The Bush administration has asked a federal appeals court to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of illegally opening its communication networks to surveillance by the National Security Agency.
Permitting the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit to proceed would endanger national security and possibly expose classified information, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal brief filed on Monday.

The administration also nominated Laurence Silberman, a federal appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., to serve as an expert in this case. A former deputy attorney general, Silberman was appointed by President Reagan and serves on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

The brief is a response to a July 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco, who surprised lawsuit watchers by saying there are “sufficient” grounds to let the lawsuit continue.

“Because of the public disclosures by the government and AT&T, the court cannot conclude that merely maintaining this action creates a ‘reasonable danger’ of harming national security,” Walker wrote.

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Filed under: Security - @ August 2, 2006 4:18 am