Judge Dismisses Lawsuit On AT& T Data Handover

CHICAGO, July 25 -- Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.

"The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government's intelligence activities," U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.

A number of such lawsuits have been filed around the country after reports that AT&T and other phone companies had turned over records to the National Security Agency, which specializes in communications intercepts.

Kennelly's ruling was in sharp contrast to last week's decision from U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker of San Francisco, who said reports of the program were so widespread there was no danger of spilling secrets.

Kennelly ruled in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other activists who said their constitutional rights were violated because of an NSA program that gathers phone company records.

Justice Department attorneys argued that it would violate the law against divulging state secrets for AT&T to say whether it had provided telephone records to the agency.

The ACLU argued that the practice was no longer secret because numerous reports had made it clear that phone records had been given to the agency.

But the judge said the reports amounted to speculation and in no way constituted official confirmation that phone records had been turned over.

He also said Terkel and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which sought class-action status, had not shown that their records had been provided to the government. As a result, they lacked standing to sue, he said.

ACLU legal director Harvey Grossman said in a statement that his group respectfully disagreed.

"A private company -- AT&T -- should not be able to escape accountability for violating a federal statute and the privacy of their customers on the basis that a program widely discussed in the public is secret," Grossman said.

In his ruling, Kennelly noted that he had received written statements from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander in his chambers, with ACLU lawyers not allowed to be present.