The concern is that we are all carrying tracking devices around with us all day, so that every place we visit is logged.

This is a great victory for personal privacy rights; our cell phones reveal an enormous amount about us and can reveal everywhere we go, who we associate with and even what we believe in many ways. The government should need to get probable cause before being able to track that information.

The key distinguishing factor between this and what has happened in the past is, it had always been retail surveillance -- the government targeted specific people and the telecom companies received warrants and allowed it. What we're alleging here is wholesale data surveillance.

Certainly this would be an important case. The fact that they may appeal this one would be of great note and I think would be a victory (for privacy advocates). Based on so many decisions against them, the Justice Department is finally bowing to pressure and submitting its theory to appellate scrutiny.

But, it's at least wearing a grey hat.

I think now they're just realizing the scales are tilting against them, and (appeals are) going to be unavoidable.

The NSA program is apparently the biggest fishing expedition ever devised, scanning millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails for 'suspicious' patterns, and it's the collaboration of US telecom companies like AT&T that makes it possible.

AT&T aided the NSA in intercepting all or a substantial part of communications going over their network. We don't exactly know what the NSA is doing with that data.

AT&T is breaking the law and invading the privacy of its customers.

As best we can tell, the NSA program is apparently the biggest fishing expedition ever devised, scanning millions of ordinary Americans' calls and e-mails for suspicious patterns.