Obama government tries to block surveillance case

The US Justice Department has invoked the state secrets privilege in a bid to stop legal action over Bush-era wiretapping.

The move marks the first time the Obama administration has used the power under its new policy on such cases.

Attorney general Eric Holder announced the decision in a California lawsuit challenging the no-warrant-needed eavesdropping programme that began after the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks.

Under the state secrets privilege, the government can have a lawsuit dismissed if hearing the case would jeopardise national security.

The Bush administration invoked the privilege numerous times in lawsuits over various post-2001 programmes, but the Obama government recently announced a new internal review process in which more senior justice department officials would make the decisions.

Mr Holder said that in the current case, that review process had convinced him “there is no way for this case to move forward without jeopardising ongoing intelligence activities that we rely upon to protect the safety of the American people”.

To proceed with the case, Mr Holder said, would expose intelligence sources and methods.

He also said US district judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, had been given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court could “conduct its own independent assessment of our claim”.

Mr Holder said the judge would decide whether the administration had made a valid claim and “we will respect the outcome of that process”.

During the Bush administration, government lawyers resisted providing specifics to judges on national security concerns.

Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco that is pursuing a similar lawsuit against the government, called Mr Holder’s decision “quite disappointing”.

“The Obama administration has essentially adopted the position of the Bush administration in these cases, even though candidate Obama was incredibly critical of both the warrantless wiretapping program and the Bush administration’s abuse of the state secrets privilege,” he said.