The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including

AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic

communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at
least 2001. Since this was first reported on by the press and discovered by the public in
late 2005, EFF has been at the forefront of the effort to stop it and bring government
surveillance programs back within the law and the Constitution.
History of NSA Spying Information since 2005 (SeeEFFs full timeline of events
here)
News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA)
has been intercepting Americans phone calls and Internet communications. Those news
reports, combined with a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several
members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of
American's telephone and other communications records. All of these surveillance
activities are in violation of the privacy safeguards established by Congress and the US
Constitution.
In early 2006, EFF obtained whistleblower evidence (.pdf) from former AT&T technician
Mark Klein showing that AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. The
undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611
Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails web browsing and other
Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA. This
copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T customers.
As one expert observed, this isnt a wiretap, its a country-tap.
Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA
obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable
networks. In June 2013, the media, led by the Guardian and Washington Post started
publishing a series of articles, along with full government documents, that have
confirmed much of what was reported in 2005 and 2006 and then some. The reports
showed-and the government later admittedthat the government is mass collecting
phone metadata of all US customers under the guise of the Patriot Act. Moreover, the
media reports confirm that the government is collecting and analyzing the content of
communications of foreigners talking to persons inside the United States, as well as
collecting much more, without a probable cause warrant. Finally, the media reports
confirm the upstream collection off of the fiberoptic cables that Mr. Klein first revealed
in 2006. (See EFFs How It Works page here for more)
EFF Fights Back in the Courts

EFF is fighting these illegal activities in the courts. Currently, EFF is representing victims
of the illegal surveillance program in Jewel v. NSA, a lawsuit filed in September 2008
seeking to stop the warrantless wiretapping and hold the government and government
officials behind the program accountable. In July 2013, a federal judge ruled that the
government could not rely on the controversial "state secrets" privilege to block our
challenge to the constitutionality of the program. On February 10, 2015, however, the
court granted summary judgment to the government on the Plaintiffs allegations of
Fourth Amendment violations based on the NSAs copying of Internet traffic from the
Internet backbone. The court ruled that the publicly available information did not paint a
complete picture of how the NSA collects Internet traffic, so the court could not rule on
the program without looking at information that could constitute state secrets. The
court did not rule that the NSAs activities are legal, nor did it rule on the other claims in
Jewel, and the case will go forward on those claims.This case is being heard in
conjunction with Shubert v. Obama, which raises similar claims.
In July, 2013, EFF filed another lawsuit, First Unitarian v. NSA, based on the recently
published FISA court order demanding Verizon turn over all customer phone records
including who is talking to whom, when and for how longto the NSA. This so-called
metadata, especially when collected in bulk and aggregated, allows the government
to track the associations of various political and religious organizations. The Director of
National Intelligence has since confirmed that the collection of Verizon call records is
part of a broader program.
In addition to making the same arguments we made in Jewel, we argue in First
Unitarian that this type of collection violates the First Amendment right to association.
Previously, in Hepting v. AT&T, EFF filed the first case against a cooperating telecom for
violating its customers' privacy. After Congress expressly intervened and passed the
FISA Amendments Act to allow the Executive to require dismissal of the
case, Hepting was ultimately dismissed by the US Supreme Court.
In September of 2014, EFF, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the
American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, joined the legal team for Anna Smith, an Idaho
emergency neonatal nurse, in her challenge of the government's bulk collection of the
telephone records of millions of innocent Americans. In Smith v. Obama, we are arguing
the program violated her Fourth Amendment rights by collecting a wealth of detail
about her familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations. In
particular, we focus on challenging the applicability of the so-called third party

doctrine, the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information they
entrust to others.

"NSA Spying on Americans." Electronic Frontier Foundation. Electronic Frontier Foundation, n.d.
Web. 13 Apr. 2015.