Thread: The U.S. Government Spies on Reporters All Too Frequently

Going back a bit to 2013..... It is important to remember the way the FBI functioned under Robert Mueller who was Director of the FBI from 2001 through 2013.

It seems that the people that were promoted to the top of the heap have a lot in common...Interesting that this is from Slate.......IMO

The U.S. Government Spies on Reporters All Too Frequently

By Ryan Gallagher
MAY 14 2013 3:37 PM


U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

RYAN GALLAGHER
Ryan Gallagher is a journalist who reports on surveillance, security, and civil liberties.

On Monday, the Associated Press revealed that some of its reporters were recently spied on by the Justice Department in what it called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.” The feds secretly obtained AP journalists’ phone records as part of what is believed to be an ongoing investigation into leaks of classified information. But it’s not the first time U.S. authorities have adopted draconian surveillance tactics to uncover journalists’ confidential sources.

The AP incident involved the DoJ obtaining two months of reporters’ phone records, which listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of AP journalists and editors. AP said in a report publishedMonday that it was not clear whether the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls, but noted that “the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012.” The DoJ’s investigation is thought to be linked to an ongoing criminal investigation that is attempting to track down the source of leaks that led to a May 2012 scoop about a foiled terror plot planned by so-called “underpants bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Typically, phone records obtained by the feds will show date, time, and duration of incoming and outgoing calls and/or text messages, according to the ACLU. While the data do not reveal the actual content of a call, they can be used to show a network of contacts and reveal relationships between people—information that is particularly sensitive for journalists working with confidential sources. The feds can input the records into a database before analyzing them using investigative software like the “i2 Analyst's Notebook,” a popular law enforcement tool sold by IBM. The raw phone records data can be transformed into detailed interactive charts that map out links between people. A few examples of what these charts look like can be found here, here, and here.

But obtaining phone records of journalists is an extreme course of action that has serious ramifications. There are special rules in place in the United States that authorities are supposed to adhere to when obtaining journalists’ communication records, and they’re intended to protect press freedom and stop prosecutors from compromising journalists’ constitutionally protected newsgathering role. Federal regulations instruct investigators that they can obtain journalists’ phone records only as a last resort, and the decision to seek the records should receive the “express authorization of the Attorney General.” The authorization should be given on the basis that “effective law enforcement and the fair administration of justice” is deemed, in the specific circumstances, to outweigh “the public’s interest in the free dissemination of ideas and information.”

In recent years, however, the FBI has flagrantly disregarded these rules on multiple occasions. A scathing 2010 review by the DoJ’s inspector general criticized how the feds had spied on Washington Post and New York Timesreporters in a leaks investigation carried out in 2004. The feds obtained 22 months of reporters’ phone records “without any legal process or Attorney General approval,” the inspector found, which illustrated “the absence of internal controls” and was judged to be “negligent in various respects.” The same report detailed two other cases of the FBI obtaining reporters’ phone records without following the proper procedures. One of these cases was described as “deficient and troubling” and the other a “clear abuse of authority” that violated the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, federal regulation, and DoJ policy.

The legality of the feds’ latest snooping on journalists is already being called into question. AP President Gary Pruitt wrote a furious letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, demanding that the authorities “destroy all copies” of the records on AP reporters. Pruitt described the investigation as “a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news” and said there was “no possible justification” for the intrusion. Holder can expect to face a grilling on the matter Wednesday afternoon, when he is coincidentally scheduled to appear before a DoJ oversight hearing being held by the House Judiciary Committee.

It’s worth noting that the debacle comes amid an unprecedented wider crackdown on leaks instigated by the Obama administration’s DoJ, which has so far prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined. The targeting of AP journalists’ phone records to reveal confidential sources, like the ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks for its publishing work, will stand as another egregious example of disproportionate action taken by a government attempting to assert its authority over state secrets like a high school bully on steroids. “The fact is I really do respect the press,” Obama said late last month in a speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner. But so long as his administration continues to target whistleblowers and reporters, those words will ring hollow.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...n_t_alone.html

Government Spying on Fox News Reporter Even Worse Than AP Case

By Ryan Gallagher
MAY 20 2013 3:14 PM

The Associated Press phone snooping scandal is still simmering. But now, adding fuel to the fire, another egregious example of the government spying on American reporters has been disclosed.

The Washington Post reports that James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, was subjected to intense government monitoring as part of an investigation into possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009. The intrusion on Rosen was more severe than that of the AP reporters, whose phone call records were grabbed as part of a separate national security leaks investigation. According to court documents, two days’ worth of Rosen’s personal e-mails, documents, and attachments stored in a Gmail account were seized as were all his historic emails to a Yahoo account used by the alleged source, State Dept. security adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. The feds obtained authorization to seize information showing Rosen’s communication with “any other source" related to the leak and also demanded Google turn over IP addresses and other metadata stored by the reporter’s Gmail account. In addition, investigators tracked Rosen’s movements to and from the State Department using security badge access records, and the timings of his calls with Jin-Woo Kim were traced.

The Post notes that a federal judge approved a search warrant to seize the content of Rosen’s private emails on the basis that there was “probable cause” that the journalist was a “co-conspirator.” Google was ordered not to disclose the existence of the warrant, and it is not clear whether the company lodged any legal objections. (A spokesman for Google had not responded for comment at the time of publication.) An FBI counterespionage agent in an affidavit alleged that the reporter had broken the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” This contentious reasoning appears to be grounded in the notion that any journalist receiving and publishing classified material from a confidential source is engaging in a criminal act—even although the U.S. government has never successfully prosecuted a reporter for disseminating unlawfully leaked classified information.

The leaked material in question is believed to relate to a Fox News story authored by Rosen in 2009 concerning possible nuclear tests in North Korea in response to U.N. sanctions. A June 2009 online Fox News report that he wrote, which appears to contain the classified information at the center of the controversy, details how “U.S. intelligence officials” had issued a warning that North Korea had proposed “four planned actions” in response to a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning its nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The story cited an unnamed source commenting on the apparent leak. Notably, Rosen also added in the report that he had withheld “some details about the sources and methods by which American intelligence agencies learned of the North's plans so as to avoid compromising sensitive overseas operations,” though he disclosed that the information had been obtained by the CIA “through sources inside North Korea.”

The FBI announced in 2010 that it had indicted Jin-Woo Kimin relation to a leak of information from“an intelligence report classified Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information to a reporter for a national news organization who was not entitled to receive it.” Jin-Woo Kim, according to the FBI, was working as an employee of a federal contractor—the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—and was on detail to the State Department at the time of the alleged disclosure.Rosen is not named in any of the court documents, but according to the Post “his identity was confirmed by several officials, and he is the author of the article at the center of the investigation.”

The surveillance of Rosen will raise yet more questions about the extreme tactics adopted by the Justice Department’s multiple aggressive leak investigations. Last week, amid a storm of controversy following the revelation the feds had grabbed AP reporters’ phone records as part of a leak probe, Attorney General Eric Holder said he was “not sure” how many similar cases of snooping on reporters he had authorized. A number of top American journalists have commented in recent days on how draconian leak prosecutions and the practice of spying on reporters is damaging legitimate journalism, causing a chilling effect that prevents sources and whistleblowers from ever coming forward.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...reporters.html