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Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe
- bcn 13y agoThe CEO of AP, Gary Pruitt, responds to Holder (DOJ) regarding the record seizure- http://www.ap.org/Images/Letter-to-Eric-Holder_tcm28-12896.pdf http://www.ap.org/Images/Letter-to-Eric-Holder_tcm28-12896.p...
- rapsourly 13y agoHave you come across any DoJ justification? As Pruitt notes, "[t]hese records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities." That's a pretty good way to inhibit future "newsgathering operations," turning potential future sources into fearful non-sources.
- untog 13y agoThis- to put it mildly- is Not Good. I'll quote David Carr's tweet[1],which best sums up my feelings on the matter: Lemme see, IRS going after political opponents plus DOJ tapping AP reporters. Nixonian optics on "the most transparent admin in history." I do wonder what kind of a legacy the Obama administration will leave to history when these kinds of events are stacked up. [1] https://twitter.com/carr2n/status/334055243379785728 https://twitter.com/carr2n/status/334055243379785728
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jacoblyles 13y agoIf you're making a list of the most tyrannical Presidents ever, you'd have to put FDR near the top of that. And his reputation has survived. Obama is a progressive. So are history professors. His legacy will be fine.
- harold 13y agoI'm not so sure. I think he's done some good work. But he's also on the precipice of having a whole generation of young idealists getting the shaft when it comes to the price of healthcare next year - if a new congressional report is to be believed. Disclosure: this is my submission from earlier today on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702248
- rhizome 13y agoNah, it's just that Hoover did such a good job it makes FDR look bad by comparison.
- logn 13y ago> Obama is a progressive Not so sure that will be part of his legacy. He generally concedes to corporate will and is so accommodating to Republicans he plans to cut social security, which they're now criticizing him for. Let's not forget that Republicans (McCain) supported national healthcare to some extent. If anything, Obama will be appreciated by progressives for his liberal Supreme Court appointments, but whether he's ever remembered as a progressive remains to be seen. Though, it's definitely what Fox News would have you think.
- smaili 13y agoHow does the government "secretly" obtain information? Did they hack the AP? Was it an inside job? Better yet, if it was so secret, how did the AP even find out that the DoJ obtained their records? Something doesn't add up...
- reustle 13y agoI would think they could have easily contacted the carriers of the phone numbers, which would quickly hand over whatever data they were requesting.
- Zikes 13y agoPhone records may be subpoenaed from the phone service providers. As the article notes, part of that process is to later notify affected service users of the subpoena, which they did on Friday by way of a letter to the AP.
- bcn 13y agoThe AP was with "notified" in a letter... From the article, "News organizations normally are notified in advance that the government wants phone records and enter into negotiations over the desired information. In this case, however, the government, in its letter to the AP, cited an exemption to those rules..." and then, "It is unknown whether a judge or a grand jury signed off on the subpoenas."
- mpyne 13y agoI guess the point is that it's not really a "secret" (which implies that a cover-up has been blown). Rather it's post-facto notification.
- r00fus 13y agoShouldn't this posting be from a neutral source, say Reuters, or some distinguished blog rather than the AP themselves? Otherwise, I'd recommend putting the quotes around the accusagion (ie, AP claims Govt has obtained their phone records, etc). Perhaps the government here is actually in the correct?
- dstanchfield 13y agoWell, since the AP is breaking the story, do you suggest we hang out until Reuters covers it?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- travisp 13y agoI don't think there's really much of a question of the basic facts, unless you think the AP has forged the letter from the Justice Department that was received Friday?
- stfu 13y agoActually we need more of that! Whatever it takes to help media wake up and become more critical of government intrusion tactics.
- rwmj 13y agoNo we don't. Most of this is already reported, if you want to look for it. If you're worried that citizens of your country aren't interested in those stories, you should get out and make more people aware.
- stfu 13y agoThis is about agenda setting. Media coverage determines what gets covered and what not. Scandals like these make government's ongoing privacy intrusion a real, tangible issue. If I go around spreading the gospel, I am just an internet tinfoil head. If it is the headline on a national newspaper, it is a real issue that needs discussion.
- danso 13y agoMaybe my memory's failing me, but I can't think of a similarly-sized press surveillance operation by the Bush Administration. Keep in mind that under Obama, more alleged government leakers have been prosecuted than all of his predecessors combined: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leakers-sends-warning-to-whistle-blowers.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leak... This includes administrations that oversaw such problematic eras as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the McCarthy Era, and of course, the War on Terrorism.
- axus 13y agoMaybe Alberto Gonzalez never bothered to send the letter. The scary thing is, how would we ever know that the government is respecting the security of our privacy, if they have to power to ignore it?
- tptacek 13y agoThis was an interesting argument, so I did some quick research. Apparently, six (6) Espionage Act cases have been filed under Obama. I found and read the indictments for each (they're easy to find, since FAS tracks them). They were: * Thomas Drake, an NSA employee who favored "ThinThread" instead of the later-adopted "Trailblazer" internet surveillance scheme, who then created a Hushmail account and fed classified documents to a reporter from it. * Shamai Leibowitz, an FBI contractor/interpreter, who fed the contents of an cable intercepted from the Israeli embassy to a blogger because he felt it implicated Israel in an attack on Iran. * Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a career civil servant at State who worked on counterproliferation and North Korea and fed classified documents about North Korea to Fox News, and then lied to the FBI about having any contact with journalists. * Bradley Manning * Jeffrey Sterling, who was fired from the CIA, lodged a series of employment law disputes with the CIA, attempted to write a memoir about his time at CIA, and then fed classified details about Iranian counterproliferation to a reporter which put a human intelligence resource at risk. * John Kiriakou, a CIA counterterrorism official who worked in Pakistan, who outed two covert operatives to a reporter (they had allegedly been involved in the Bush-era interrogation program). Of this list, Kiriakou and Drake are sympathetic to me, but every single case here seems like a valid prosecution; when you take a role that requires you to handle the most sensitive data the government handles, you cannot share it with the press expecting not to end up arguing your side of the story in a court of law. You certainly can't out covert operatives, or feed foreign intercepts you translate to bloggers!
- sehugg 13y agoThis is the May 2012 story the AP claims to have set off the investigation, the writers of which were allegedly the targets (linked from Business Insider): http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-07/al-qaeda-bomb-plot-foiled/54811054/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05...
- revelation 13y agoIronically, that story reads like yet another NYTimes "well informed insider" report: U.S. officials, who were briefed on the operation, insisted on anonymity to discuss the case, which the U.S. has never officially acknowledged.
- spikels 13y agoWhat's really crazy is that this was a big success and was probably leaked by someone proud of the achievement. Meanwhile someone else had decided to pursue these drastic measures to find the leaker. They may even work together. In any event the operation was going to be announced a week later. Perhaps the real offense was spoiling a triumphant press conference.
- SpikedCola 13y agoIs anyone even surprised by the actions of the U.S. Government anymore?
- Zikes 13y agoAre there currently any VOIP+Tor type technologies that could reasonably replace existing telephone services and prevent this sort of thing in the future?
- kunai 13y agoVOIP is just as easily snooped as regular lines. It's not as easy, but you can do it with the right tools.
- Zikes 13y agoWhich is the "+Tor" part, which both encrypts the data and obscures the sending and receiving parties.
- evan_ 13y ago> VOIP is just as easily snooped as regular lines. It's not as easy, but you can do it with the right tools. Wait, is it just as easy or not as easy?
- mpyne 13y agoThe point is that there's no difference when the resources of the government are put to the task.
- aasarava 13y agoAdding to your question, it seems there are two things that are needed: Reducing reliance on a third-party service (phone company, Skype, etc.) that may keep call records which can be subpoenaed; and encrypting the conversation itself so it can't be monitored. It seeems there are "crypto phones", but do these still rely on a third-party service to initiate and transmit the call? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_phone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_phone
- Zikes 13y agoFrom what I can gather, those crypto phones will encrypt the communication but the identity of the two parties and the duration of the calls would still be known.
- jhspaybar 13y agoThey told me if I voted for McCain that we'd end up living in a police state after 8 years...and they were right! Credit to Instapundit if you care to see more from the most transparent administration ever http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=%22They+told+me+if+I+voted+for+John+McCain%22 http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=%22They+told+me+if+I+voted...
- kunai 13y agoPretty much both sides of the spectrum look pretty grim. I used to be a hard-ass liberal, but now I've changed my outlook, matured a bit, and become a libertarian. Their philosophy makes the most sense, but no one seems to listen.
- moens 13y agoDemosthenes and Locke are the only voices allowed... and you must rabidly adhere to one or the other. Ah, Ender, didn't you know?
- kunai 13y agohttp://xkcd.com/635/ http://xkcd.com/635/
- TruthElixirX 13y agoIf you are a former liberal turned libertarian I highly recommend http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/ http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/. They're liberals but use a libertarian ethic framework, sort of.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoLet's not forget the IRS having authority to pull all electronic communications from an entity without any kind of oversight at all (because they are a "special" agency) and now word that some of the documents they've been pulling, perhaps against policy, were leaked to the press. I tried to post an analysis of why the IRS story was important to hackers everywhere earlier. It was killed. Beats me why. Some wag said it was just more political bullshit. I quite understand people who want to hear exclusively about Erlang innards and point out there are plenty of other places for articles that involve any politics at all. But this is the world we live in, and the technologies we are developing are being used for this stuff. One day some guy writes code to exploit MITM attacks for web devices, and one day very soon afterwards some despotic government uses it to target and kill people. You can't continue to hide your head in the sand and pretend that somehow some really cool tech will come along and save the day, so back to the Apple and SV gossip tripe. That's simply not realistic. We don't write pure technology. We create powerful tools that impact the lives of people everywhere. It is not rational to pretend that impact does not exist. I guarantee you that some hacker in the audience probably played a role in the software used for the AP intercept. ADD: And the joke I've been thinking about all day which must come out: they don't make a Hallmark card for this.
- aasarava 13y agoAs far as I can tell, there was no real "intercept" in this case other than the government asking for records of calls. So the software involved was probably just a SQL query. That said, I do agree with the point you're making that there can be a larger context to our work. Indeed, it can give meaning to our work. I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys writing iPhone apps; but the prevalence of things like Stuxnet, and Chinese cyber spying, and Bitcoin (in particular the political philosophy behind its origin), and Facebook (and its implications for privacy), and now the AP subpoena, is increasingly telling me that there's a huge opportunity to use tech skills to make a difference in the world. And the people most suited to do it are people who understand both politics and technology.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoMore to the point, we're involved in this whether we want to be or not
- dweekly 13y agoI posted this on my FB wall, pretty outraged, and a friend of mine who is a former federal prosecutor had this to say in response: Let me provide some context: this was certainly not unchecked or without oversight. In fact, any time phone records are requested by federal subpoena as part of a criminal investigation (which is what happened here), the subpoenas are checked by a federal grand jury and -- later in the process -- open for judicial and public review. During the investigative phase, subpoenas are kept sealed in court records to protect the privacy rights of innocent people and to maintain investigative integrity. This is a normal part of our legal process, and consistent with best international practices. Also, because of obvious free press concerns, there are special checks in place whenever you want to subpoena records of press officials. You have to prove that it's necessary for the criminal investigation and that there is no other way to get the info. It's actually such a pain in the ass (lots of paperwork and waiting for a long line of signatures) that no one would want to go through it unless it was absolutely necessary. Here, they're investigating criminal leakage of classified information about a CIA's disruption of a terrorist plot to blow up an airliner on the anniversary of bin Laden's death. Whoever leaked the information committed a serious crime and likely put lives in danger. (Confidential sources are important to reporters, but they are perhaps even more important and certainly harder to come by for intelligence officers. CIA may have worked for years to acquire the source that allowed them to foil the terrorist plot, and that source may now be dead as a result of the leak of classified information.) The article has fairly limited information but says that there were 20 phone lines for which records were subpoenaed. This number would be consistent with investigation of a leak to one of a small handful of people, and although we won't know until court records are ultimately unsealed, I suspect the records requested for the office lines were probably tailored in scope to match that set of people. Like I said, the approval process is onerous, and you have a much better chance of getting things signed if you really narrow the scope of your request (e.g., "We know the data was leaked in this 3 day period, and we suspect the info was received by this person, who worked in the office from 4-8pm those days, so we'll request those times.") The records you get back from the phone company include phone numbers called and duration of calls, and then you can subpoena other records if you see any numbers that match up with the person suspected of leaking the classified info. I think it's important to keep in mind that our intelligence operations play a critical role in keeping us safe. If we're unwilling to accept law enforcement's role in protecting our intelligence services, then we should expect more attacks like the one that happened in Boston.