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U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records
- raylu 13y agoSince when was it OK to even subpoena reporters?
- tptacek 13y agoIt has always been OK to subpoena reporters. Reporters enjoy no special protections in federal law.
- raylu 13y agoBut for their sources? Am I missing something or is that obviously not OK?
- TWAndrews 13y agoThe press believes it is not ok, and some of them have spent time in jail to avoid revealing their sources. There are no special protections from a legal perspective, however.
- mpyne 13y agoIt's allowable. In fact I thought last decade some reporter went to prison for years for "contempt of court" for refusing to comply with a valid subpoena (but I forget the name).
- tptacek 13y agoJudith Miller was jailed for refusing to out Bush administration sources who outed Valerie Plame's status as a covert operative as political retribution.
- mpyne 13y agoYes, that's the one, thanks.
- theflyingkiwi42 13y agoLewis Libby did not out Valerie Plame's status. It was reporter Robert Novak who did. It was also never 'leaked' as political retribution. "In late August 2006, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed publicly that Novak had based his disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's CIA identity on then still-classified information that Armitage initially gave him while Armitage was still serving in the State Department." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair_timeline
- tptacek 13y agoThat is an interesting new definition of "out", where telling a reporter doesn't count, but the reporter's story does.
- hga 13y agoThe CIA assumed in the first half of the '90s that Aldrich Ames burned her covert status, so she was withdraw from that role long before any of this happened. Just another desk bound "operative" in McLean, Virginia, where there's a highway turnoff sign to the HQ.
- tptacek 13y agoI'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Outing a covert agent also risks outing other resources in the area, or sources and methods. In any case, it was clearly not a good idea for Scooter Libby to reveal her identity to Bob Novak.
- hga 13y agoFirst: "In any case, it was clearly not a good idea for Richard Armitage to reveal her identity to Bob Novak." Let's keep the established facts straight. Otherwise, since you're ignoring my statement that she was no longer a covert agent when this happened, I'm not sure what's the point of your reply.
- OGinparadise 13y agoWow! Besides the new level of audacity, whatever happened to "Never picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel" ?
- sneak 13y agoSecond amendment's been gone for a while. Fifth and fourteenth haven't been seen in a minute, either. Peaceable assembly's overrated anyway. (RNC '04) How much of the first needs to be gone until it's enough to recognize that the USA is no longer a free society? How many whistleblowers, security researchers, and cryptographers need to be thrown in prison on bullshit trumped-up charges? How many hunger-striking political prisoners need to be held in secret prisons indefinitely without trial? How many decades of PATRIOT Act abuses of individual privacy will be enough? It's time to emigrate. Vote with your tax dollars.
- grecy 13y ago>It's time to emigrate. http://www.reddit.com/r/iwantout http://www.reddit.com/r/iwantout http://www.reddit.com/r/igotout http://www.reddit.com/r/igotout
- angersock 13y agoYes, because as a foreign national you'll be so much more protected from the US. Don't be daft.
- jlgreco 13y agoWhen we have a situation where we are afraid to leave the system, as is our right, then the system can no longer be said to be just.
- DamnYuppie 13y agoWell said. I hope more of our country men feel this way and vote accordingly.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoYou don't get to vote, you get to choose among several pre-selected candidates. Or maybe you could say the two parties vote for you, and they sure as fuck aren't looking for your input on that. To achieve critical mass for substantial change requires more than voting.
- AJ007 13y agoIts sad that high profile news organizations in the United States now need to use secure communication channels out of fear of being harassed by their own government.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoThey have always needed to communicate securely.
- genwin 13y agoThey haven't shown the gov't who's the boss since Watergate. They've been content to be subservient since then. Next, gov't will require them to use decryptable communications.
- guelo 13y agoAs far as we know the government only obtained records of the timestamps and endpoints of the communication, not the content. Encryption wouldn't help there, you need something like Tor. But the problem is that in order to setup a comm channel over Tor you would have to communicate over an insecure channel to set it up. Any idea of what could be the solution for a news org?
- AJ007 13y agoI said secure, not encrypted, for that reason. This isn't a problem that needs one solution, but multiple, layered ones. Communication should be disposable and deniable.
- salimmadjd 13y agoThis is so strange! When was a last time AP released anything that wasn't more than government PR. On many important issues like lead up to Iraq war and now to a potential Iran war, AP has just reported what's been expected of them. My thought is the wiretap was set to catch potential whistleblowers than to do anything with reporters or AP itself.
- johnvschmitt 13y agoCorrect. The government probably figured, they don't need a subpoena, because they already manage the AP so closely. You aren't hearing any serious dissent from the AP. That said, we have to be vigilant about any overreach, as civil rights are too hard to get back once you give them up.
- mpyne 13y agoAs far as I can tell this was done via subpoena (but it's uncertain under whose authority the subpoena was issued, it may not have been a judge or grand jury). Had there not been a subpoena the U.S. would likely not have informed the AP of the search at all.
- jbuzbee 13y agoGive me a break - I'll assume you're just woefully uninformed. For example: http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD
- _account 13y agoIt's not strange at all. If the AP's sources just disappeared, the word would be out to any future sources/marks that the AP gives up sources...but if the big bad government did this rare, but effective overreach...the spooks can still terminate the leak and the AP has plausible denial. The CIA wants to maintain the AP's ability to lure in more leaks in the future.
- jbuzbee 13y agoOh, another complex conspiracy theory. Rolls eyes...
- rorrr2 13y agoI hope AP switches to encrypted VOIP after this. Along with everyone else.
- TWAndrews 13y agoI expect that will change the tone of coverage of news stories on surveillance issues.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoSo inside of just a few days, we have political opposition groups targeted for audits -- including questions about donors and volunteers -- and surveillance of the press. The easier we make it for some analyst in FBI headquarters to determine everywhere a potential terrorist cell has been, the easier we make it for some other analyst to conduct political spying and harassment like the world has never seen before. You can't pick one and not get the other. In many, many ways, the political side of this is the worst part. This has nothing to do with parties or politics. It's the normal and automatic result of the creation of systems without appropriate checks and balances.
- MartinCron 13y agowe have political opposition groups targeted for audits That could be extremely ugly politics, or it may not be. Paying special attention to tax status compliance of anti-tax activists might just be a pragmatic profiling. Kind of like giving extra attention to young men flying alone on one way tickets while checking no luggage.
- hga 13y agoYou really should check your facts before simply repeating the current party line. The acknowledged scope of the targeted investigations is so wildly beyond "anti-tax activists" the mind boggles. And see also e.g. Z Street's allegations about being questioned WRT to its views et. al. of Israel.
- MartinCron 13y agosimply repeating the current party line No, the party line is that that targeting some groups is "Outrageous". I'm taking the unpopular contrarian position that maybe some organizations are more prone to be compliant with tax laws than others.
- gyardley 13y agoThe same office released the confidential application documents of conservative groups to ProPublica. http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-tea-party-also-disclosed-confidential-docs http://www.propublica.org/article/irs-office-that-targeted-t... Perhaps you could argue that digging into these groups was being 'prudent', if that was in fact all they did. (I'm not buying it - being opposed to taxation has nothing to do with the eligibility requirements for a 501c4.) But whatever could be the justification for sharing a confidential application with the press, if not partisan politics? That's actually a felony, not that anyone will ever be charged.
- Flemlord 13y agoStellar. Maybe we'll finally see some real outrage in the media about the erosion of civil liberties in the US.
- DamnYuppie 13y agoI sincerely hope we do, yet I fear we won't as the media is basically a bunch of whimpering liberals with no desire to ask the hard questions.
- advisedwang 13y agoI hope everyone noticed this is an AP-written article so might not totally impartial here.
- electic 13y agoI want to vomit. I feel very sick just reading this.
- speeder 13y agoI am from Brazil, and I must ask: Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom, when US ignores its own constitution, takes away freedom from its citizens, and most important to me, takes away freedom from citizens of other countries while claiming to do the exact opposite? I am from Brazil, and many people here remember the US backed (and enforced sometimes) rightwing government that we had during the cold war. Many people remember their loved ones that will never come back from our prisons, or from CIA hands. Many people in many countries, why the US come to "save" them, and instead put in power people like Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Castelo Branco, Augusto Pinochet, Mohammad Pahlavi, and many, many, many others. US only care about its corporations, it only fights to defend its profits, it is clear when it kicked João Goulart out of Brazil for supporting agrarian reform and other left-leaning policies, when it helped rebels kill both Lybia and Iraq leaders after they stopped selling oil for USD, when it "saved" Afghanistan from URSS by training Osama Bin Laden... I think it is a outrage that people around the world only started to remember 11 of september after the Trade Center was attacked, not after US bombed Chile (9/11/1973) and forcefully kicked out a elected president to "save" chileans and give them "democracy" in the form of a oppressive dictator friendly to US business.
- angersock 13y agoNow, you can hardly judge a country on one or two acts of unrelated political activism abroad... :P More seriously, it's complex--painting it in the simplest broad strokes of "The US only cares about corporations" is unfair. The US is not the US; it's a combination of local, state, and federal governments and bureaucracies. There's almost certainly near no magical evil council sitting atop it all scheming about how to wring profits from other countries at any cost; instead, we have the misguided actions and interactions of generally well-meaning people that are so segregated from the big picture and scared of losing their jobs that they make mistakes which snowball.
- uptown 13y ago"instead, we have the misguided actions and interactions of generally well-meaning people that are so segregated from the big picture and scared of losing their jobs that they make mistakes which snowball." That's a pretty generous supposition ... in regard to both intent and competency.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- beedogs 13y agoWhy don't you try contributing something "of much higher quality", then?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- iguana 13y agoWhat value does your comment have? If you don't agree, tell us why. Otherwise, why comment in the first place? To tell us we suck? Have you ever seen the comments on CNN, Yahoo, etc? I find the quality of discourse on HN WRT politics is excellent, especially politics that have technological implications. HN arguably has the least partisan approach, and those that disagree tend to do so politely.
- beedogs 13y agoUSA is becoming Germany circa 1934.
- twoodfin 13y agohn is becoming reddit circa 2007.
- brown9-2 13y agoMost of the comments here are decrying the death of freedom, but isn't a subpoena the lawful and ideal way for the government to go about this sort of thing? Is a leak of classified information not supposed to be investigated?
- belorn 13y agoThe leak of classified information should be investigated in proportion to the damage that said leak caused. Otherwise its not an ideal way, and even questionable if its lawful. If the government has clear and verifiable evidence of damage that has happen as a result of said leak, then there should be documents to show it. Where are the dead bodies or the loss of material goods?
- vaadu 13y agoThis is not the US. This is the DOJ, which is not the same thing. This is only going to make the hole deeper for Obama with the Benghazi and IRS scandals already aboil.
- mikecane 13y ago>>>The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. News organizations that have consistently rolled over and let the government have its way with secret this and secret that -- and they're shocked! shocked! that they are subjected to secret ops too? Wake the eff up, special snowflakes.
- Zenst 13y agoWell, for all those people who thought they had access to this information on-tap. Clearly that is not the case.
- lettergram 13y agoThis post and (more predominantly) some of the comments seem to be swaying dangerously close to breaking the guidelines of the site... Instead of arguing politics (ie the moral argument) it would be more interesting to discuss the reasoning behind the wire taps or the implications of such a wire tap.
- Alex3917 13y agoThis is funny. First the NY Times purposely buries its own story about the warrantless wiretapping in order to get Bush reelected. Then they complain when it starts to look like they could be the ones getting wiretapped. What a bunch of morons.
- grandalf 13y agoThere is not any kind of recourse that would result in consequences for the government officials who committed this crime. If the public cared, this kind of thing could potentially result in Obama's impeachment. Since the public doesn't care, it's a tempest in a teapot. The nice thing for the officials is that while this kind of story riles some people up a bit, it quite effectively sends a chilling message at journalists and would-be informants. Surely a cost-benefit analysis was conducted and ironically the NY Times coverage is part of the desired outcome. Consider for a moment what the coverage would be like if there were truly a hostile/adversarial relationship between the press and the government. The public does not care about the rule of law, so we don't have it. There is no better way to join the establishment than to become a reporter.
- tantalor 13y agoSee also, "Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers-infiltrate-new-york-times-computers.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers... In each case, a government accessed a newspaper's network without authorization to determine the source of a leak.
- drill_sarge 13y agoeveryone should watch this from 29c3 Not my department [29c3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw Enemies of the State [29C3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs after this nothing of what happened here should surprise you
- codex 13y agoThe U.S. did not secretly obtain these records. It notified the AP that these records were obtained using a valid subpoena, which by law needs to be approved by the attorney general. Subpoenas of phone records happens all the time in both criminal investigations and civil cases. This is just the AP using the propaganda power of its infinite supply of ink to attempt to protect itself from criminal investigations. Congratulations, HN--you fell for it. The amount of critical thinking on this site has dropped to unmeasurable levels.
- obstacle1 13y agoIt isn't as cut-and-dry as you're pretending. The AP's complaint is that the records obtained were unreasonably broad in scope, which goes against the DoJ's guidelines w/r/t news subpoenas. >Rules published by the Justice Department require that subpoenas of records of news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general, but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained through subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington. >A subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period," according to the rules. >The reason for these constraints, the department says, is to avoid actions that "might impair the news gathering function" because the government recognizes that "freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news." Regarding the attorney general approving subpoenas, >Rules published by the Justice Department require that subpoenas of records of news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general, but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained through subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington. In general it is really shady that so many things are 'unknown' about this. Presumably the reporters who wrote this article should have been able to gather this information (since the article is itself written by the AP). That they didn't implies either a) that the journalists are supremely incompetent, or b) that the DoJ is intentionally withholding information it normally has to hand over by law or regulation. That may be why the journos are calling this "secret" information gathering.
- Fuxy 13y agoAnd this is why privacy is important. I think we should give the people from the AP a little basic surveillance avoidance tips. Like say... don't use your office, personal or work phones for confidential informants. Use a prepaid card from a location you wouldn't normally go to and trow it away. (single use)
- rjohnk 13y agoCan't we all just get along?