DOJ To Claim National Security in NSA Case

deblau writes "Wired is reporting that the federal government intends to invoke the rarely used 'State Secrets Privilege' in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class action lawsuit against AT&T. The case alleges that the telecom collaborated with the NSA's secret spying on American citizens. The State Secrets Privilege lets the executive branch step into a civil lawsuit and have it dismissed if the case might reveal information that puts national security at risk."

Comments

Re:Possible Justification

[charnov]

Remember the Maine.
Last ruled accidental

Pearl Harbor.
Debunked many, many times. The best anyone can claim is that we underestimated and were imcompetent

Operation Paper Clip.
I would say this is actually a good thing. Northwoods was one of the projects to get as many of the scientific aparatus of the Nazi's before the Russians did. It lead to NASA, our nuclear program, and many other advances. I am assuming the error you are referring to here is that many of these people committed war crimes and were never prosecuted. Tough. They weren't living it up in the US; most were nearly slaves. Fare trade

Intentionally uncured syphallis experiments.
I am assuming you are primarily Tuskegee. This one you got right. It was horrible and a perfect example of abuse of power and utter lack of anything resembling a sense of humanity at the government. A huge black mark against our entire society.

Unwitting LSD experiments.
I am assuming you are referring to MKULTRA and associated projects. Although largely unsupported, I'll stipulate that this actually happened and to the scale that is widely reported. The people reportedly involved are also pretty much wack-jobs and I don't doubt they were capable of this. I don't think this rises to anywhere near to the level of other 'experiments', however, such as what was done to thousands of American troops testing nuclear weapons or NBC inoculations.

Northwoods documents.
A false flag op proposal that was never implemented and shot down by the COJCOS and POTUS. There are lots and lots of proposals like this every year. Welcome to military thought processes

Various Church committee revelations.
Bingo! Now you hit closer to the discussion at hand. The Church Committee refers to the Congressional oversight (or lack thereof) previous to Watergate. Before the public scandal, most ops in the US had very little oversight at all. Today, at least a bunch of somebodies (a couple of committees, the Joint Chiefs, Prez, etc.) are supposed to know what's going on and have a measure of control. These type of ops are nasty, ugly, unethical, and sometimes illegal. The world is not a happy place. The idea of the oversight is to only use as much force as is necessary. Trust me, we are a lot more reserved than just about anybody else out there (or at least pre-9/11 we were). The English and Isreali's have no problem killing anyone anytime. The French are frickin terrifying in what they do. Pretty much ever non-western intelligence apparatus makes us look like boyscouts.

Waco.
Huh? This was overzealousness and stupidity, nothing more.
Ruby Ridge.
See - Waco

Abu Gharib.
This is a little closer to the issue at hand, which is lack of oversight or a disregard for humanity as a whole. High value assets can be subjects to all kinds of horrible things in the pursuit of data, but that isn't what happened here. This is what happens when people think they know what they are doing, aren't particularly smart, and have no one to tell them to stop. This should have never happened and further illustrates the breakdown in control and professionalism in the Bush administration

Guantanamo Bay.
This type of thing has been happening for a long long time (decades). Unfortunately necessary in certain situations, the way it has been handled and the fact that it has been made public is a really bad thing. Playing dirty is one thing, being dirty is another.

3. The elephant is on fire?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Just a guess