Judge Rejects Customer Suit Over Records From AT&T

The New York Times reports:

A federal judge in Chicago dismissed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against AT&T that claimed it had illegally given information about its customers to the National Security Agency. The judge, Matthew F. Kennelly, based his ruling on the state secrets privilege, which can bar suits that would disclose information harmful to national security.

The ruling is at first blush at odds with a decision last week by a federal judge in San Francisco. That judge, Vaughn R. Walker, allowed a similar suit against AT&T to proceed notwithstanding the state secrets privilege.

But the two decisions can be reconciled, Judge Kennelly wrote. The Chicago case concerns records of phone calls, including when they were placed, how long they lasted and the phone numbers involved. The San Francisco case, by contrast, mainly concerns an N.S.A. program aimed not at a vast sweep of customers’ records but at the contents of a more limited number of communications.

Can you make sense of it?