Obama administration backs telecom immunity

The Obama administration has asked a federal judge in San Francisco to uphold a law aimed at dismissing suits against telecommunications companies that cooperated with President George W. Bush's wiretapping program. In a filing late Wednesday, the Justice Department sought to dispel Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's concern that the law might violate the Constitution by giving the attorney general too much power to change the legal rules that govern the companies' conduct. The law requires that judges dismiss suits by people claiming that the companies violated their privacy rights, as long as the attorney general certifies that the firms were helping an anti-terrorism program that the president authorized. A statement Wednesday by Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller seemed to reflect Obama's lack of enthusiasm for the law. "The department is compelled to defend statutes as long as it can reasonably do so, and in this case the department was asked by the court to make a defense of the statute passed by Congress," Miller said. Cindy Cohn, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who represents AT&T customers in the lead case before Judge Walker, said she was disappointed.