Reuters
Sunday, May 14, 2006; A08

The government filed a motion yesterday to intervene and seek dismissal of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group against AT&T Inc. over a federal program to monitor U.S. communications.

The suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses AT&T of unlawful collaboration with the National Security Agency in its surveillance program to intercept telephone and e-mail communications between people in the United States and people linked to al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations.

The class-action suit was filed in January by San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of AT&T customers -- before reports last week that AT&T and two other phone companies were secretly helping the government compile a massive database of phone calls made in the United States.

In its motion seeking intervention, posted on the court's Web site, the government said the interests of the parties in the lawsuit "may well be in the disclosure of state secrets" in their effort to present their claims or defenses.

"Only the United States is in a position to protect against the disclosure of information over which it has asserted the state secrets privilege, and the United States is the only entity properly positioned to explain why continued litigation of the matter threatens the national security," said the motion, dated May 12.