Check out this extraordinary claim by Verizon regarding its disclosure of tons of customer phone records to the NSA:
“Communicating facts to the government is protected petitioning activity,” says the response, even when the communication of those facts would normally be illegal or would violate a company’s owner promises to its customers. Verizon argues that, if the EFF and other groups have concerns about customer call records, the only proper remedy “is to impose restrictions on the government, not on the speaker’s right to communicate.”
Verizon argues that EFF and the ACLU are harassing them, and claims that “the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit [designed to] deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.”
Maybe the AACS-disclosers should have tried to provoke some CALEA demand for it!
1 response so far ↓
1 cearta.ie » Blog Archive » Handing over customer records as protected speech? // May 8, 2007 at 5:19 am
[...] On the day I learn (hat tip Media Law Prof Blog) that US not-for-profit NGO Freedom House has released its annual global Freedom of the Press Survey for 2007 (Ireland fares reasonably well – equal thirteenth in Europe, equal sixteenth worldwide – but we could do better), I also learn (hat tip madisonian.net) that Verizon have made an extraordinarily tendentious free speech argument in favour of disclosing customer records to the US security services. Ars technica reports: Verizon is one of the phone companies currently being sued over its alleged disclosure of customer phone records to the NSA. In a response to the court last week, the company asked for the entire consolidated case against it to be thrown out—on free speech grounds. … [their] “right to communicate such information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment,” argue Verizon’s lawyers. [...]
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