After Saddam Hussein was executed, President Bush reassured the world that the Iraqi dictator received "a fair trial – the kind of justice he denied victims of his brutal regime."

The Bush administration has similarly promoted "the rule of law" and "an independent judiciary" for countries such as Cuba, Burma and Iran.

Yet that same president is pressuring Congress to deny Americans our day in court before an independent judiciary by repealing the rules of law that guarantee the right to sue a private company for illegal infringements on our privacy rights.

I am a plaintiff in one of two lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against phone companies – in my case, AT&T – for illegally sharing private customer calling records with the federal government. My co-plaintiffs include other journalists and attorneys, psychiatrists, doctors, ministers and a former Republican member of Congress.

The administration is trying to deny us our legal rights through a strange new doctrine called "telecom immunity" or "retroactive immunity."

President Bush is demanding that Congress erase violations of law by telephone companies after those violations occurred and after we filed suit challenging them but before a federal judge considers the evidence, determines the extent of the violations or orders remedial action.

Bush is resorting to hyperventilating rhetoric to bully the reluctant House of Representatives to authorize his un-American scheme. This past weekend, he said terrorists are planning attacks "at this very moment" and called on Congress to choose between helping "class-action lawyers sue for billions of dollars" and helping "our intelligence officials protect millions of lives."

Before Congress is sucked into this rhetorical swamp, consider that AT&T and other phone companies that buckled to secret administration demands for our records had a legal alternative: They could have insisted that the administration first obtain the court order that they – or their corporate attorneys – knew was necessary. That's what another large phone company apparently did, demonstrating more respect for the rule of law than AT&T apparently has. AT&T would have been legally obligated to respond to a valid warrant, saving "millions of lives" at that "very moment."

Instead, AT&T chose to violate federal and state law.

I and my fellow plaintiffs don't stand to win any money through our lawsuit, much less billions of dollars, but we do hope to assure governmental accountability, to open to public scrutiny the actions of corporations and government that have teamed up to deny citizens the rights guaranteed by law.

Violation of privacy guarantees has enormous practical as well as constitutional consequences.

As a journalist working out of a home office, I communicate with many sources by telephone. I have written extensively on those most secretive of government institutions, prisons. Frequently, important revelations about the administration of prisons and the effects of our sentencing policies come to the public only because confidential informants risk their livelihoods to blow the whistle on corruption, incompetence and cruelty in these institutions. As a journalist, I can offer sources little more than the protection of confidentiality for their courage.

Similarly jeopardized when the phone company secretly shares our personal telephone records are doctor-client, lawyer-client and ministerial confidentiality.

The privacy we seek as citizens and professionals is guaranteed by the California Constitution and Public Utilities Code as well as by federal law that sets out a lawful process for secret action to protect national security. Even the privacy policy AT&T provides to its customers guarantees such confidentiality.

We do not seek an inappropriate advantage in court. We are prepared to prove our case before a judge – unless the right to do so is abolished partway through the legal process by politicians with no respect for an independent judicial process.

Congress, as it considers corporate immunity this week, must resist fear-mongering rhetoric and permit American citizens the same right to our day in court as President Bush says was granted to Saddam Hussein.