Tash Hepting's AT&T Suit Has Cold-War Roots

AT&T SUIT HAS COLD-WAR ROOTS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Siobhan Gorman siobhan.gorman@wsj.com]
Behind the scenes in the tussle over whether telephone companies can be sued for cooperating with warrantless government surveillance is a 35-year-old computer engineer who lives outside San Francisco. Tash Hepting, of Hepting v. AT&T, had remained silent as Washington hashes out an impasse over whether to grant immunity to phone companies, as the White House wishes, which would kill this lawsuit and the 37 others. Mr. Hepting now says he filed suit, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties advocacy group, largely because of the experiences of his father, Rick Hepting, a short-wave-radio enthusiast in the 1950s and 1960s. The elder Mr. Hepting was told by the government that it was reading his mail because he had made contact with a Chinese radio station, the younger Mr. Hepting says. Mr. Hepting says he became interested in the recent government activities after reading about the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance. He said he grew concerned that the effort was sweeping up communications of a host of customers of the big telephone companies like AT&T, of which he was one. In pushing to give immunity to telecommunications companies in the AT&T suit, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio recently said Democrats are opposing immunity to protect their "trial lawyer allies who are seeking to profit" from the lawsuits. President Bush has alluded to the interests of trial lawyers in pushing for immunity. Mr. Hepting says he's "more than a little personally insulted" by that accusation. "I'm not a trial lawyer. I'm not in this to make a lot of money. I'm in this to make a principled stand," he says. His lawyer, Kevin Bankston with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said they are willing to cap the damages requested. Mr. Bankston said it would be enough to be a punishment but "would not financially cripple the company."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120476570408315217.html?mod=todays_us_pa...
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