Most of you probably already know about the EFF's lawsuit against AT&T charging that AT&T illegally opened its network to the National Security Agency for unauthorized surveillance of US citizens. Now, the Bush administration has moved to quash the lawsuit using vague hand-waving about "state secrets".
Their arguments rest on the principle that even if the president is breaking the law, he can get away with it as long as he invokes national security. Courts would be demoted to a clerical role of noting that the "state secrets" privilege has been invoked and dismissing the case post-haste.
This would, if taken to its logical conclusion, allow the president to get away with murder.
Here, of course, we're talking about the Bush administration trying to derail a civil lawsuit against AT&T filed to right a wrong — there's no criminal prosecution — but the principle is the same. (Note that 50 USC 1809 makes it a federal felony to engage "in electronic surveillance under color of law, except as authorized by statute.")
No wonder the judges were skeptical. "The bottom line here is that once the executive declares that certain activity is a state secret, that's the end of it?" Judge Harry Pregerson asked. "No cases, no litigation, absolute immunity? The king can do no wrong?"
The judge asks a very valid question. This is one more example of an administration that appears to fully and unquestioningly believe that it is above the law. But perhaps what's more worrisome is that this differs from the prior administration only in degree, not in kind. Both major parties seem much less concerned with honoring and upholding the Constitution as the supreme law of the land and the embodiment of the principles upon which the United States was founded, than with railing against it as "obsolete", or simply pushing it to the side as an embarrassing and inconvenient historical relic, to be ignored or circumvented whenever possible, and obeyed only when forced to.
And that is dangerous. The history books are full of examples of what happens when a government decides that it is above the law and can do whatever it pleases.
"L'état, c'est moi."
