Why We Can't Have Telecom Amnesty

Today the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stopped a challenge to the President's warrantless wiretapping program. An Islamic charity claimed that they were illegally spied upon. The government accidentally GAVE THEM TRANSCRIPTS of the phone calls between the defendants and their lawyers. Why was it thrown out?

A federal appeals court in San Francisco today handed a major victory to the Bush administration, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program could not go forward because of the "state secrets" privilege.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, which had argued that allowing an Islamic charity's claims that it was illegally spied upon to go forward would threaten national security.

This is why telecom companies must be held accountable. If the Specter compromise shifts the defendant in those cases from the companies to the federal government, they'll call state secrets and the suits will stall out. The courts will not want to intervene in a national security issue. This is most clear in this case when there's DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE that the government illegally spied on the charity without a warrant. Telecom companies can't claim state secrets; the government can. If you ever want to know what the government did, who they spied on, how many calls, how many emails, how much data, you must reject telecom amnesty.