Complaint filed to NSA September 27, 2013 at 8:38pm Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and a class of similarly situated persons, bring thisaction and allege upon personal knowledge and belief as to their own acts, and upon information andbelief (based on the investigation of counsel) as to all other matters, as to which allegations Plaintiffsbelieve substantial evidentiary support exists or will exist after a reasonable opportunity for furtherinvestigation and discovery, as follows: PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 2. This case challenges an illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnetcommunications surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (the “NSA”) and otherDefendants in concert with major telecommunications companies (“Defendants” is definedcollectively as the named defendants and the Doe defendants as set forth in paragraphs 25 through38 below). 3. This program of dragnet surveillance (the “Program”), first authorized by ExecutiveOrder of the President in October of 2001 (the “Program Order”) and first revealed to the public inDecember of 2005, continues to this day. 4. Some aspects of the Program were publicly acknowledged by the President inDecember 2005 and later described as the “terrorist surveillance program” (“TSP”). 5. The President and other executive officials have described thTeSP’s activities, whichwere conducted outside the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) andwithout authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”), as narrowly targetingfor interception the international communications of persons linked to Al Qaeda. 6. The Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence have since publiclyadmitted that the TSP was only one particular aspect of the surveillance activities authorized by theProgram Order. COMPLAINT -1- 7. In addition to eavesdropping on or reading specific communications, Defendantshave indiscriminately intercepted the communications content and obtained the communicationsrecords 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 ofsophisticated communications surveillance devices, attached to the key facilities oftelecommunications companies such as AT&T that carry Americans’ Internet and telephonecommunications. 9. Using this shadow network of surveillance devices, Defendants have acquired andcontinue 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 andclass members, in an unprecedented suspicionless general search through the nation’scommunications networks. 10. In addition to using surveillance devices to acquire the domestic and internationalcommunications content of millions of ordinary Americans, Defendants have unlawfully solicitedand obtained from telecommunications companies such as AT&T the complete and ongoingdisclosure of the private telephone and Internet transactional records of those companies’ millionsof 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 conjunctionwith the vast quantity of communications content acquired by Defendants’ network of surveillancedevices, in order to select which communications are subjected to personal analysis by staff of theNSA and other Defendants, in what has been described as a vast “data-mining” operation. COMPLAINT -2- 12. Plaintiffs and class members are ordinary Americans who are current or formersubscribers to AT&T’s telephone and/or Internet services. 13. Communications of Plaintiffs and class members have been and continue to beillegally acquired by Defendants using surveillance devices attached to AT&T’s network, andDefendants have illegally solicited and obtained from AT&T the continuing disclosure of privatecommunications records pertaining to Plaintiffs and class members. Plaintiffs’ communications oractivities have been and continue to be subject to electronic surveillance. 14. Plaintiffs are suing Defendants to enjoin their unlawful acquisition of thecommunications and records of Plaintiffs and class members, to require the inventory anddestruction of those that have already been seized, and to obtain appropriate statutory, actual, andpunitive damages to deter future illegal surveillance.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 00:18:29 +0000
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