Government Will Release Some Telco Wiretap Lobbying Documents – Though they’ll protect AT&T and Verizon company identities

William — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:52:42 +0000

A Federal Judge has demanded, three times now, that the Obama Administration hand over documents that highlight how major phone companies AT&T and Verizon lobbied for legal immunity for their involvement in the government’s warrantless wiretap program. The government, with no real legal footing to stand on, has now tried to delay that release three times in order to keep those documents out of the ongoing Congressional discussion about domestic wiretapping. According to the EFF they’re finally making headway, and some documents should be released this week:

…on Friday, the government reported to the appeals court that it has finally given up the fight over a significant portion of the records, including communications between agencies and Congress about amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). We expect to receive the documents later this week, and we will post them on the website as soon as we can after that.

In a very clear act of non-transparency, there’s still a significant number of baby bell lobbying documents the government is protecting. The Obama administration also still plans to redact the identities of any specific companies from any documents they do release — and are not disclosing communications within the Executive Branch concerning telco lobbying.

Link to the original article…

remove the labels - Gadgets and Life » protect AT&T and Verizon

Government Will Release Some Telco Wiretap Lobbying Documents – Though they’ll protect AT&T and Verizon company identities