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Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)
Mon May 13, 2013, 05:45 PM May 2013

Wide Government Taps Associated Press Phone Records

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 outgoing calls 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. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls.

In all, 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 exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Pruitt said.



http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records-probe


Hey ... its all good You know
free press and all that.

12 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Wide Government Taps Associated Press Phone Records (Original Post) Ichingcarpenter May 2013 OP
"AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know" jberryhill May 2013 #1
I 'm glad you Ichingcarpenter May 2013 #2
Depends on whether Move To Amend gets its way... jberryhill May 2013 #3
Holder was a death squad lawyer warrprayer May 2013 #4
That is pretty bad. boston bean May 2013 #5
It seems to be nothing more than kona808 May 2013 #6
These were not taps FarCenter May 2013 #7
ACLU 's statement Ichingcarpenter May 2013 #9
typically... maybe pintobean May 2013 #10
The DOJ better have filled out all the paperwork on this one 0rganism May 2013 #8
This don't sound good if true. Puddy May 2013 #11
Obama claims the right to KILL Americans in secret and without oversight or due process... Demo_Chris May 2013 #12
 

jberryhill

(62,444 posts)
1. "AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know"
Mon May 13, 2013, 05:54 PM
May 2013

Oh how cute, a corporation claiming a right to privacy and against unwarranted searches.
 

jberryhill

(62,444 posts)
3. Depends on whether Move To Amend gets its way...
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:04 PM
May 2013


There is a substantial number of DUers who support amending the Constitution to say this:

https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.


The AP is a corporation. If one subscribes to "corporations have no Constitutional rights" then "freedom of the press" only applies to publishing apparatus which are owned by individuals - and presumably wealthy ones.

But if you subscribe to the view that "corporations have no Constitutional rights" but draw some kind of carve-out for "press", then I'm interested to know what you include in "press". Is that, in your view, limited only to ink on paper, but does it extend to other media, like making a movie?

boston bean

(36,186 posts)
5. That is pretty bad.
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:09 PM
May 2013

Hopefully, this will help pull back some of the intrusions the patriot act and any other BS law created after 911 caused.

 

kona808

(41 posts)
6. It seems to be nothing more than
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:10 PM
May 2013

The White House plumbers attempting to fix a leak.

Nothing to see here.

The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided 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.


http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records-probe
 

FarCenter

(19,429 posts)
7. These were not taps
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:11 PM
May 2013

The Justice Department obtained the call detail records which includes the calling and called telephone numbers, the time and date, and the duration of each call. This is not a "tap", and is does not include the content of the call.

The phone records are typically obtained by means of a subpoena to the phone company.

Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)
9. ACLU 's statement
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:24 PM
May 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: 212-549-2666, media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – The Department of Justice secretly obtained two months' worth of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, according to an AP story.

The following statement can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office:

"The media's purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance. The Attorney General must explain the Justice Department's actions to the public so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again."

The following statement can be attributed to Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project:

"Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power. Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources


http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/justice-department-secretly-subpoenas-ap-phone-records

 

pintobean

(18,101 posts)
10. typically... maybe
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:26 PM
May 2013

From the ACLU

In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's interpretation and implementation of the FISA Amendments Act. Last November, the government released a few hundred pages of heavily redacted documents. Though redacted, the documents confirmed that the government had interpreted the statute as broadly as we had feared and even that the government had repeatedly violated the few limitations that the statute actually imposed.



http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/fbi-if-we-told-you-you-might-sue-0

0rganism

(23,856 posts)
8. The DOJ better have filled out all the paperwork on this one
Mon May 13, 2013, 06:17 PM
May 2013

Unlike the Benghazi BS or the IRS-vs-teaparty thing, this has the makings of a real scandal.

 

Demo_Chris

(6,234 posts)
12. Obama claims the right to KILL Americans in secret and without oversight or due process...
Mon May 13, 2013, 07:30 PM
May 2013

By comparisson, this is positively libertarian.

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