New and Worse Secrecy and Immunity Claims from the Obama DOJ
April 7th, 2009Via: Salon:
When Congress immunized telecoms last August for their illegal participation in Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Senate Democratic apologists for telecom immunity repeatedly justified that action by pointing out that Bush officials who broke the law were not immunized — only the telecoms. Here, for instance, is how Sen. Jay Rockefeller justified telecom immunity in a Washington Post Op-Ed:
Second, lawsuits against the government can go forward. There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area. If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House’s year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials.
Taking them at their word, EFF — which was the lead counsel in the lawsuits against the telecoms — thereafter filed suit, in October, 2008, against the Bush administration and various Bush officials for illegally spying on the communications of Americans. They were seeking to make good on the promise made by Congressional Democrats: namely, that even though lawsuits against telecoms for illegal spying will not be allowed any longer, government officials who broke the law can still be held accountable.
But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government’s first response to EFF’s lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush’s NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the “state secrets” privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new “sovereign immunity” claim of breathtaking scope — never before advanced even by the Bush administration — that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is “willful disclosure” of the illegally intercepted communications.
In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad “state secrets” privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they “willfully disclose” to the public what they have learned.
Kevin – You need a category “change that you can believe in”
I don’t get what this all about. Why defend spying on anyone, anywhere, anytime. Like its cool to do. Bush did it and “we” the Obama DOJ want to as well? What are the Obama’s going to do next? Sign on to the thinking of the Bush, Feith, Cheney, Rumsfeld war crime chain gang? Bush opened a can of worms – someone warned that once Bush claimed certain powers no president would give them up. And so there you have it. SOOOO Disapointing.
But then there’s the whole torture thAng.
Absolutely incomprehensible. Disgusting. These people should be turned out in a field like the pigs they are and be required to root in the dirt with their noses and other various body parts – hey whatever works- so that they must till a farm the size of Iraq or Afghanistan- with their snouts to make it a decent place to live in again. That would be torture befitting what they have done.
Not exactly an eye for an eye. I don’t believe in that. I know I always hope to see people hang themselves on their own petard, but that is not the way our life one this planet works.
But there is I think, a rope that we see unwinding that those who want to subvert our rights will hang themselves on. Pride. It is such a deadly sin.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/133273/do_the_secret_bush_memos_amount_to_treason_top_constitutional_scholar_says_yes/?page=entire