IP: Privacy Group Sues for U.S. Files on Spying

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/cyber/articles/04spy.html

Privacy Group Sues for U.S. Files on Spying

By JERI CLAUSING 


WASHINGTON -- A leading privacy advocacy group on Friday filed a lawsuit that seeks to force the National Security Agency to release its records on potential government surveillance of the Internet communications of American citizens. 
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court here by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, seeks the public disclosure of internal NSA documents discussing the legality of the agency's intelligence activities. 

The filing was prompted by various news reports in the past year that indicate the NSA is coordinating a global surveillance system known as Echelon. 

As part of that initiative, the current issue of New Yorker magazine reports that it took NSA only 11 months to fill what was expected to be three years? worth of planned storage capacity for intercepted Internet traffic.