The Obama administration is making a sweeping defense of government wiretaps that critics say goes far beyond the post-9/11 claims of the Bush administration.
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The Justice Department has delivered the first government response to a lawsuit brought last year by AT&T customers to stop what they called a “dragnet” program that indiscriminately monitored phone calls and e-mails.
Its brief filed in San Francisco Friday used the same argument as the Bush administration — that the government has a privilege to keep “state secrets” in matters of national security.
But it also claimed the Patriot Act gives the feds a broad-ranging “sovereign immunity” to conduct domestic spying.
“The administration is arguing that the US can never be sued for spying that violates federal several surveillance statutes,” said Kevin Bankston, lawyer for the plaintiffs.