Salon Blogger Interviews EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn: "

Glenn Greenwald is one of the most thorough political bloggers covering the issue of warrantless wiretapping. Week after week, his Unclaimed Territory blog at Salon has kept abreast of the latest developments, tenaciously covering every twist and turn in the debate as Congress mulls whether to grant immunity to telecom lawbreakers for their participation in the illegal program.

Today’s post from Greenwald includes selections from a long interview with EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn, highlighting some of the most recent developments in EFF’s class-action suit against telecom giant AT&T:

GG: The lawsuit you originally brought was against only AT&T and not against the Bush administration or any government officials. Is that correct?

CC: Yes. We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government.

No one covers the details like Greenwald, but his most important contribution is in helping readers get beyond the details to view the wider picture. Greenwald reminds us that the broader issue at play in this case is the question of Executive power, and whether the courts will have the opportunity to rule on the limits of that power.

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(Read Original Article - Via EFF: Deep Links.)