Suddenly Mainstream Reporters are Outraged at Government Surveillance
Posted: May 13, 2013 Filed under: The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: al Qaeda, Associated Press, CIA, Department of Justice, Eric Holder, foiled terror plots, government surveillance, mainstream media, Underwear Bomber, warrantless wiretapping 23 Comments
We’ve known for years that the Feds are tapping phones, reading e-mails, checking on which site we go to on the internet, all without warrants. This afternoon the news broke that the DOJ subpoenaed two months
of phone 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.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Naturally AP reporters and executives are outraged and President and CEO Gary Pruitt has sent a letter of protest to Attorney General Holder.
The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.
The story in question was about the successful foiling of the so-called underwear bombing plot. There’s much more at the AP link. So the feds are enraged because of a leak about a successful counterterror operation. Imagine if it had been unsuccessful? Maybe those reporters would be headed to re-education camps by now.
But that’s not the whole story, according to Think Progress. The reason the feds were so nervous about that AP story was that the CIA stopped the underwear bomber rather than the FBI.
Why that drew the attention of the Justice Department, however, is that the CIA was the one who foiled the plot, which the AP report made clear:
The FBI is examining the latest bomb to see whether it could have passed through airport security and brought down an airplane, officials said. They said the device did not contain metal, meaning it probably could have passed through an airport metal detector. But it was not clear whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it. You can check out the price of precious metals here.
The would-be suicide bomber, based in Yemen, had not yet picked a target or bought a plane ticket when the CIA stepped in and seized the bomb, officials said. It’s not immediately clear what happened to the alleged bomber.
AP learned of the plot a week before publishing, but “agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately” due to national security concerns. But, by reporting the CIA’s involvement in foiling the plot, they put AQAP on notice that the CIA had a window into their activities. The AP’s reporting also led to other stories involving an operative in place within AQAP, and details of the operations he was involved in. That operative, it was feared, would be exposed and targeted by AQAP as retribution for siding with the United States.
John Brennan, who is now the head of the CIA, said at his confirmation hearing that the release of information to AP was an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.”
The AP knew they were being investigated–the shock came when they realized the breathtaking extent of the federal intrusion.
The DOJ issued a statement claiming that “because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the free flow of information and the public interest”
Okay, if you say so….
So now what? Will mainstream reporters who have been accepting of government surveillance as long as it was directed at us “little people” now begin a real pushback? We shall see.
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Josh Marshall publishes a comment by a reader who thinks the AP “doth protest too much.”
Marshall still thinks the feds overreached.
Media selective outrage trikes again. 🙂
I see where some are saying the DOJ “secretly” subpoenaed the phone records. If they followed federal law, that’s not true since the subject has to be notified.
They were notified today. The problem in my mind is that the NSA is collecting and saving all this data about all of us and all they have to do pull out the AP stuff and hand it over to the DOJ. I think it would just be times, dates and who they talked to, not content of the call; but that would still identify sources.
It’s not like the old days when they got a warrant and then collected the data. The data is now collected ahead of time.
What I read was the DOJ subpoenaed the phone companies for call records. That would have been signed off by a judge or grand jury. Though that’s not as much of a story.
The phone companies are the ones who save the records for the NSA. Remember the FISA bill that immunized the Telcoms from being sued by people they damaged? It’s just the FISA court that would have to sign off on it, as far as I know because it’s about “national security”–that’s automatic. They’ve never turned down anything.
I still think it’s a problem though, no matter how they obtained the information.
It’s definitely through FISA from what I’m reading. The thing is, it is technically a crime to release classified info. Of course the government classifies everything it doesn’t want us to know. The media should have been pushing back on this all along, but instead the big guns like the NYT and WaPo have cheered on the fake war on terror and ignored the first amendment implications. Until their own ox is gored.
Phone companies always saved call records for billing purposes. Local police subpoena billing records in a lot of investigations. I believe they keep the records in perpetuity now though instead of some time interval.
Yes, but the police have to actually convince a judge they have probable cause. Supposedly, anyway. I guess anything goes these days.
In any case, the real point of this is to instill fear in reporters so that they won’t actually report on anything serious.
Scare people who would leak more likely.
The people who leak have already been shut down. Obama has prosecuted whistleblowers and leakers more than all presidents in history combined.
To be honest, I’m not all that sympathetic to AP, but judging by what I’ve seen on Twitter, the media folks are very upset. I’m guessing we’ll being hearing a lot of self-centered talk from them and very little recognition that these powers have already been used against a lot of not so powerful American citizens.
Might include where you are at when you called.
Bush wiretapped ABC news reporters in 2006.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2006/05/federal_source_/
Hell it wasn’t too long ago that the republicans were saying we were “unpatriotic and that we were giving in to all the terrorists”. Shortly after 9-11 the lordship expanded his secret listen in program, and Obama adopted it in the name of “counterterrorism”.
What happened to Helen Thomas when she said Bush was the worst fucking president ever?
Here’s Emptywheel’s take on it: “A Full Two Month Period” that Covers John Brennan’s Entire Drone Propaganda Campaign
She thinks the feds were after more than the underwear bomber leaks. It’s about Brennan’s involvement with the drone strikes. She lists all the AP articles on the drone program during that time and the reporters affected.
Emptywheel:
Charlie Savage on the AP story.
Charlie Pierce isn’t happy: Eric Holder Must Go
I just heard that Dakinikat lost her electricity at her sister’s house in Seattle. She might have to go to her father’s place for the night. He doesn’t have internet. She says hi!
it just came back on!!! yay!!! heat and internet!!!
Excellent news!
In Boston sports news, the Bruins came back from a 3 goal deficit to tie the Maple Leafs 4-4, and they just scored in OT to win game 7.
Incredible.