When the government told a court Friday that it wanted a class-action lawsuit regarding the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on Americans dismissed, its lawyers wielded one of the most powerful legal tools available to the executive branch — the state secrets privilege. That privilege allows the government to tell a judge that a civil case may expose information detrimental to national security, and to ask that testimony or documents be hidden or a lawsuit dismissed. That extraordinary executive power was established in English common law and upheld in a 1953 Supreme Court case involving the fatal crash of a secret bomber. Full Story
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