AT&T sued over records allegation:
Suit protests alleged release to NSA, says work calls for privacy

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, May 20, 2006

By PETE SLOVER
The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN -- A lawyer, a journalist and a financial adviser sued AT&T in a federal court in Austin this week, protesting the company's alleged release of phone records to the National Security Agency.

The trio, among several plaintiffs in the suit, said the release of phone records poses special problems for their professions, where confidentiality is often a legal and ethical duty.

"But Mary Jones and Bill Smith talking to their brother-in-law shouldn't have their privacy invaded, either," said Austin lawyer Jim George, who filed the suit against the San Antonio-based company.

Last week, USA Today reported that AT&T and other phone companies complied with a security agency request for millions of customer phone records after the Sept. 11 attacks.

An AT&T spokesman has said the company does not allow wiretapping without a court order and has not given customer information to government agencies without legal authorization.

Mr. George said he contacted an attorney for AT&T before filing the suit, offering to hold off if the company would assure him the news accounts were wrong. The attorney would not, citing national security, he said.

The lawsuit is one of several filed against AT&T over the issue, but Mr. George said it can be distinguished from the others on several grounds.

First, the lawsuit is based not just on federal law but also on a similar Texas statute that prohibits and imposes fines for the release of phone records without a court order. On that basis, the lawsuit seeks class-action status so the plaintiffs can be expanded to include all Texas customers of AT&T, Mr. George said.

It also seeks class status for journalists, lawyers and financial advisers who use AT&T. Mr. George said that group could be expanded to include physicians, priests and "others for whom confidentiality is not just nice it's a duty."

The plaintiffs in the case include Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project; The Austin Chronicle weekly newspaper, along with its editor and reporter Louis Black; and Richard "Dicky" Grigg, attorney for a detainee captured in Afghanistan and being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Mr. Grigg said he has filed a lawsuit against President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, demanding the government show the grounds for his clients' detention.

He said that he can only contact his client by letter or in person but that he uses his phone to work on the case and consult with other detainees' attorneys.

"If they are monitoring calls and checking who I am calling, that could be very detrimental to my client," he said.

Although the lawsuit seeks fines against AT&T, Mr. George, said the case is not about money. The attorney, who was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall during the Nixon administration, represents media clients.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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