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Why DOJ Didn't Need a "Super Search Warrant" To Snoop On Fox News' E-mail
awaissoft writes "If attorney general Eric Holder wanted to perform even a momentary Internet wiretap on Fox News' e-mail accounts, he would have had to persuade a judge to approve what lawyers call a 'super search warrant.' A super search warrant's requirements are exacting: Intercepted communications must be secured and placed under seal. Real-time interception must be done only as a last resort. Only certain crimes qualify for this technique, the target must be notified, and additional restrictions apply to state and local police conducting real-time intercepts. But because of the way federal law was written nearly half a century ago, Holder was able to obtain a normal search warrant — lacking those extensive privacy protections — that allowed federal agents to secretly obtain up to six years of email correspondence between Fox News correspondent James Rosen and his alleged sources."
Investigative journalism apparently. You know, the stuff that the major networks gave up on years ago.
I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
Perhaps the more relevant question should be what does anyone do to justify wiretapping, which in this police state, amounts to jack shit.
(I didn't use the word "warrant" here, because that might imply they need to follow the law and obtain one. They don't.)
But hey, keep arguing red vs. blue and vote for that two-party system. You see how much fucking good it does...
Did you even bother to read the story at the link you provided?
The story there tells us that FoxNews knew of a telephone records search, but not of an email search.
"CNN and other media outlets have previously reported a separate Justice Department query into Rosen's e-mails. With the approval of Attorney General Eric Holder, Justice officials obtained a warrant from a federal judge to access Rosen's e-mails.
While Fox News is now acknowledging that the Justice Department notified its parent company about the phone records search, that notice apparently did not include anything about the separate search of Rosen's e-mail."
Leftist here. It's not OK because its Fox and it's not OK because Obama did it. And FYI I'm sure the government would have also engaged in unconstitutional wire tapping were Romney (or Paul, or [Insert your favorite controlled opposition candidate here]).
Your problem might be that you have mistaken Democrats for actual leftists.
I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
It's not what they did; it's what the person talking to them was allegedly doing. The Executive branch was investigating a leak from one of its own, and Fox News was on the receiving end of the information, apparently, so by wiretapping Fox News' communications, they were hoping to find the source of the leak.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Don't let the Red/Blue Faux News debate cloud this issue. It doesn't matter who did it or to whom it is not okay and this policy should be banned.
I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
Journalism.
No, seriously: James Rosen asked someone at the State Department questions about North Korea.
Because that apparently could involve classified information (not that it necessarily did), Obama's Department of Justice pulled six years of Rosen's email.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
Rosen reported that,
"U.S. intelligence officials have warned President Obama and other senior American officials that North Korea intends to respond to the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution this week... with another nuclear test,"
And now the "Justice" Department is telling us that they consider him an accomplice to espionage.
Essentially, the reporter in question wrote an article just to say that we had a high-level asset inside the North Korean government. There was no new factual information in the article otherwise - just the need to out a spy in an article about North Korea responding to sanctions. Similar to the AP case, where the reporter felt the need to out the fact that the British had an undercover operative inside Al Qaida who delivered them a sample bomb for analysis.
Not shocking this is flagged informative by the left leaning slashdot. Gotta circle the troops around the commander and chief. God forbid he is worse than GWB, which is a feat in itself no one could have imagined.
An administration spying on journalists and using the IRS as a political tool is chilling as fuck and every single American ought to be scared as shit of it. Oh wait, you voted for him? Makes it ok I guess!
It's not what they did; it's what the person talking to them was allegedly doing. The Executive branch was investigating a leak from one of its own, and Fox News was on the receiving end of the information, apparently, so by wiretapping Fox News' communications, they were hoping to find the source of the leak.
This is exactly the kind of activity that is supposed to be prohibited by the 1st amendment; attempting to force the press (covertly or not) to reveal the identity of their sources.
They investigate what they choose to investigate for their own ends. No network has given that up. Fox News just tends to be investigating a lot more now, with a left leaning president, while during W they mostly just pandered. Now MSNBC is in pander mode, having done the "investigating" thing during W.
Pretending anything else is just exposing your personal bias. The crime here is our news outlets have such blatant bias, and very little dedication to journalism and conveying the facts to the masses. Worst, people actually think that what these organizations are doing is truth.
Doesn't matter who's fault it is...
who started privacy abuses,
what party is/was in power.
There is something going terribly wrong here.
We, as Americans,
have obviously slid quite a little way down the slippery slope,
toward something quite different than the bastion of freedom we like to think of ourselves as...
We should be doing something more about it than pointing fingers and playing politics.
Yes but Gouvernments these days asks themselves the important question of "What Would Nixon Do?".
Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
The countries that failed where not leftist. The only said they were.
Countries that are actually leftist are doing pretty well. Sweden, among others.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Fox is the most honest mainstream new outlet in the US with CNN coming in second. Every news outlet has bias but I think Fox provides less fluff and candy-coated "news". Ms. Crowly at CNN and many many others at CNN are in love with the President. While that is fine, it seems to shape what they say regarding news. For example, the only thing on CNN this week was the Jodi Arias trial which to me isn't newsworthy but they did this to hide the fact the administration (e.g. IRS, DOJ, and President) are all involved in various scandals. Fox reported this and barely mentioned the trial, which is how it should be. You got to hope the news outlets report on things that matter, on things that could screw or unscrew the country. I don't like or dislike President Obama, but I absolutely despise how the media is ignoring the administration's lack of regard for the Constitution, for federal laws, for state laws, or for American values. The only way to keep our politicians in check is to report on the things they do that we don't agree with.
You can attack me all you want but in the end you're just parroting liberal talking points and are unable to think about the future and what's ultimately good for our country. Socialism is where we're headed. Seems good on the surface because you get "free stuff" but when they run out of money to give away the free stuff they tax and tax and tax. When that's not enough they confiscate everything to redistribute it to who needs it. It never ends well so we need to find something short of Socialism. President Obama may be on track or may not be, I personally think he's gone a little too far, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. In the end, it's the media's fault for not holding politicians accountable.
Under the law they used for the warrant, they didn't have to notify until 90 days after the termination of the intercept.
But since the intercept was continuous, and for all we know, still on-going, they never notified about Rosen's mail.
The whole article is a mess of obfuscation until you read to the bottom of the the story where it FINALLY gets to the point:
The gradual supplanting of the POP protocol, where messages typically were not left on mail servers and available for law enforcement, by the newer server-based IMAP protocol also encouraged this shift.
Any mail you keep on a service for more than 6 months is considered abandoned, and fair game. This means ANY IMAP account outside of your premises is wide open to seizure.
Which means every google/microsoft/yahoo mail account is fair game under the obsolete 68 law unless you take careful pains to only and always use POP, and never leave a copy on the server.
The law is clearly being deliberately misused, and the mail is not abandoned, as long as the account is being used.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If you are an honest individual, the easiest way to show you that you are wrong is to have you look at youtube for the times where they have taken news from elsewhere and spliced it together to try to make something which never existed... for example, fox took a segment from the daily show during the 2008 election and did just that.
I am being polite here, the alternative to the above would just be a troll fest.
An infringement on the freedom of the press, or the confidentiality of sources, is a threat to democracy regardless of whether it targets an actual news agency or a mockery thereof.
Funny...
When it's a shitbag PFC posting to wikileaks, it's all Save The Whistle-blower around here.
THL phish sticks
Congress should pass an adjusted law and move on rather than making it a witch hunt. Trying to milk it as a "dirty conspiracy" will just pull BOTH parties (deeper) into the mud.
Computerized gerrymandering is part of the problem: politicians redraw their own districts to be slanted politically so that all they have to do is kiss up to extremists to get re-elected rather than do real work.
Table-ized A.I.
It's just hundreds of innocent Mexicans murdered by guns the administration supplied to drug cartels. How is that a scandal?
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney made his dog ride on top of the family car once. Sorry widows and orphans of murdered Mexicans, you lose.
Especially as the PFC actually raised his right hand and swore to be a good and obedient soldier. His was an act of treason whereas reporters are generally depended upon to be all about the story they are after. This is Fox News though. A lot of the left hates them enough to not mind if the administration they worship pisses all over the First Amendment. I noticed most of the leftist media though wasn't so happy about it however. They, unlike the liberals here, are smart enough to realize that one day there might be another Republican administration (I doubt it but I guess it could happen) and they don't like the precedent this sets. To me this is just another sign that using e-mail is not a good idea. If I was in the news business I'd start raising pigeons.
I'd love a link to that.
> Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
It is absolutely a major scandal. But Fox trivializes the scandal by politicizing it. Instead of making it about government run amok, they keep trying to make it about the "other team" running amok. That is a major disservice because it makes people like the OP tune out. They are the little network that cried Fox.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Nobody gave the cartels anything. They sold them to the cartels. We're running out of money and we've got to get some revenue somehow.
Please tell me what you would consider a scandal.
Mitt Romney said 47% of people don't pay income taxes and so his tax cut message might not appeal to them. Scandal-palooza!
(Sorry dead Mexicans and grieving widows and orphans and parents of murdered children. You lose.)
President Obama is a firm supporter of civil liberties. At least for people that agree with him.
Yes but Governments these days asks themselves the important question of "What Would Nixon Do?"
Quick, get someone over to the Watergate!
So your issue isn't that all of those done were done by the Republicans as well, but that the complaints are all by impotent radio talk show hosts if the Democrats are in power, and protesters if the Republicans are in power? You've missed the issue.
Learn to love Alaska
Fox News only cares because it's happening to them.
At least they care about it for some reason. They may be hypocrites and only care about their own, but things like this make the press more sensitive to such issues and people in general more aware.
Howcum it wasn't a major scandal when Bush was doing the same thing?
Could it be the House and was Republican for 6 out of his 8 years in office?
Does that "current events" selection include all of Obama's scandals and coverups? Or is it limited to who won American Idol and how big Kim Kararshian's ass is?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
First, Team Obama have had an effort underway since the start of their campaign in late 2007 to push the theme that Fox news is evil/bad/untrustworthy because it is the ONLY network in the US with no financial ties, employment ties, or family ties (by blood or marriage) to the Obama campaign and PR people (look it up... it's shocking how many at the other news outlets have either worked for the Obama admin, fund raised for them, or are married or biologically related to them). No other president in U.S. History has had the media in his pocket to this degree. PBS is financially dependent on him. The NBC network (via GE and including MSNBC) had its CEO in the Obama team, partly funded Obama, and GE itself was untaxed under Obama (but of course this has NOTHING to do with the relentless pro-Obama NBC and MSNBC coverage...). If you watch any news outlet other than Fox, ask yourself how often you have seen a reporter shouting tough questions at Obama and how many times you have seen stories about Obama policies or actions that did not presume he was right. This used to be the norm with ALL news outlets and all previous presidents... not with Obama... with Obama, the press is friendly to him and always assumes as the baseline of any story that he is a good guy doing good things... it's like 1936 Germany... a progressive press spoon-feeding good news about a progressive leader to a public which therefore, seeing nearly nothing negative about him approves of him getting more and more power over their lives... it's bizarre and unsettling to see AMERICANS interviewed about Obama talking about him in such messianic terms as some now do (we've seen this play before and it rarely ends well).
The Obama campaign to de-legitimize Fox has included the effort to flood You-Tube with anti-Fox bits. Obama's human drone supporters flood message boards with anti-Fox stuff all the time in an effort to keep people from getting any news that might be critical of Obama.
Second, it's the Daily Show (which, DUH, is a COMEDY show) that doctors the news clips (to help set-up comedy and satire bits). Fox has repeatedly shown entire news clips then showed Jon Stewart's take on the matters (using hacked bits of the Fox video) and debunked this stuff... Jon Stewart and his supporters either ignore it or say "so what? he's a COMEDIAN...nobody takes this SERIOUSLY!".
People who think that ANYTHING they get on a COMEDY channel from two Democrat SATIRISTS (Stewart and Colbert) is actual NEWS are fools... exactly the sort that Obama NEEDS to vote for him and support him and NEVER watch anything like Fox that might debunk anything he says/does.
You, sir, have been manipulated by the nation's court jester on behalf of his king... and you do not even know it. Very sad indeed
They investigate what they choose to investigate for their own ends. No network has given that up. Fox News just tends to be investigating a lot more now, with a left leaning president, while during W they mostly just pandered. Now MSNBC is in pander mode, having done the "investigating" thing during W.
So between the two of them at least somebody is doing some investigation regardless of who is president. Ideally news outfits would be less biased and more willing to hang any president, but the way this works now is pretty much how the press has worked for most of our history. It's a lot better than having no one investigating.
BTW, when did Obama become a "left leaning president" as you put it? He's a Democrat, which means CNN loves him and Fox hates him, but on most issues he doesn't lean left at all. You must be imagining some opposition party that no longer exists.
Very good point, no news source has ever been in existence that didn't have an ulterior motive. Weather it was for profit, pander or ideals. The news has always been spoon fed to us.
Well, the bias has manifested itself in different ways and severity. I'm sure that there have been some egregious cases of bias in the past. In past decades though, many news stations took their job seriously and strove for objective news, with biases creeping in mostly as a result of subconscious slips when putting together stories.
Today, because echo chamber news has shown to be more profitable than real news, the bias is mostly mandated by company policy. Fox started first by pandering to the right, MSNBC came next by pandering to the left, and CNN... well, I think CNN just has a gas leak somewhere in their office.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Yes but Gouvernments these days asks themselves the important question of "What Would Nixon Do?".
- yeah, and then they multiply it by about 1000 and do that instead.
Has Nixon actually bombed a bunch of Americans around the world? I hate the guy, by the way, but I don't think he has done anything even close to what the modern day politicians are doing daily.
Everything Nixon did is legal in current day USA.
Think about that.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Except Nixon was a saint compared to Obama.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
It's not wrong because someone is doing it. It's wrong because they are doing it.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The studies you cite, done by a democrat professor from a less-than-stellar university over-sampled Fox news viewers and then asked them a bunch of "current events" questions which ALL Americans generally do poorly at.
Want the TRUTH? try this page which is not a Fox-related site.
Try getting some news from a place not tied to the Democrats or to Progressives (i.e. stop soaking your head in the MSNBC/HuffPo/Kos KoolAid). Some lefty academics have done studies specifically designed to trash non-lefties and then pushed them through the progressive-run media (all of whom hyped those studies and in a circular fashion passed them around) and because most of their target audience never seems to come up to the surface for air, this scheme works fairly well.... it just does not convince anybody whose not already in the tank.
Progressivism is toxic and Dangerous and always leads to bad things... Progressives count on the public being dumb enough to confuse "Progressivism" with "progress"... the two are only related if you are a hard-core evolutionist who wants to give mother nature a bit of a hand... The last time Progressivism rose in America (Early 1900's) it lead to extreme evil and it spread some nasty ideas (like genetic purity/superiority/cleanliness, supermen, euthenasia, the individual as only a cog in the great machine of society, assigning a dollar value to a human being, etc) around the world... so much so that the left abandoned the "progressive" title they'd previously been proud of and they hid behind the moniker: "liberal". Now, having soiled the term "liberal" they are hoping that everybody forgot about the bad side of progressivism and, like cattle, they are all following Hillary Clinton's call to go back to that term. There's a very good reason why nearly all the Progressive webites and think tanks have been partly funded by the world's richest and most famous NAZI collaborator.... young people need to WAKE UP and study some of that history stuff your progressive/unionized teachers did not teach you... you are being setup for a VERY DARK future just as a previous generation of young people were similarly setup.... only now the world has far better technology to oppress and kill...
That has always been the case, the various news outlets' claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn't bother me as much as the obvious willingness of people to abandon the First Amendment protections for a news source they don't agree with.
You'd think Slashdotters would be intelligent enough to separate the principle from the actors. Oh, wait. This is Slashdot. My bad.
That has always been the case, the various news outlets' claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn't bother me as much as the obvious willingness of people to abandon the First Amendment protections for a news source they don't agree with.
You'd think Slashdotters would be intelligent enough to separate the principle from the actors. Oh, wait. This is Slashdot. My bad.
That has not always been the case. Early on, network news was a public service and paid for by the profits from other programming. Then some bright MBA got the idea that if they made it controversial and sensational then more people would tune in and they could charge more for commercials, just like regular programming. Thus was born the modern news outlet and journalism, where it is no longer about presenting the news, but attracting viewers for advertising revenue. Sex sells, so we had weeks of the Jodi Arias trial. Politics, abortion, gay rights are all hot button issues, so instead of news we have op-ed pieces masquerading as news to inflame the public, but to get them to tune in. Why? Because people respond to that shit and in doing so, the news outlets make a fortune in advertising revenues.
The BBC reports the news because they are government funded. They just report the news good or bad. In the US, however, if profits don't exceed last year, then shareholders are angry which means the board of directors is angry which means CEOs are in trouble, so the "news" has to get viewers to watch however they can. That is why there is a bias in the news. It is basic Marketing 101. Controversy gets viewers ==>Viewers gets advertisers ==> advertisers improve the bottom line ==> improved bottom line make shareholders happy ==>happy shareholders leads to happy Boards ==> happy Boards leads to bonuses for execs and the pattern repeats over and over.
Can you point to us where the other networks were investigating things...unless fox was investigating it first? You know, sometimes a month or more beforehand. Besides, it wasn't just MSNBC in pander mode, but NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. So, really now we've got a 5:1 ratio. Then again, Fox was hardly silent during the days of W, and broke several stories that the other part of news media then caught onto. And really the media hasn't only done this with the current administration, but other important news stories...like the Gosnell trial. And the only reason why they refused to do any news on that is because they were carrying even more water.
Even though I'm up in Canada, Fox was the only one that carried pundits on both sides of the issue on that one. The other 5 did nothing on it, for nearly a month. In fact the reserved press section in the courtroom was uniformly empty of them, AP, Reuters, AFP among others and only Fox and bloggers were the ones covering it.
Om, nomnomnom...
The simple solution is to fold email into current law so as to enjoy the same protections as snail mail.
In his situation you have to risk the time, is it worth it? Will public groundswell save you if you are found out? Neither Wikileaks, nor any intermediary can be held responsible under the First Amendment unless they bribed or coerced him somehow.
But reporters, they're just receiving this info. It should be protected under this super search warrant.
I hope these past few weeks have been instructive in the wisdom of forbidding government certain powers on principle. It will be misused. Don't fall into the trap that, well, it's OK because it's my guy wielding the power. Some day, the shoe will be on the other foot. See also the "nuclear option" in the Senate. The Republicans almost got rid of it not too long ago.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
LOL, no, if you voted for Romney the government would have engaged in unconstitutional wiretapping anyway. Everyone wants to expand government powers when they're in charge then rein them back when they aren't.
My problem with Fox News and their supporters is their embarrassing inconsistencies on this issue. Roger Ailes said in 1988 that leakers should be tortured and executed, and Fox News personalities have consistently declared war against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks because they weren't real news organizations. It's the leftists who defended Bradley Manning and also Fox News. Just read everyone who supports Fox News. Even the New York Times got Fox News' back: "With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible ''co-conspirator'' in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news." So not only are you wrong about the right, you're also wrong about the left. I guess you must be a GOP.
And about the IRS scandal. Remember when four Republican congressmen asked (and received) a three year IRS probe into the NAACP for saying bad things about President Bush? LOL.
Seriously, the GOP and its supporters should adopt a worldview that's at least internally consistent. The leftists do a better job of it than the right. The GOP argues that we should preserve the Constitution then argues that we should strip American citizens of their Constitutional rights because they were accused of being a bomber. PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK!
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
You have no idea what you are talking about.
It is NOT illegal to receive classified information and publish it if it is just dumped in your lap, like the Pentagon Papers.
It is if you asked for it and conspired obtain the information, which is what they are trying to proveby naming him an coconspiritor.
Add to that the fact tht Holder testified he knew nothing about it and did not condone it.... And yet it turns out he signed the warrant.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
They told me if I voted for Romney the government would engage in unconstitutional wiretapping.
Nothing is more amusing to me that watching leftists trying to pretend this is all okay because it's Fox and not what they consider real news organizations. I hope you remember this moment when the next Republican president takes office.
Nothing more amusing than watching conservatives complaining about "leftists trying to pretend this is all okay" when virtually none are.
Sure those people exist, but in my experience that level of hypocrisy is a confined to a marginalized fringe on the left.
Hell, just out of curiosity I checked out what Daily Kos had to say. It's mostly schadenfreude and laughing at the hypocrisy but no where do I see them pretending it's ok.
I stole this Sig
But that would be a Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense, and those have been illegal for neigh on 30 years now.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You'd like to think so.
Who's banking system blew up the worldwide economy? Who's demand for cheap goods is driving climate change? It's not the "leftist" countries, who are enjoying better health care for less money while not forcing their young to gamble their future on 5 figure student loans.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Dictionary.com doesn't trump the Constitution.
Learn to love Alaska
If PFC Manning thought he blowing the whistle, he should have used the appropriate channels to do so. Leaking classified documents to the press was not the proper way to go about it. There are several legal outlets available for doing just that. They all lie outside the chain of command such that retaliation by the chain of command is neigh on impossible. Hell, he could have even gone to the FBI if he thought he couldn't trust the military. They do a pretty decent job of bringing down high ranking officials when they have actual evidence to go with. But no, PFC Manning was just an idiot that couldn't follow the rules, and put people's lives in danger. He deserves the full penalty of law.
Main part of the leak was that the official channels ALREADY KNEW and APPROVED.
Including cia, fbi and the president.
duh.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Wow. So that the ticket. All the Imperial President needs is the appropriate doublespeak labels for his enemies in the press and they can be destroyed. No first amendment issues here, the Emperor says so.
There were lots of newspapers that were called the XYZ Republican or the ABC Democrat. The entire concept of "unbiased journalism" was started by the agencies like AP because... they wanted to get both sides to subscribe to their wire feeds. We're just returning to an older pattern as people are once again able to select information sources that match their ideology.