Adam Liptak in the New York Times writes about a submission US Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. made to the Supreme Court, about seven months before NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed new evidence of the government’s massive and secret surveillance programs:
It was on the day Hurricane Sandy shut down the rest of Washington. The justices had made it to court through lashing rain, and they seemed to be paying particular attention when Mr. Verrilli, the Obama administration’s top appellate lawyer, argued that a challenge to a 2008 surveillance law should be dismissed.
He said, a little comically in retrospect, that the human rights groups, lawyers and reporters who sought to challenge the law had no particular reason to think that their communications were being collected. The plaintiffs could not show they had been harmed by the surveillance program, he said, so they lacked standing to sue. Their fears, he said, were the product of “a cascade of speculation.”
That was merely aggressive and effective advocacy.
“Double Secret Surveillance” [nytimes.com]