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<div class="entry-date">[given the global reach of US policies and
the <font size="-1">extraterritorial<font size="-1">ity
inherent in <font size="-1">us<font size="-1">e of the ne<font
size="-1">t, thi<font size="-1">s article <font
size="-1">raises some co<font size="-1">ncer<font
size="-1">ns about abuse of state power in the
US. It is particularly<font size="-1"> <font
size="-1">worr<font size="-1">ying since
many activists use the listserver RISEUP
which was affect<font size="-1">ed in a
r<font size="-1">aid - that I ha<font
size="-1">d not heard about<font
size="-1"> - and presents a
plight that is far from
sanguine. The challenge to
internet governance, much like
the Spanish doma<font size="-1">in
name seizure, is<font
size="-1"> the extent to
which US national interests
confli<font size="-1">ct
with their indivi<font
size="-1">dual </font>interests</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font>
in circumstances where there is regulation/disciplines in which
affected (noncitizens) are affected...From a human rights
perspective, the issue is <font size="-1">what governance
arrangements need to be put <font size="-1">in place to
maintain the <font size="-1">cosmopolitan nature of the
internet (in the broadest sen<font size="-1">se) as well
as sens<font size="-1">ibl<font size="-1">y manage
diversity... </font></font></font></font></font></font>]<br>
<br>
May 16, 2013
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<div class="subheadlinestyle">The AP Seizures and the Frightening
Web They've Uncovered</div>
<h1 class="article-title"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/16/the-governments-war-on-the-press/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-governments-war-on-the-press">The
Government’s War on the Press</a></h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by ALFREDO LOPEZ</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>“Paranoia,” said Woody Allen, “is knowing all the facts.” By
that measure, we’re becoming more and more “paranoid” every
day.</p>
<p>This week, we learned that the Obama Justice Department <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journalists-of-the-associated-press-seized-by-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nytimes.com']);">seized
two months of records</a> of at least 20 phone lines used by
Associated Press reporters. These include phone lines in the
AP’s New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn offices as well
as the main AP number in the House of Representatives press
gallery, the private phones and cell phones belonging to AP
reporters and a fax line in one AP office.</p>
<p>The government effected this massive seizure “sometime this
year” according to a letter from the Justice Department to
AP’s chief counsel this past Friday (May 10). The letter cites
relevant “permission” clauses in its “investigative
guidelines” and makes clear that it considers the action legal
and necessary.</p>
<p>In many ways, this is the most blatant act of media
information seizure in memory. It affects over 100 AP
journalists and the countless people those journalists
communicated with by phone during those two months. It
violates accepted constitutional guarantees, the concept of
freedom of the press and the privacy rights of literally
thousands of people. Predictably and justifiably, press,
politicians and activists have expressed outrage.</p>
<p>But as outrageous as the admitted facts are, the story’s
larger implications are even more disturbing. It’s bad enough
that the Obama Administration has grossly violated fundamental
constitutional rights, acknowledged the violation and defended
their legality. Even worse is that likelihood that the
intrusion will probably be ruled legal, that it has been
ongoing against other targets for some time and that this is
only the tip of the intelligence-abuse iceberg.</p>
<p>The facts are still tumbling out daily but here’s what we
know. While the Justice Department’s letter of notice to AP
didn’t provide the reason for the seizure, the date of the
seizure or the dates of the data seized, the timing hints
strongly that this is tied to a major investigation of
“whistle-blowing”. Last year, the AP used unnamed sources in a
story about a Central Intelligence Agency effort to disrupt a
Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner. The AP, at the
government’s request, held that story for several days but
published it on May 7, 2012 after it was confident the plot
had been foiled. Because the AP’s story ran a day before
Federal officials were scheduled to announce their “victory”,
it’s logical to assume Associated Press honchos knew the
government would be unhappy.</p>
<p>So they were probably not surprised that, led by the U.S.
Attorney Ronald Machen, federal investigators spent a year
aggressively searching for the people who leaked the
information. That’s vintage Obama. With six government
“whistle-blowers” in jail or being prosecuted, federal
law-enforcers have <a
href="http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_whistleblowers/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.salon.com']);">prosecuted
twice as many whistle-blowers</a> as all previous
Administrations combined over the course of two and a quarter
centuries. But until now, the media-savvy Obama people have
been careful to restrain their pursuit of the corporate press,
limiting confrontations to an occasional request or demand for
one source revelation.</p>
<p>That’s why these revelations are so shocking to media
professionals and advocates. As AP’s CEO Gary Pruitt told
Attorney General Eric Holder <a
href="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/05/Letter-to-Eric-Holder_reporter-call-records.pdf"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','download','http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/05/Letter-to-Eric-Holder_reporter-call-records.pdf']);">in
his letter of complaint this week</a>, “These records
potentially reveal communications with confidential sources
across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the
AP during a two-months period, provide a road map to AP’s news
gathering operations and disclose information about AP’s
activities and operations that the government has no
conceivable right to know.”</p>
<p>There, in a nutshell, is the problem. For the corporate
media, there is such still a thing as “no conceivable right to
know”. Up to now, part of Obama’s information policy has been
that mainstream media qualifies for First Amendment protection
but “alternative” journalists and the news organizations they
work for, as well as bloggers, activists, writers and others
who work independently of major news organizations and who use
the Internet as the free vehicle of communications it was
invented to be have absolutely no protections. Since 2009,
this government is known to have taken action against Internet
activists and truth-tellers: seizing servers, email records
and virtually all forms of on-line communications and then
prosecuting people in over a dozen cases based on some of
those seizures. There’s been very little action taken against
the corporate press, which for its part has largely ignored or
blacked out any reporting on the government attacks on its
smaller media competitors.</p>
<p>This “favored status” commercial media has enjoyed has now
been trashed. The “protected press” is as exposed as the rest
of us. In answering Pruit’s letter, the Justice Department
said as much. “We must notify the media organization in
advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the
integrity of the investigation,” U.S. Attorney’s Machen
spokesman William Miller explained, in a remark that went way
beyond the traditional exemption for protecting lives. He
added, “…we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to
strike the right balance between the public interest in the
free flow of information and the public interest in the fair
and effective administration of our criminal laws.”</p>
<p>In fact, there was no urgency involved in the government’s
assault on AP’s news operation — the incident in question was
over — and seizure of this kind of information has
traditionally been allowed only if a subpeona is issued, after
the targeted media parties have had a chance to challenge the
government intrusion in court. The courts, after all,
constitute one of the protections of privacy and free speech
we citizens have. Under our Constitution, the courts, not the
government, are supposed to decide what is “the right
balance,” as Miller put it.</p>
<p>Most of us lost those protections with the Patriot Act and
the <a
href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/doj-got-reporter-phone-records/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.wired.com']);">Justice
Department’s updated guidelines</a> which allow the
government to engage in secret seizure if its investigators
believe there is a real “security threat”. In fact, it is only
required to announce that seizure when “it is determined that
such notification will no longer pose a clear and substantial
threat to the integrity of the investigation.” In other words,
they can seize anything without a subpeona if they think they
should seize it without a subpeona.</p>
<p>That I have learned personally and this is either a
disclaimer or a claim to authenticity. Last year, the FBI
snatched a server belonging to May First/People Link (my
organization) from its location. We believe they were
investigating some nut using anonymous servers (servers that
don’t maintain records of who used them) to mail threatening
emails to students at the University of Pittsburgh. We
maintain one such server for our colleagues at <a>Rise-Up</a>.</p>
<p>The AP case applies the suspension of our rights to the
“established” media, finalizing a remarkably swift collapse of
balance of power protections by removing the courts from the
equation.</p>
<p>It’s a moment described in the famous Civil Rights Movement
saying, quoted by Angela Davis: “If they come for me in the
morning, they’ll come for you at night.” After years of
chipping away (largely without protest or even acknowledgement
from the mainstream corporate media), at the rights of what
the Administration considers the most dangerous and
uncontrollable information source — the Internet and the
activists and independent journalists who thrive on it like
Wikileaks or Mayfirst, the web hosting service I helped found
— they’ve now knocked on the door of the mainstream media.</p>
<p>To get a feeling for how dangerous this is, all one must do
is trace how these investigations unfold and visualize the
investigative web that is developing.</p>
<p>First, they get the phone records. In this case, the phone
companies apparently just gave it to them. Protestations that
these include “only” phone numbers called and nothing else
collapse upon careful examination. Seized cell phone records
(and their logs of emails, websites visited and texts sent)
are now in the Justice Department’s hands along with all the
numbers called by over 100 reporters on 20 phone lines.
Starting with the phone numbers called, investigators can then
go to commercial email providers (like Google’s Gmail) and
seek records of everyone who the reporters contacted. After
all, they can now search the providers’ databases against the
acquired names and phone numbers!</p>
<p>Email on AP’s servers wasn’t seized — that could never be
done “secretly”. But some AP reporters probably use their
non-company email as well and investigators can go after that.
Internet providers are under enormous pressure to give up
those records and many, like Google, will do so voluntarily
upon official government request. They’ve already done it for
the Chinese government to help it go after its critics.</p>
<p>So anybody who gets a phone call from one of the seized lines
during this period can now be investigated more aggressively
without subpeonas using the powers of investigation the
government already has and information it has already gathered
in secret from reporters who had promised them anonymity.</p>
<p>Where is the limit? Without a court hearing, there is none.
If an AP reporter called your phone or emailed you from a
targeted cell phone, the government now knows it and your
phone number (and possibly email address) is now part of the
investigation. That gathered information now includes your
name, address, phone number, calls you received and calls you
made. If they got to the email, all of that is theirs. No
matter what those phone calls or email messages from your cell
phone are about, they are a part of a government investigation
into a major security leak.</p>
<p>Once you’re in the mix, the government can then declare you
an investigation “target” and legally seize read all your
email and seize all the email of anybody your wrote. All of
this activity is legally covered and, based on past government
practice, can be done without informing you.</p>
<p>What’s more there are now indications that the government
isn’t stopping there. According to the Washington Post, you
don’t even need to be part of an investigation.</p>
<p>“Every day, collection systems at the National Security
Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls
and other types of communications,” <a
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://projects.washingtonpost.com']);">the
Post reported</a> in its extraordinary series on government
intelligence. “The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70
separate databases.”</p>
<p>The Guardian’s Glen Greenwald argues that <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.guardian.co.uk']);">such
numbers are only possible if the government is recording</a>
every phone call, text and email being transmitted in this
country. Several FBI whistle-blowers and former agents, he
points out, have attested to that scope of activity.</p>
<p>To say you will be part of a prosecution or that the
investigation would reach such lengths may, at this point,
border on paranoia. But not long ago most of us would have
considered paranoid the idea that such collection of data is
even taking place. “Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a
tyrannical political culture,” Greenwald wrote. To deny the
danger in all this is to trust that the government won’t abuse
this power or consider your completely legal activities to be
dangerous.</p>
<p>Does the Obama Administration deserve that trust? Its stated
position is that the government can collect and use any
information of this type if there is a security reason to do
so. The issue is what is a “security reason” and, since courts
have been effectively removed from the process, that
definition is completely in the hands of the Justice
Department, Homeland Security, the FBI and the National
Security Agency. If one of those agencies says you have no
right to privacy, you don’t.</p>
<p>There are many people in this country working in opposition
to the government. Many of them oppose policies and challenge
laws. Many of them have relationships with similar activists
in other countries and take up issues that affect those other
countries. Should we really feel comfortable giving some
government functionary the power to decide if our activities
are “dangerous” or “pose a threat”? This is an Administration
that has criminally charged Internet activists for violating
terms of service agreements, smeared the reputations of
countless legitimate activists in all kinds of movements and
kept scores of people in Guantamo’s prison for years without
charges, in most cases knowing and even conceding that they
are innocent of any. Does that track record offer any
assurance that they will be judicious and restrained with your
information?</p>
<p>Should we trust them with the powers they have amassed?
Clearly not, because, given the facts we already know,
mistrust isn’t paranoia; it’s knowing the facts.</p>
<p><i><strong>ALFREDO LOPEZ</strong> is a member of <a
href="http://ww.thiscantbehappenng.net"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://ww.thiscantbehappenng.net']);">ThisCantBeHappening!</a>,
the new independent three-time Project Censored
Award-winning online alternative newspaper. </i></p>
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