seized, and to obtain appropriate statutory, actual, and punitive damages to deter future illegal surveillance.

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/jewel/jewel.complaint.pdf