Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage

[DesMoinesDem]

Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage
By Eugene Robinson, Published: MONDAY, MAY 20, 7:48 PM ET

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold.

It also may well be unconstitutional. In my reading, the First Amendment prohibition against “abridging the freedom .?.?. of the press” should rule out secretly obtaining two months’ worth of the personal and professional phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, including calls to and from the main AP phone number at the House press gallery in the Capitol. Yet this is what the Justice Department did.

The unwarranted snooping, which was revealed last week, would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. But it is part of a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior.

The Post reported Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone and e-mail records for Fox News reporter James Rosen, and that the FBI even tracked his movements in and out of the main State Department building. Rosen’s only apparent transgression? Doing what reporters are supposed to do, which is to dig out the news.

In both instances, prosecutors were trying to build criminal cases under the 1917 Espionage Act against federal employees suspected of leaking classified information. Before President Obama took office, the Espionage Act had been used to prosecute leakers a grand total of three times, including the 1971 case of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Obama’s Justice Department has used the act six times. And counting.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-obama-administration-mistakes-news-for-espionage/2013/05/20/0cf398e8-c17e-11e2-8bd8-2788030e6b44_story.html

[ProSense]

1. Please,

The Post reported Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone and e-mail records for Fox News reporter James Rosen, and that the FBI even tracked his movements in and out of the main State Department building. Rosen’s only apparent transgression? Doing what reporters are supposed to do, which is to dig out the news.

...the media are complicit and everyone should stop pretending that Fox Noise is a news organization. They're digging up old news stories to pile onto the AP story.

WaPo: DOJ Spied On Fox News Reporter (a perfect example of media complicity - updated)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022871121

Well well well, Fox News was a co-conspirator in leaking classified docs...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022872403

[railsback]

4. Ditto

Maybe Eugene Robinson should curl up in a tiny ball underneath his bathroom sink after he duct tapes his windows with plastic.

[Cha]

12. FYI, ProSense "Why the Justice Department May Be Right"

Critics of the Justice Department's subpoena of AP telephone records have shamelessly mischaracterized the Department's actions and the purposes for them. Any interference with the free press merits close scrutiny, but that scrutiny needs to consider just what the Department actually has done and why.

***snip

At the point of issuing the subpoena, there may have been no reasonable basis for distinguishing the likelihood of involvement of any of the six individuals at the AP, which would explain why the date-targeted toll records of each of them were sought. The generic AP phones at the different AP bureaus might also have been used for some of the communications to or from the wrongdoer, but toll records do not distinguish between different individuals who are using the phone; they only record the phone number of a call made to or received from it. The resulting "sweep" or "dragnet" of records may seem ominous from the AP's perspective, but from an investigatory perspective the scope of the toll record subpoena may have been narrowed as much as possible, which is what the Department's own regulations require. The delayed notice of the subpoena is very likely justified by a concern that someone at the AP might tip off the wrongdoer, enabling that person to destroy records or other critical evidence before the FBI could serve and execute a search warrant.


On the Huffington Post, Geof Stone has provided a valuable explication of the constitutional and statutory rules applicable here, concluding "that nothing the Department of Justice did in this investigation violated the Constitution ... [or] any federal law." Geoff also reviews the DOJ regulations that are designed to be more protective of the free press than the outer limits of the law and the Constitution. Like him, I have no way of knowing whether these regulations were completely satisfied, a judgment that requires knowing more details about the investigation than we now have. We know enough now, however, to say that the leak was truly a serious one, that it is in no way comparable to whistleblowing, and that the Department has exercised considerable restraint in its investigation. While further disclosures about the investigation - perhaps once a case is made and charges brought -- might reveal missteps on the government's part, the deafening drum beat of overblown charges about the Department's actions seems quite unwarranted.

***snip

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-h-schroeder/why-the-justice-departmen_b_3294043.html

[patrice]

2. I don't understand what people think responsible parties are supposed to do when a leak trail leads

to media/ a journalist.

I understand the functional role that Robinson thinks journalists, the fourth estate, are supposed to fulfill and that role should be protected, but not all journalists/stories rise to that level of service. They're much more usually about creating careers and selling advertising. When it comes to things like outing CIA agents or safe houses in dangerous unstable places, why would media sources be a sacred cow?

Why do we necessarily assume that government is hostile to leaks? Yes, there's an inclination toward secrecy about more nefarious government actions, but leaking can also be like whistleblowing, so who does it, when, and how can detrimentally affect the subject of a leak and ruin its value to government reform and effectiveness. Who is the better judge of this? Bureaucrats charged with these kinds of responsibilities or reporters who, unlike Eugene Robinson, are more about their own ambitions, or are about damaging certain political issues and programs than they are about doing the right thing.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Because some of those activities

Are criminal. We're you around when Iran Contra happened? That was the CIA, and a whole operation was outed, and a US President should have been impeached.

I got no idea what people want, a supine press that asks pretty please before covering a story? I really don't know what people are missing.

[patrice]

5. Government met legal requirements in this AP story, right? And why, all of a sudden, are we

supposed to trust so explicitly, completely, and even dangerously, those very same media/reporters/journalists that we are also so constantly and justly so complaining about their function as the wholly owned propaganda subsidiary of corporate personhood.

Again, with government we have at least a theoretical role to play with some influence upon how these things play out. NOT so with private media. They can publish whatever they want for whatever reason they want and that's NOT for our benefit. It's for SELLING themselves. Their leaking can even destroy an chance that the leaked material could produce any kind of benefit on the leaked issue and they'd still get the benefit to themselves of having leaked.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Nope, in fact all the internal regulations

Set after the Church Committee recommendations were violated.

People complain about the press...well then, maybe we should criminalize independent journalism, and only have that approved by the state. I mean of course, if it bleeds it leads. But none of this shit where you find your government violated anything, ranging from the Brown Act on and up.

[ProSense]

7. That's

Nope, in fact all the internal regulations

Set after the Church Committee recommendations were violated.

People complain about the press...well then, maybe we should criminalize independent journalism, and only have that approved by the state. I mean of course, if it bleeds it leads. But none of this shit where you find your government violated anything, ranging from the Brown Act on and up.

...absolute nonsense, and the media are hypocrites: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2871052

[patrice]

9. Nadin, it does nothing for anyone's case to mischaracterize what someone is saying. Who, exactly,

wants to "criminalize independent journalism"?

I'd like a real answer to my question, please. I don't see how what good we accrue from a "free" press (and I maintain that it is NOT free, because it is private and market driven, so whatever benefit you posit from it isn't in its nature as a "free" professional enterprise, but at the behest of owners who deign, when THEY decide to, to act for reasons other than profit and not to act for those same reasons when they choose not to) . . . how does what good we accrue from what is called a free press outweigh the harm it can and indeed DOES do too? How do we preserve the good potential and prevent the bad?

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Let's make this about you.

For a second let's assume you come across a juicy story. Believe or not as a blogger...you are also a journalist.

So it is really good, and exposes some secrets. This pattern of going after reporters can affect you, personally.

But, but bloggers have no sources, I hear ya. Some bloggers have broken stories, like Josh Marshal and Koss.

So this is not just about the AP...it's about all of us.

And it is not those of us with you can get hurt and not sue the county cards. That's what media cards are about...again, it's about all of us.

Granted, I have assumed I got no privacy, but that is because the country I come from reporters get killed. Do we want to get to that point before we get it?

[Luminous Animal]

11. So we abandon the notion of a free press because it is private and market driven?

(In the U.S., other than PBS and NPR, it has always been private and market driven.)

Where does that leave the independent community supported press? Do we leave it up to the government to decide what is good or bad press? The Bush Admin's DOJ considered prosecuting the NY Times under the Espionage Act for exposing NSA privacy abuses.

The fourth estate needs to be Constitutionally defended in all cases or the notion of a fourth estate is meaninglessly.

[Luminous Animal]

8. When you lose Eugene you should recognize you've gone too far.