Laura Rozen asks an important question:
If the telcos feel they are being unfairly sued for cooperating with a government request that they were assured was legal, why don't they sue the government? What prohibits them from doing so? State secrets?
Assuming that we don't grant them retroactive immunity for their illegal actions (and those actions must have been illegal, or else why grant immunity?), I suspect this is precisely the approach they will try to take. I hadn't thought about it before, but I suspect that the administration has, and that this is one of the reasons they so desperately want to grant immunity. Whereas the current lawsuits would examine the actions of the government, lawsuits of this nature would look at the decision-making process inside the White House and DOJ that led to the actions, and as much as the Bush administration wants to prevent the former, the later must be an even greater concern.
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