On Wednesday June 3, 2009 U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the lawsuits against the nation’s telecoms for participation in the drag-net electronic surveillance program that captured untold riches about who we all really are. Your every credit card purchase, text message, phone call, website visited and email sent were potentially harvested by these companies in the name of protecting us from terrorism. The unconstitutional telco warrantless wiretaps are now RULE OF LAW.

Yet one cannot help but imagine the value of possessing this data. With a large enough sample, such data can be mined with supercomputers and cloud computing ^[1] to provide fairly accurate profiles for nearly every citizen. By ranking these profiles using psychological personality traits, ^[2] one could highlight groups such as “free thinkers with potential networking capability who are 18-35″ or “religious, high earners with families of more than four children who fill prescriptions for STD medication”. The potential abuses are enormous, the data is literally who we are on a day to day basis.

“Walker’s decision (.pdf), ^[3] if it survives, ends more than three years of litigation accusing the nation’s carriers of funneling Americans’ electronic communications to the Bush administration without warrants in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. The ruling also means that the public may never know how the Bush White House coaxed the telecoms to participate in the program without court warrants, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleged in a lawsuit lodged in federal court here three years ago.” Judge Tosses Telecom Spy Suits wired.com ^[4]

Just as the Senate approved telco immunity back in February of 2008 and the story was buried by baseball steroid use, ^[5] the same mechanisms are at play as a result of this ruling. Considering the value of the information and the desire to protect the corporations from prosecution it seems doubtful that we will ever really know the extent to which our privacy has been compromised. The story of this ruling barely got mention.

“Congress has manifested its unequivocal intention to create an immunity that will shield the telecommunications company defendants from liability in these actions,” Walker wrote.

The initial lawsuit was filed around Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician’s now infamous documentation ^[6] identifying that all AT&T customers’ electronic communications were siphoned to the NSA (National Security Agency) ^[7] without warrants or FISA court proceedings. They just did it.

“We’re disappointed,” said Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director.

“We think the judge is wrong.”

[Read the entire article "Judge Tosses Telecom Spy Suits" on Wired.com] ^[4]

Watch the MSNBC report on Mark Klein & Room 641A on YouTube

Read Mark Klein’s Actual Unredacted declaration at the EFF

Read about the secret closet and “room 641A” on Wired.com

Read more about “Mass Surveillance” at Wikipedia ^[8]

Watch the art installation “Room 641A: NSA Spying Cartoon” on YouTube ^[9]