Liveblogging court hearings: NSA's spying, AT&T's alleged complicity

Over at Wired News Threat Level blog today, Ryan Singel and David Kravets have been liveblogging the U.S. 9th Circuit hearing in San Francisco on the NSA's domestic surveillance program, and AT&T's alleged assistance.

Here's a blow-by-blow from earlier today: Link. The money quote:

Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland."

And here's a snip from Singel's analysis, posted after the hearings:

While the same three 9th Circuit Appeals Court judges heard arguments in two different spying cases today, they seemed to be two entirely different sets of judges.

When listening to the government attempt to bury, on the grounds of national security, a lawsuit against AT&T for allegedly helping the government engage in a dragnet surveillance program aimed at Americans, the judges expressed dismay that the government and AT&T could not simply show documents proving the surveillance did not exist.

That case relies heavily on company documents provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation by former AT&T technician Mark Klein. Large chunks of those documents were published by Wired News last year.

But in the second half of Wednesday's hearing, the judges hardly asked any questions of the government attorney.

Link to full text of post.