Posted on 06/12/2006 12:24:55 PM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
A National Security Agency program that listens in on international communications involving people in the United States is both vital to national security and permitted by the Constitution, a government lawyer told a judge here today in the first major court argument on the program.
But, the lawyer went on, addressing Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court, "the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security."
The only solution to this impasse, the lawyer, Anthony J. Coppolino, said, was for Judge Taylor to dismiss the lawsuit before her, an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the eavesdropping program, under the state secrets privilege. The privilege can limit and even extinguish cases that would reveal national security information, and it is fast becoming one of the Justice Department's favorite tools in defending court challenges to its efforts to combat terrorism.
The Detroit case was filed in January on behalf of journalists, scholars, lawyers and nonprofit organizations who contended that the possibility of government eavesdropping interfered with their work. In remarks to reporters after the 90-minute argument, Anthony D. Romero, the A.C.L.U.'s executive director, called the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege "Orwellian doublespeak."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Only if their work is betraying our country.
I thought that actual damage had to be shown for a lawsuit to be valid. Am I wrong?
Um, why? I'd LOVE to hear an example.
Prior to her appointment to the Federal Court in 1979, Judge Taylor was a private practitioner, a legislative assistant, an Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor, an Assistant United States Attorney, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Wayne State Law School, and an Assistant Corporation Counselor, City of Detroit. She is a 1950 Graduate of the Northfield School for Girls, East Northfield, Massachusetts, and received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1954 and L.L.B. from Yale Law School in 1957. Judge Taylor was appointed to the bench on November 2, 1979.
She is a Trustee of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan and the Henry Ford Health System.
She is a member of the State Bar (Committees on Character and Fitness and on U.S. Courts), Federal Bar, Wolverine Bar, Black Judges Association and Women Judges Association.
"the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security."
The cat is out of the bag anyway.
"Dude! I was, like, talking to one of my stoner buds about scoring some meth and I thought, whoa, what if George W. Bush is like listening to my calls? And then I got, like, all worried and stuff and couldn't finish writing my column for the New York Times or teach my classes at Harvard. So how much money do I get?"
You laugh, but that's basically where their arguements are based.
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