Wired News reporter Ryan Singel has a story today about an attorney who learned he'd been spyed on by the feds, when a government employee accidentally give him a classified document showing that the NSA was intercepting his phone calls without a warrant. The attorney represents the Saudi Arabian charity Al-Haramain, and one US branch of that charity was under federal investigation. When federal agents asked the attorney to return the smoking gun document, they got $2 million worth of lawsuits in return:
It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked "top secret." And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls.
You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.
By all accounts, that's what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew in August 2004. And it happened at a time when no one outside a small group of high-ranking officials and workaday spooks knew the National Security Agency was listening in on Americans' phone calls without warrants. Belew didn't know what to make of the episode. But now, thanks to that government gaffe, he and a colleague have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA's surveillance program.
The pair are seeking $1 million each in a closely watched lawsuit against the government, which experts say represents the greatest chance, among over 50 different lawsuits, of convincing a key judge to declare the program illegal.
Link to "Top Secret: We're Wiretapping You."
In related news, a White House privacy board today approved two of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance programs — electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking — saying neither violates civil liberties. Link.
