Reporter Phone Records Being Used to Find Leaks

jackbird writes "Brian Ross, Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC news says a confidential source informed him that reporter's phone records are being used by the administration to track down leaks. Apparently reporters for the New York Times, ABC News, and the Washington Post are being scrutinized. The fact that ABC News journalists are even seriously wondering about whether the warning is connected to the NSA's domestic surveillance activities indicates just how anxious many people in Washington have become."

Comments

Re:Haha..

[crotherm]

You mean how Bush outed Plame and thus caused the undercover company that watched Iran's nukes to fold? That kind of leak?

Re:lives are at stake with leaks.

[AuMatar]

Lives aren't at stake. The reporters aren't giving out troop movement and defence plans. They're reporting about things like highly illegal wire tapping and domestic surveilance. THis is a heavy handed attempt by the administration to scare whistle blowers out of telling the American people things they need to know. We have laws to protect these people for a reason, the US goverment is flaunting them.

Re:lives are at stake with leaks.

[syphax]

(shudder, I suspect I'm going to get hammered on this one)

I hope you do. Am I the only one that remembers Nixon's enemies list?

The primary issue with all of this news regarding government snooping is oversight. Don't give me this "we're at war," "why do you care if you aren't doing anything wrong" crap. We should have a goverment of checks and balances, which were designed to limit the (almost invariably corrupting) concentration of political power. What happens when the Administration alone gets to decide what constitutes what is "wrong?"

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Martin Niemoller

I feel like an alarmist raising the specter of the creep of Totalitarianism in the U.S., but how else do you explain this? Don't feed me the war on terror talking points; consider:

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

The "I" here is Gustave Gilbert; the respondent is Hermann Goering.
I realize that by Godwin's Law I've lost this argument already, but if Goering's comments from 60 years ago don't make your spine tingle, what does?

Re:lives are at stake with leaks.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are policies in place to report corruption or illegal activities in regards to classifired material.

Yeah, that's the path that Sibel Edmonds followed:

While an FBI translator, Edmonds discovered poorly translated documents relevant to the 9-11 attacks and reported the shoddy work to her supervisors. She also expressed concerns about a co-worker who had previously worked for an organization under FBI surveillance and had a relationship with a foreign intelligence officer also under surveillance. In addition, Edmonds claimed that she was told to work slowly to give the appearance that the agency was overworked so it would receive a larger budget, despite a large backlog of documents that needed translating.

But what happened to this rule-follower?

She was fired less than a year later in March 2002 for reporting shoddy work and security breaches to her supervisors that could have prevented those attacks.

Certainly she didn't just give up did she?

Edmonds has been fighting the corruption permeating the FBI since her unfair dismissal and sued to contest her firing in July 2002. On July 6, 2004 , Judge Reggie Walton in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed Edmonds' case, citing the government's state secrets privilege.

So, following the rules, a translator reports the fact that her supervisor is inept, that there might be compromised agents in the FBI and that some of the materials involved in 9/11 were translated improperly and what happens? She gets fired. She follows the legal option and the Bush administration uses the State Secres Privelage to have her case dismissed entirely.

Seriously, if you were riding on a bus and the driver were drunk, wouldn't you want someone to say something? Or would you rather they wait and call headquarters at the next stop?

Source article [http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/18828res2005 0126.html]

Re:Apples and Oranges

[orthogonal]

Watergate had nothing to do with classified information/national security

You remember the Pentagon Papers?

Daniel Ellsberg, a former Marine and a researcher for the RAND corporation surreptitiously copied "the Pentagon Papers", a multi-volume history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Hoping to inform the American public of U.S. mistakes in Vietnam, Ellsberg then released the papers to the New York Times.

President Nixon attempted, on national security grounds, to halt their publication. When the Supreme Court declined to uphold the suppression of the papers, Nixon ordered G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt to break in to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, hoping to find information with which to publicly smear Ellsberg.

That break-in, and the others that followed at the Watergate Building, became known as the Watergate conspiracy.

It also destroyed the government's case against Ellsberg: because of the break-in and an allegation that Nixon had ordered the CIA to "totally incapacitate" (e.g., kill) Ellsberg, the government's case against Ellsberg for conspiracy and espionage was dropped.

Re:What a surprise...

[inKubus]

It amazes me that people aren't yelling and screaming about this and marching in front of the White House.

I'll be right behind you. Go, march, at LEAST yell and scream. Donate to the EFF. CALL your representatives, city, state, and federal. If you already have, choose one and do it again. Once is not always enough.

What's scary are the comments left on the ABC blog

[inertialmatrix]

The part I find incredibly frightening is that it seems so many citizens of this country do see a problem with this. Sure, they are coming for the communists first, but then what? I am afraid of the hysterical masses that are willing to hand over MY rights to the government. I grew up thinking that the whole purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect me and others like me from the wacko majority?

You know, we spend a lot of time teaching our children about the men that founded this country, however flawed personally they were, and the ideals they believed in. Maybe it's time we actually stood by those words.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Benjamin Franklin


Quotes from ABC News Blog by members of the public:
"Good! I hope they do find out who is leaking national security info to the press. I'm tired of the press helping our enemies. Maybe you guys should start trying to "FOR the USA" instead of "AGAINST the USA" ALL THE TIME. I hope the FBI nails lots of idiots who are out to destroy the intelligence agencies and cost us more soldiers and spys!"

"'Bout time you guys are roped in."

"Excellent the Media needs looking after, Traitors most of them......."

"good, you seditionist creeps deserve what you get. who knows how many serviceman have died because of your "right to know""

"I hope the information they gain allows them to catch the scum that leak information, and helps them arrest the communist scum who publish it."

"Well maybe ABC news better stop leaking classified information. This only helps our enemies and right now I believe ABC news is an enemy of the US."

"You didn't inconvenience someone, you broke the law. It's called a criminal investigation!!!!"

"I believe that it is a great idea to maintain telephone surveilance over news organizations who disclose classified and sensitive secret information. Lets nail the government employees who knowingly break their oath to not divulge classified information."

"GOOD! I hope they find out who is reporting all of these leaks. And I hope you are tried and perhaps spend some time in jail for it. KEEP CALLING and I hope they track your every word!"

Does The Constitution Still Matter?

[viewtouch]

The Constitution specifically states that there can be no laws which abridge (i.e., curtail) the freedom of the press. In plain English that means that The Constitution specifially withholds from the government any authority to even investigate the activities of the people when they are about the business of publishing information.

There are no exceptions to this - not even 'national security'.

Of course if The Constitution is considered merely to be a 'Goddamned Piece of Paper', as Bush has described it, and if the people who are involved in violating The Constitution don't care about adhering to it, then all bets are off, which is pretty much where we in the US are at these days.

Re:Wrong.

[Mr. Slippery]

Not to be an ass, but what secret CIA prisons? The ones that the EU investigated and found no proof of...

Ahem.

"The CIA has, on several occasions, clearly been responsible for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on the territory of (EU) member states, as well as for extraordinary renditions," Claudio Fava said in his first interim report of the European Parliament's probe into the alleged CIA abuses.

The article you cite says "De Vries [the CIA-abuse denier] came under sharp criticism from the EU parliamentarians for refusing to consider earlier testimonies from a German and a Canadian who described to the committee how they were kidnapped and imprisoned by foreign agents, and from a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who alleged that British intelligence services used information obtained under torture".

Asserting that the EU investigated and found no proof of CIA kidnapping may have a comforting feel of "truthiness" for you, but I'm afraid that reality once again is showing a liberal bias.

Re:Standard Police procedure

[jsac]

We know that they did not bother with such technicalities. They explicitly refused to get an order from the FISA court, when Qwest asked for one.

Re:Good stuff!

[TubeSteak]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tru thiness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

The truthiness of this statement is 100%