Breaking: US DOJ Spied for Months on AP Reporters

[ewmayer]

Forget about the recently-broken scandal of the IRS targeting conservative political groups for "extra deep scrutiny" during the run-up to the last presidential election ... that 'tis a mere tempest in a teapot compared to this latest revelation about "how your government works for you":

Justice Department Spied For Months On Associated Press Reporters

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone 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.

So when Obama promised to run the "most transparent US administration in history", apparently he meant "most transparent[ly megalomaniacal and paranoid] US administration in history". But hey, what's a few elided words between friends?

[science_man_88]

as to finding the associated press office numbers even I was able to find them.

if I could find the names of the reporters I could likely get the phone numbers if they aren't unlisted. it's the getting the phone call logs that is the big breach here IMO especially if they are targeting specific story types.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

it's the getting the phone call logs that is the big breach here IMO especially if they are targeting specific story types.

"The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call ..."

I've seen phone call logs (when working on telecommunications stuff):
date and time of connection,
phone number of caller,
phone number of called,
duration,
some internal circuit/switch ID in the PBX (nothing to do with the phone numbers) through which the connection was made.

In the current case, each log seems to be for one particular telephone, not all numbers in a PBX like the ones I worked with. So each individual log record would include only one phone number -- the other end of each connection.

If a particular outside-AP number is associated (from information other than AP phone logs) with a particular story or small set of stories, then indeed the bare phone-number information and dates/times from a log might strongly hint as to which calls were about particular stories.

[ewmayer]

Edit: opening line of post below refers to a lengthy OCD-sponsored digression which was subsequently split off here.

By way of a surely-futile attempt to steer this thread back to the original topic which apparently no one but Herkuhlees, sohn uff Zooss me gives a crap about:

The Hill: House Judiciary investigating whether Holder lied under oath

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters, an aide close to the matter told The Hill.

The panel is looking at a statement Holder made during a back and forth with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) about whether the DOJ could prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act of 1917.

“In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material -- this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy,” Holder said during the hearing.

However, NBC News reported last week that Holder personally approved a search warrant that labeled Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen a co-conspirator in a national security leaks case.

The panel is investigating whether NBC’s report contradicts Holder’s claim that he had not looked into or been involved with a possible prosecution of the press in a leaks case.

I must take strenuous issue with the tendentious phrasing in the above piece - more 'honest' would be to say that "missteps may have been made under oath."

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The Hill: House Judiciary investigating whether Holder lied under oath

I must take strenuous issue with the tendentious phrasing in the above piece - more 'honest' would be to say that "missteps may have been made under oath."

I am reminded of almost exactly four decades ago, "I misspoke myself." -Ron Ziegler
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...907098,00.html

Also:

The statement in the subject line was made when Nixon was caught in an absolute, straight-up (no ice), bald-faced lie. It has been attributed to Ron Ziegler*, his press secretary, but may have come from H.R. Haldeman*, Nixon's chief of staff. Even then, no one in the Republican party would say the president lied, or fibbed, or even "prevaricated" (which would have sent a few folks to their American Heritage Unabridged). Nope. Just "That statement is no longer operative". As I remember, there were incredulous looks from the press, followed by howls of laughter. No one had yet come up with the wonderful "case closed", which wouldn't have mattered anyway.
It was the beginning of the end.

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ress=104x35321

Furthermore:

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) defended Republicans’ willingness to shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood by falsely claiming that abortion is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” In reality, just three percent of its work is related to abortion. This afternoon, CNN brought on Planned Parenthood’s Judy Tabar to discuss his comment. During the interview, CNN anchor TJ Holmes relayed a statement from Kyl’s office walking back the comment, claiming the statement was not meant to be “factual”:

HOLMES: We did call his office trying to ask what he was talking about there. And I just want to give it you verbatim here. It says, ‘his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.’

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...ned-parenthoo/

The current "dodging and weaving", or should I say, "shucking and jiving", is all too familiar. I wonder if a thesaurus would show, "inaccurate", "falsehood", "prevarication", and "lie" are all equivalent, or only the latter three expressions.

I'm telling a terrible story
But it doesn't diminish my glory
For they would have taken my daughters
Over the billowy water
If I hadn't in elegant diction
Indulged in an innocent fiction
Which is not in the same category
As telling a regular terrible story.

-Major General Stanley, "The Pirates of Penzance", Gilbert and Sullivan

[ewmayer]

How about

"the prevarications alleged to have been made under oath were never intended to be taken as factual, if indeed they ever occurred, which would in itself constitute at worst an error of judgment rather than a potentially perjurious instance, hypothetically speaking."

I think we can all agree on that, even if we don't fully understand it.

Now we just need Gilbert & Sullivan to return from the dead their permanent administrative leave and set The Daily Beast's piece of desperate-whitewashing spin quoted - in some places twice - by Cheesiepoofs to music ... here, since the paperwork involved in returning from PAL is so very involved, I shall make a feeble attempt to invoke the spirit of G&S via a parity parody piece titled The Imperial President's Song:

I am the very model of a Carteresque incompetence,
Not to be accused of gross Nixonian indifference,
I know the presidents of USA, and I quote the fights historical
From Teapot Dome to Watergate, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters constitutional,
I understand the rule of law, both person- and institution-al,
About habeas corpus I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
(bothered for a rhyme)
With many cheerful facts about torture not condoned nor used.

[kladner]

About habeas corpus I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
(bothered for a rhyme)
With many cheerful facts about torture not condoned nor used.

Oh. Dear. <smirk>

[only_human]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

About habeas corpus I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
(bothered for a rhyme)

About habeas corpus I'm loaded with ammo,
That's not worth a damn when stuck in Guantanamo.
(optional riff on guns here)
With many cheerful facts about torture not condoned nor used;
If spoken would, as a drone, fill the air.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

How about

"the prevarications alleged to have been made under oath were never intended to be taken as factual, if indeed they ever occurred, which would in itself constitute at worst an error of judgment rather than a potentially perjurious instance, hypothetically speaking."

I think we can all agree on that, even if we don't fully understand it.

I don't know. It does seem like me perjured himself to me, and certainly it seems the remarks were intended to be factual (whether true or false). Perhaps the prevarications, as you say, fall just below the threshold for perjury, I'm no lawyer. But in any case I think intentionally deceiving Congress is enough for him to lose his job, regardless of whether there is prosecution. An attorney general you can't trust isn't one I'd want to see in office.

Honestly I'm not sure why the president doesn't distance himself further from Holder. I can't imagine he supports this kind of thing.

[ewmayer]

Holder media backlash intensifies: Major news outlets lined up to reject Attorney General Eric Holder’s offer of an off-the-record meeting Thursday as his conflict with the press corps escalated.

The New York Times, the Associated Press, The Huffington Post and CNN were the first major outlets to decline the offer, and Fox News, Reuters, CBS News, McClatchy and NBC News followed. The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News and Politico have said they plan on attending the meeting.

The boycotting news outlets said that the Department of Justice’s insistence that the media groups not report on the content of the discussions violated their journalistic guidelines or was a conflict of interest.

“They don't help us inform the public," McClatchy Washington bureau chief James Asher told Poynter about off-the-record meetings. “This one seems designed mostly to make a public relations point and not a substantive one. If the government wants to justify its pursuit of journalists, they ought to do it in public.”

The Huffington Post Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim had similarly sharp words in his rejection.

“A conversation specifically about the freedom of the press should be an open one,” he said. “We have a responsibility not to betray that.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday that the administration was “hopeful that media organizations will take advantage of the opportunity to constructively contribute to this process.”

Earnest stressed that the attorney general was “taking this seriously” and argued it wasn't hypocritical to hold a meeting about press freedoms off the record.

[kladner]

From May 30, 2006.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Walt Handelsman musical animation about NSA wiretapping.

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/walt-...ping-1.1335614