Telecom Surveillance to Receive Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card The Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless surveillance program, utilizing power granted in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. On Sept. 19, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss Hepting v. AT&T and more than 40 other lawsuits against telecommunications companies that provided data to the NSA. This motion was enabled by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (H.R. 6304). These cases were initially pursued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has called the NSA program "dragnet surveillance." The FISA Amendments Act states that cases can not be maintained if the Attorney General certifies that the defendant's actions were authorized by the president. Mukasey issued a blanket certification the same day he filed the motion to dismiss. The letter does not specify which telecommunications companies assisted the government because, according to Mukasey, releasing such information "would cause exceptional harm to the national security of the United States." Nor does the public certification specify which one of five provisions of the amended FISA renders the companies exempt from litigation. Mukasey asserted that eavesdropping was narrowly targeted solely to al Qaeda affiliates and not a wider dragnet. Mark Klein, a former AT&T engineer turned whistleblower, disputed this in a 2006 statement about equipment he helped the NSA install that intercepted all of AT&T's Internet and phone traffic, conducting what he called "vacuum-cleaner surveillance." Klein served as a plaintiff's witness for the telecommunications lawsuits....