Obama Administration moves to block challenge to wiretapping program

The Friday brief involves a lawsuit filed by the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the NSA for the wiretapping program. The agency monitored the telephone calls and emails of thousands of people within the United States without a court's approval in an effort to thwart terrorist attacks.


In attempting to block a San Fransisco court from reviewing documents relating to the NSA program, the Obama Administration is also protecting other individuals named as defendants in the suit: Vice President Dick Cheney, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington and former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.



The Friday brief responded to the government agencies being sued; the individual defendants have asked for more time to prepare their response.It also stands firmly behind the telecommunications giant AT&T.



AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed that the company allowed the agency to install network monitoring hardware to spy on American citizens.The Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department says, "has set forth a more than reasonable basis to conclude that harm to national security would result from the disclosure of whether the NSA has worked with any telecommunications carrier." AT&T is specifically mentioned. Public reports have fingered AT&T, Verizon, MCI and Sprint as participating in the government's eavesdropping efforts.Acting Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz penned the brief on behalf of the Obama Justice Department."



The grounds for this motion [to dismiss] are that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction with respect to plaintiffs' statutory claims against the United States because Congress has not waived sovereign immunity, and summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs' remaining claims against all parties... is required because information necessary to litigate plantiffs' claims is property subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege and related statutory privileges," Hertz and other trial attorneys for the Justice Department wrote.

Obama voted for the revised Act while a senator last year.

Read on.



Notice that the part that Congress has not waived sovereign immunity. There is a lot of pointing fingers to Obama and the claim that block this lawsuit in wiretapping case means that Obama is still keeping Bush policies. The shift should be on Congress not the President to change the wiretapping bill. As I recall, before Obama took office, Congress passed to allow telecommunication companies to be granted immunity. The bill should be revised again