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U.S. Government Intervenes in EFF vs. AT&T
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting that the US government has 'filed a motion on Saturday to intervene and seek dismissal of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group against AT&T Inc. over a federal program to monitor U.S. communications.' More from the article: " In its motion seeking intervention, posted on the court's Web site, the government said the interests of the parties in the lawsuit "may well be in the disclosure of state secrets" in their effort to present their claims or defenses ... A hearing is scheduled for June 21 before federal Judge Vaughn Walker." You may recall a few weeks ago when the DOJ asked the judge to dismiss the case. They've now taken the next step required to quash this legal action.
Only a dictatorship would take steps to prevent anyone from knowing if their rights were being violated.
If Mr. Bush is so sure of his assertion that nobody's rights are being trampled and that all of his Executive Orders approving these actions are legal, then he shouldn't be afraid for these actions to face the rule of law.
But then, the administration knows full well that none of this will stand up to a legal challenge.
You are witnessing the actions of a dictatorial administration consumed with the belief in its own superiority and its own place above the law. Bush believes that as President, he can do anything he wants without regard to the law; he believes himself to be invinceable.
Unfortunately, as Congress and the courts stand now, he's right.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Don't be so sure. What the government is doing is not something that the Bush administration just came up with. It is doctrine with long-standing in Anglo-American law called the State Secrets Doctrine and it has been successfully invoked in the past, including the very recent past. Only a year ago it was successfully invoked to terminate the whistleblower retaliation lawsuit by Sibel Edmonds, the former translator for the FBI who revealed incompetance and security breaches. The way it is supposed to work is that the head of the relevant agency (by law the only person who can invoke the doctrine) certifies to the court that continuation of the case would require the disclosure of information damaging to national security. The courts give great deference to such certification.
Even an advocate of open government such as myself can see reasons for having such a doctrine. Suppose that a deep cover agent of the US, who is providing critical intelligence about a hostile foreign power, cheats somebody in a business transaction. The person cheated sues. It could easily be the case that the information disclosed in the course of the suit would make the agent look suspicious. In a case like this, there would be a legitimate reason for the government to want to put a stop to the lawsuit. (One would of course expect the government to assume the financial burden for its action and compensate the injured party, but that's a different issue.)
The problem is that the doctrine relies on the truthfulness of the certification that national security would be damaged if the suit were to proceed. It assumes that he or she is telling the truth in claiming that the damage would really be to national security rather than embaressment to government officials or disclosure of their criminal activities. It also assumes that there isn't a workaround, e.g. limitations on certain evidence, requirement that evidence be seen only by attorneys with security clearance, in camera review of evidence by the judge, so that the only way to prevent the damage is putting an end to the lawsuit.
Unfortunately, it isn't safe to assume that agency heads will certify truthfully. That is particularly true of this administration. I say that not just on grounds of the unusually high levels of dishonesty and and self-serving hallucination in this administration but because we have strong reasons to believe that they have repeatedly lied about security issues. There are the bald-faced lie that the US does not countenance torture, the lies about the reasons for invading Iraq, and the laughable rationalization for warrantless surveillance. They have repeatedly made the bizarre claim that the disclosure of warrantless surveillance itself damaged national security. How could that POSSIBLY be? It told nobody anything about the US's surveillance capabilities, how it is done, or who is targetted. The only thing that was disclosed was that they are not getting warrants. As far as I can see, the only way in which this could lead to a security problem would be if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had a leak, so that terrorist organizations were falsely assumin that they knew when they were under surveillance. The Bush administration hasn't come up with any explanation for how this disclosure could have security implications - they just yammer about it loudly and hope that nobody will notice what a crock this is.
I hope that the EFF and other plaintiffs in these suits will be able to persuade the courts to require an offer of proof from the government. Unfortunately, I am concerned that they will not succeed in this, due to the dangerous and undemocratic, but established tradition of deference the government in such cases.
Bush is nominating Hayden to direct the CIA. Even though Hayden broke the law by spying on us, saying the 4th Amendment doesn't require probable cause. It does.
So Bush's government is derailing justice to protect his compiling vast complex databases of our private communications. In the hands of Iran/Contra conspirators.
After Bush's Justice Department agreed to drop their in-house investigation into Bush's NSA wiretap spying because Bush's NSA told them they didn't have security clearance, these lawsuits are the main obstacle to Bush spying on you as much as he can, taxpaid by you.
Next week, NSA whistleblower Chris Strom will reveal to the Senate how the NSA domestic spying goes even further than these latest exposures (despite Bush denial at every step). Probably spying on us with our satellites, which they scare us into paying for as part of that useless $BILLION Star Wars missile shield.
Feel safer?
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make install -not war
Just because the government has a legitimate reason (from its POV) to want something, doesn't mean it can legitimately have it.
There's no power under the Constitution to quash lawsuits based on vague claims of "national security". Yes, there is a longstanding tradition of allowing it; that doesn't make it right or legal (understanding the Constitution as "law of the land" to have priority over misbegotten case law).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There are other ways to ensure the political compliance of the intelligence community. It's funny you should mention the CIA; in the wake of Porter Goss's resignation, Sidney Blumenthal wrote a piece for Spiegel Online that can be found at http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,15 18,415638,00.html which discussed the recent history of the agency. Rather than stacking it with loyalists, the current administration is attempting to gut the CIA and transfer the lion's share of its duties to the Pentagon. The current culture of the U.S. armed forces is much more amenable to the administration's agenda than CIA could ever be, and whatever civics training that its personnel have matters little in face of their adherence to the chain of command.
In reality, the administration has very nearly accomplished the objective you allude to, i.e. the elimination of whatever respect for the rights of Americans that the intelligence community still has. They have simply been more clever about it. The Spiegel article makes clear that these actions are very serious; I can only hope that the backlash you speak of will actually become manifest.