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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.
Yet they force us to play.
The rules aren't what makes it easy; the rules are used to justify it. The fact that "call records" are a thing that someone else stores for you, is what makes it easy.
A modernized phone system would lack the capacity for anyone to be able to do this, regardless of any rules.
They're wrong regardless of who's President.
And that's entirely the point, and why you should be against this kind of thing regardless if you're on the left or right. You can't guarantee who comes next isn't someone you won't want to trust with that kind of unchecked and intrusive ability to spy on us all.
2013... thx obama
NSL's have more fuckery involved than just journalists. This isn't new, and many have been speaking up for a long time. Everyone needs to respect the bill of rights and constitution. I know some here enjoy bashing the second as well as being advocates of the 4th, but all need to be respected regardless of which American football team you pull for. NSL's should be illegal. Put your Obama and Trump bashing aside and unite for a common goal.
How exactly to they decide what news organizations are considered...well, news organizations, and by extension which people are considered journalists? Because if they set the bar low enough, then this is basically everyone. For example, by commenting on /. (a site that claims to provide news), am I contributing to the reporting of the news and therefore considered a journalist? What about someone with a blog, in which they report news about their own life or a topic of interest? For that matter, if facebook is a news site...
The potential for overreach seems laughably high with this policy, even by US domestic spying standards.
Am I oblivious to the US Constitution? How can you have "secret rules", not approved/ratified/signed/passed/whatever in and by a public law.making body such as the upper house, the lower house, an executive order (am I missing something here?)? Aren't all these supposed to publicize new laws to those that vote? So people actually know what the guys they voted for are doing, and, you know, actually know if they are following the "most recent law"?
Because the way I see this, when you have ad hoc "secret rules" applied by justice or intelligence bodies, that is the definition of abuse of power (or spying, which is basically "abuse of power" for non-judicial purposes). One thing is to know there are gag orders put in place to companies - those gags were approved publicly, so the people basically "know companies might or might not be screwing with your privacy rights", but such a thing as "secret rules" would turn that to "every government executive body or law enforcement might or might not be screwing with your _rights_" (as in "all rights", that's how broad it becomes).
The existence of such rules mean, in essence, there can be rules like, for instance "allowing your or your entire family's execution because you ate a pretzel this morning without giving tip and a police officer didn't like it"; or milder, yet stupider things like "ban you from Netflix because you watch too much foreign movies". It gets that stupid.