Court Rejects Obama Bid to Stop Wiretapping Suit

[SirNitram]

Link

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration has lost its argument that a potential threat to national security is a good enough reason to stop a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday rejected the Justice Department's request for an emergency stay. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, cited the so-called state secrets privilege as its defense. The government claimed national security would be compromised if a lawsuit brought by the U.S. chapter of an Islamic charity was allowed to proceed.

The case was brought by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a defunct charity with a chapter in Oregon.

The decision by the three-judge appeals panel is a setback for the new Obama administration as it adopts some of the same positions on national security and secrecy as the Bush administration.

Earlier this month, Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a review of all state secrets claims that have been used to protect Bush administration anti-terrorism programs from lawsuits.

Yet even as that review continues, the administration has invoked the privilege in several different cases, including Al-Haramain.

The case began when the Bush administration accidentally turned over documents to Al-Haramain attorneys. Lawyers for the defunct charity said the papers showed illegal wiretapping by the National Security Agency.

The documents were returned to the government, which quickly locked them away, claiming they were state secrets that could threaten national security if released.

Lawyers for Al-Haramain argued that they needed the documents to prove the wiretapping.

The U.S. Treasury Department in 2004 designated the charity as an organization that supports terrorism before the Saudi government closed it. The Bush administration redesignated it in 2008, citing attempts to keep it operating.

The 9th Circuit eventually agreed that the disputed documents were protected as state secrets. But the court ruled that the Oregon chapter of Al-Haramain could try to find another way to show it had standing to sue the government over domestic wiretapping.

A number of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, tried to sue the government over warrantless wiretapping but were denied standing because they could not show they were targeted.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

While I see the current administration's take on national security claims to be a bit of a disturbing trend, at least we appear to have a justice department that takes its job seriously.

[Ender]

Given that this was such a strong reversal from previous statements by the Obama administration, I wonder if they didn't have an inkling of how the ruling was going to go, and pressed it just so firmly get it struck down. After all, if it is just president after president reversing the others work, nothing moves forward. Having a position formally demolished by the other branches puts it to rest for good.

Might be giving too much credit to the White House though.

[Covenant]

I can only assume they've attempted to preserve some of these special powers so that they can finish reviewing all of the data from the Bush years. I don't know how much time you'd really have in a month or so to tackle all these problems and still sift through the complicated matter of what this looks like. Regardless, unless there was stirring new evidence in favor of these more rigorous interrogation practices and overt torture, I'm not sure why it's necessary to keep the Bush policies in place. I'm glad to see the court whack this, and hope it will continue to. Just because I vote someone into office doesn't mean I want them to be held by checks and balances. I believe Obama's a great guy with a good ethical framework, but it's easy to give into the complications of running a superpower and make logical compromises on things that don't really need to be there. Warrentless Wiretapping is certainly handy, but it's not really necessary.

[Dominus Atheos]

Nitram's title is wrong. Even the 9th Circuit isn't crazy enough to strike down the State Secrets principle, they just said that the charity could try to find other proof that they were spied upon.

The 9th Circuit eventually agreed that the disputed documents were protected as state secrets. But the court ruled that the Oregon chapter of Al-Haramain could try to find another way to show it had standing to sue the government over domestic wiretapping.

See? They completely agreed that the State Secrets principle could be used to protect the documents. And the charity won't be able to show it "has standing to sue the government over domestic wiretapping" without these documents.

A number of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, tried to sue the government over warrantless wiretapping but were denied standing because they could not show they were targeted.

Without these documents the charity can't show they were targeted, so unless the government accidentally delivers another set of documents showing they were illegally wiretapped, the lawsuit is dead.

Also, can we get the title changed? The actual title of the article in the OP is "Court Rejects Obama Bid to Stop Wiretapping Suit", so that seems like the best one to change it to.

[ray245]

Although I have to wonder, could some kind of secret intelligence Obama received, influence him to change his stance?

I can only assume they've attempted to preserve some of these special powers so that they can finish reviewing all of the data from the Bush years. I don't know how much time you'd really have in a month or so to tackle all these problems and still sift through the complicated matter of what this looks like. Regardless, unless there was stirring new evidence in favor of these more rigorous interrogation practices and overt torture, I'm not sure why it's necessary to keep the Bush policies in place. I'm glad to see the court whack this, and hope it will continue to. Just because I vote someone into office doesn't mean I want them to be held by checks and balances. I believe Obama's a great guy with a good ethical framework, but it's easy to give into the complications of running a superpower and make logical compromises on things that don't really need to be there. Warrentless Wiretapping is certainly handy, but it's not really necessary.

What if some findings that really show us that information gathered from torture could work? If there is accurate findings that torture is reliable, letting everyone know about it will only set a precedence to support excessive torture over the most minor crime.

Imagine the general public demanding using torture on a suspected murderer. By the time he was proven to be innocent, he already been subjected to an act of torture. Although to be frank, such scenario is unrealistic to begin with, for such a finding would not be limited to one nation alone, and can be easily found by any public institution.

[Qwerty 42]

I'm curious to see how the White House takes this. Two months ago it would have set them to howling about legislating from the bench.

[Covenant]

Ray, if torture works, the heads of nations would know already. While they wouldn't want the population at large to know that torture is a reliable source of information, there's no doubt that most people realize that threat of violence is an effective way to squeeze someone for information, especially if that information doesn't have life-or-death connotations. However, the reason you don't torture a suspected murderer is because torture would be unreliable in such a case anyway.

All I was saying is that it is possible that from amidst the sea of bad information, the Bush policies actually did turn up a few gems. Why they wouldn't have tried to say so in order to save their legacy proves to me that they didn't, since they were eager to seize upon every other bit of laudible information for public relations gain. But it is feasible that revealing that information now, including sources and current operations as well as operational partnerships in sensitive regions of the middle east, could be dangerous and not undo the errors of the past. In such a circumstance it may be more practical just to say "This is a mess, but we can't divulge this information without threatening current safety." The hope is that no such further uses of this power are in the works for the future, but I don't doubt there's some skeletons in the closet of the Bush years which would be very uncomfortable to reveal just yet. I'd rather read about them in 10 years via a national bestseller (Ghosts of Guantanamo: America's Torture-War on Terrorism, copyright 2021) than botch current operations before the new administration can fix things up.

I can only imagine how many very sensitive operations there are still in progress using the powers Bush sought, and which McCain would have continued as normal. It can be hard to stop that stuff abruptly, so I'm willing to assume for the moment that this is an inherited issue with an inherited solution. If the state secrets defense and wiretapping are still around a year or two from now though, I think both parties will punish the administration for failing to act.

[ray245]

Ray, if torture works, the heads of nations would know already. While they wouldn't want the population at large to know that torture is a reliable source of information, there's no doubt that most people realize that threat of violence is an effective way to squeeze someone for information, especially if that information doesn't have life-or-death connotations. However, the reason you don't torture a suspected murderer is because torture would be unreliable in such a case anyway.

All I was saying is that it is possible that from amidst the sea of bad information, the Bush policies actually did turn up a few gems. Why they wouldn't have tried to say so in order to save their legacy proves to me that they didn't, since they were eager to seize upon every other bit of laudible information for public relations gain. But it is feasible that revealing that information now, including sources and current operations as well as operational partnerships in sensitive regions of the middle east, could be dangerous and not undo the errors of the past. In such a circumstance it may be more practical just to say "This is a mess, but we can't divulge this information without threatening current safety." The hope is that no such further uses of this power are in the works for the future, but I don't doubt there's some skeletons in the closet of the Bush years which would be very uncomfortable to reveal just yet. I'd rather read about them in 10 years via a national bestseller (Ghosts of Guantanamo: America's Torture-War on Terrorism, copyright 2021) than botch current operations before the new administration can fix things up.

I can only imagine how many very sensitive operations there are still in progress using the powers Bush sought, and which McCain would have continued as normal. It can be hard to stop that stuff abruptly, so I'm willing to assume for the moment that this is an inherited issue with an inherited solution. If the state secrets defense and wiretapping are still around a year or two from now though, I think both parties will punish the administration for failing to act.

I know, which is why I said my what if scenario is pretty unrealistic to begin with. And I do agree with your point, if reverting every of Bush policy immediately is not going to benefit anyone in the long run, then a delay is certainly justified.