How sweet it is to be in charge.

Last Friday the Department of Justice invoked the Federal Government’s military and state secrets privileges to request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) suit against ATT be dismissed. The idea is that the law suit, which claims ATT and the NSA have been working together to siphon off Internet and telephone traffic for purposes of snooping on American citizens, could reveal “state secrets” and therefore should be dismissed.

It is scary enough that our national spy agency can induce ATT to cooperate in spying on US citizens without bringing the full force of the DOJ to bear as well. I think the privacy issues are actually the smaller of the political concerns at play here. The real dirt to be uncovered in the ATT-NSA case is the quid pro quo that apparently exists between these two. Under what Government contract did ATT spend the possibly tens of millions of dollars on high end equipment to pull this off? Is ATT actually compensated for this? Or, is ATT doing favors for one branch of the government in return for special treatment in future contracts for telecommunication services? And now, apparently for protection from prosecution?