Glenn Greenwald notes that last summer when the US Congress granted immunity to the telecommunications companies who were illegally participating in then-President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, government officials were specifically not granted similar immunity privileges.
After having led the lawsuit against the telecommunications companies, in October 2008 the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and members of the Bush administration for the illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
On Friday, 3 April 2009—two days late to be a cruel April Fools’ joke—the Obama administration filed its response to the EFF lawsuit (.pdf; 120Kb). The Obama administration seeks immediate dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on the same argument Bush used: the state secrets privilege.
But Obama seeks to extend executive power even further than Bush did by claiming sovereign immunity included in the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits for any government surveillance except in the case of willful disclosure of any illegally obtained communications. Never mind that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Wiretap Act, and the Stored Communications Act (SCA) all specifically prohibit illegal warrantless wiretaps.
Greenwald writes that what the Obama administration is asserting “is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it’s being claimed with a straight face.”
On Wednesday, 8 April 2009, Olbermann interviewed Kevin Bankston, the EFF’s lead attorney in the lawsuit against the Bush administration. This is especially surprising because Olbermann had been one of the most blatantly uncritical, doe-eyed apologists for Obama in the run-up to the election.
As Olbermann said in his initial analysis, “welcome to change you cannot believe in.”
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