

The incoming Obama administration will vigorously defend congressional legislation immunizing U.S. telecommunication companies from lawsuits about their participation in the Bush administration's domestic spy program.

That was the assessment Thursday by Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for attorney general, who made the statement during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A court challenge questioning the legality of the legislation is pending in U.S. District Court in San Francisco – where the judge in the case wanted to know what the Obama administration's position was.

"The duty of the Justice Department is to defend statutes that have been passed by Congress," Holder told Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah), who asked whether the Obama administration would continue the legal fight to uphold the legislation that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to overturn.

"Unless there are compelling reasons, I don't think we would reverse course," Holder added.

At a San Francisco hearing in EFF's case last month, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker wondered aloud whether the incoming Obama administration would continue to defend the legislation, which passed in July. Obama opposed immunity but voted for it because it was included in a new spy bill that gave the Bush administration broad warrantless-surveillance powers.

"We are going to have a new attorney general," Walker said from the bench, wondering whether he should delay a decision, pending guidance from Obama. "Why shouldn't the court wait to see what the new attorney general will do?"

The EFF is also accusing the nation's telecoms of funneling Americans' electronic communications to the Bush administration without warrants in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Holder's comments came the same day a secret federal appeals court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, released a declassified +++inset-left

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