Secret Rules Make It Pretty Easy For the FBI To Spy On Journalists (theintercept.com)

schwit1 shares with us a report on a 11-part series led by The Intercept reporter Cora Currier: Secret FBI rules allow agents to obtain journalists' phone records with approval from two internal officials -- far less oversight than under normal judicial procedures. The classified rules dating from 2013, govern the FBI's use of national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists' calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization being targeted. They have previously been released only in heavily redacted form. Media advocates said the documents show that the FBI imposes few constraints on itself when it bypasses the requirement to go to court and obtain subpoenas or search warrants before accessing journalists' information. The rules stipulate that obtaining a journalist's records with a national security letter requires the signoff of the FBI's general counsel and the executive assistant director of the bureau's National Security Branch, in addition to the regular chain of approval. Generally speaking, there are a variety of FBI officials, including the agents in charge of field offices, who can sign off that an NSL is "relevant" to a national security investigation. There is an extra step under the rules if the NSL targets a journalist in order "to identify confidential news media sources." In that case, the general counsel and the executive assistant director must first consult with the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's National Security Division. But if the NSL is trying to identify a leaker by targeting the records of the potential source, and not the journalist, the Justice Department doesn't need to be involved. The guidelines also specify that the extra oversight layers do not apply if the journalist is believed to be a spy or is part of a news organization "associated with a foreign intelligence service" or "otherwise acting on behalf of a foreign power." Unless, again, the purpose is to identify a leak, in which case the general counsel and executive assistant director must approve the request.

Comments

Re:Can someone clarify "secret rules" for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, it's stupid, but it's, sadly, remarkably easy to understand.
One of the problems is called "Regulatory law" (as opposed to legislative law).

Unfortunately, Congress often passes laws where it doesn't know what it's doing, so it drafts the law vaguely and defers the exact rule making to sub agencies.
Thus, in crap like the Patriot Act, you have statements like "cannot intentionally capture data from US citizens", and the NSA taking their scumbag lawyers and writing briefs on exactly what THEY THINK that means. In these briefs, they do things like redefine words like "intentionally", "incidentally" to be completely meaningless, "capture" to mean only something applicable at gun point and with ropes, and then conclude that any section of the law that's inconvenient simply does not apply to them (and that off-hand comments can be extended to mean things that were never intended). These interpretations are internal to the department, and hence subject to classification - you know... for National Security and all that. These interpretations have the weight of law, and because the world will end if anyone will read these rules (you know... "national security"... ), the government established secret rubber-stamp courts, to handle any cases where their records cannot be viewed (because... national security).

So yes, some TLA(3 letter agency) can covertly reclassify murder or terrorism as playing counter-strike, classify this inane decree (because... uhm... national security!), and arrest you, and try you with sealed records under a gag in a secret kangaroo court, because charging you in an open court would force them to reveal their super secret inane proclamation which they OBVIOUSLY can't do (national security dammit! You want terrorists blowing up children or something?!?).

Sadly, I'm only partially exaggerating.

Re:secret rules

[AmiMoJo]

You vastly over-estimate Clinton's influence and power. It just so happened that her opponent was a lying asshole and the press noticed. His press officers going on rants about the media not accepting his alternate facts is not because the media is corrupt and controlled by his opponents, it's because the media makes some minimal effort to print the truth.

That the media screws up sometimes is irrelevant, it doesn't mean you can just tell them any old bullshit and expect it to be accepted as equal to reality.