Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe
bigstory.ap.org
bigstory.ap.org
I tried to post an analysis of why the IRS story was important to hackers everywhere earlier. It was killed. Beats me why. Some wag said it was just more political bullshit.
I quite understand people who want to hear exclusively about Erlang innards and point out there are plenty of other places for articles that involve any politics at all. But this is the world we live in, and the technologies we are developing are being used for this stuff.
One day some guy writes code to exploit MITM attacks for web devices, and one day very soon afterwards some despotic government uses it to target and kill people. You can't continue to hide your head in the sand and pretend that somehow some really cool tech will come along and save the day, so back to the Apple and SV gossip tripe. That's simply not realistic. We don't write pure technology. We create powerful tools that impact the lives of people everywhere. It is not rational to pretend that impact does not exist. I guarantee you that some hacker in the audience probably played a role in the software used for the AP intercept.
ADD: And the joke I've been thinking about all day which must come out: they don't make a Hallmark card for this.
That said, I do agree with the point you're making that there can be a larger context to our work. Indeed, it can give meaning to our work.
I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys writing iPhone apps; but the prevalence of things like Stuxnet, and Chinese cyber spying, and Bitcoin (in particular the political philosophy behind its origin), and Facebook (and its implications for privacy), and now the AP subpoena, is increasingly telling me that there's a huge opportunity to use tech skills to make a difference in the world. And the people most suited to do it are people who understand both politics and technology.
Lemme see, IRS going after political opponents plus DOJ tapping AP reporters. Nixonian optics on "the most transparent admin in history."
I do wonder what kind of a legacy the Obama administration will leave to history when these kinds of events are stacked up.
Obama is a progressive. So are history professors. His legacy will be fine.
Disclosure: this is my submission from earlier today on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702248
Not so sure that will be part of his legacy. He generally concedes to corporate will and is so accommodating to Republicans he plans to cut social security, which they're now criticizing him for. Let's not forget that Republicans (McCain) supported national healthcare to some extent. If anything, Obama will be appreciated by progressives for his liberal Supreme Court appointments, but whether he's ever remembered as a progressive remains to be seen. Though, it's definitely what Fox News would have you think.
Keep in mind that under Obama, more alleged government leakers have been prosecuted than all of his predecessors combined:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leak...
This includes administrations that oversaw such problematic eras as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the McCarthy Era, and of course, the War on Terrorism.
* Thomas Drake, an NSA employee who favored "ThinThread" instead of the later-adopted "Trailblazer" internet surveillance scheme, who then created a Hushmail account and fed classified documents to a reporter from it.
* Shamai Leibowitz, an FBI contractor/interpreter, who fed the contents of an cable intercepted from the Israeli embassy to a blogger because he felt it implicated Israel in an attack on Iran.
* Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a career civil servant at State who worked on counterproliferation and North Korea and fed classified documents about North Korea to Fox News, and then lied to the FBI about having any contact with journalists.
* Bradley Manning
* Jeffrey Sterling, who was fired from the CIA, lodged a series of employment law disputes with the CIA, attempted to write a memoir about his time at CIA, and then fed classified details about Iranian counterproliferation to a reporter which put a human intelligence resource at risk.
* John Kiriakou, a CIA counterterrorism official who worked in Pakistan, who outed two covert operatives to a reporter (they had allegedly been involved in the Bush-era interrogation program).
Of this list, Kiriakou and Drake are sympathetic to me, but every single case here seems like a valid prosecution; when you take a role that requires you to handle the most sensitive data the government handles, you cannot share it with the press expecting not to end up arguing your side of the story in a court of law. You certainly can't out covert operatives, or feed foreign intercepts you translate to bloggers!
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/obama-whistleblo...
[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57582929/official-we-kn...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/politics/accidental-pat...
But to your point: it doesn't matter if Obama personally investigated the cases himself or if a witchhunt is led by a middle manager. He is the top executive, what he says or implies trickles down the chain of command. If he passed along the word that these prosecutions weren't worth the time and effort, then the immense work that goes behind building these cases would, quite likely, dissipate.
Is there anything that can reign them in? Or should I say convince them to reign themselves in. I don't think so.
Sorry for the rant.
Advice for press: Get trained in spycraft (throw away cell phones, false names, strong file and email encryption, Tor...). but most of all don't become too cozy with our leadership.
News has become a celebrity sport, and it's too late for "too cozy".
https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+correspondents+di...
Read up on Mark Klein's whistleblower case. It wasn't just press surveillance - it was the origin of surveillance of everybody.
Credit to Instapundit if you care to see more from the most transparent administration ever http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=%22They+told+me+if+I+voted...
I used to be a hard-ass liberal, but now I've changed my outlook, matured a bit, and become a libertarian.
Their philosophy makes the most sense, but no one seems to listen.
U.S. officials, who were briefed on the operation, insisted on anonymity to discuss the case, which the U.S. has never officially acknowledged.
In any event the operation was going to be announced a week later. Perhaps the real offense was spoiling a triumphant press conference.
Scandals like these make government's ongoing privacy intrusion a real, tangible issue. If I go around spreading the gospel, I am just an internet tinfoil head. If it is the headline on a national newspaper, it is a real issue that needs discussion.
Wait, is it just as easy or not as easy?
It seeems there are "crypto phones", but do these still rely on a third-party service to initiate and transmit the call? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_phone
From the article, "News organizations normally are notified in advance that the government wants phone records and enter into negotiations over the desired information. In this case, however, the government, in its letter to the AP, cited an exemption to those rules..."
and then,
"It is unknown whether a judge or a grand jury signed off on the subpoenas."
Let me provide some context: this was certainly not unchecked or without oversight. In fact, any time phone records are requested by federal subpoena as part of a criminal investigation (which is what happened here), the subpoenas are checked by a federal grand jury and -- later in the process -- open for judicial and public review. During the investigative phase, subpoenas are kept sealed in court records to protect the privacy rights of innocent people and to maintain investigative integrity. This is a normal part of our legal process, and consistent with best international practices. Also, because of obvious free press concerns, there are special checks in place whenever you want to subpoena records of press officials. You have to prove that it's necessary for the criminal investigation and that there is no other way to get the info. It's actually such a pain in the ass (lots of paperwork and waiting for a long line of signatures) that no one would want to go through it unless it was absolutely necessary. Here, they're investigating criminal leakage of classified information about a CIA's disruption of a terrorist plot to blow up an airliner on the anniversary of bin Laden's death. Whoever leaked the information committed a serious crime and likely put lives in danger. (Confidential sources are important to reporters, but they are perhaps even more important and certainly harder to come by for intelligence officers. CIA may have worked for years to acquire the source that allowed them to foil the terrorist plot, and that source may now be dead as a result of the leak of classified information.) The article has fairly limited information but says that there were 20 phone lines for which records were subpoenaed. This number would be consistent with investigation of a leak to one of a small handful of people, and although we won't know until court records are ultimately unsealed, I suspect the records requested for the office lines were probably tailored in scope to match that set of people. Like I said, the approval process is onerous, and you have a much better chance of getting things signed if you really narrow the scope of your request (e.g., "We know the data was leaked in this 3 day period, and we suspect the info was received by this person, who worked in the office from 4-8pm those days, so we'll request those times.") The records you get back from the phone company include phone numbers called and duration of calls, and then you can subpoena other records if you see any numbers that match up with the person suspected of leaking the classified info. I think it's important to keep in mind that our intelligence operations play a critical role in keeping us safe. If we're unwilling to accept law enforcement's role in protecting our intelligence services, then we should expect more attacks like the one that happened in Boston.
Someone in the Obama Administration wanted to brag a bit and leaked confidential information to the AP.
They blew a British agent's cover and he had to pull out of Yemen.
His Yemeni associates may now be subject to torture/imprisonment/death.
That's illegal and irresponsible. The people responsible should be tracked down and punished.
The Justice department got a warrant and obtained relevant information from the AP. Just because they are US media doesn't give them the right to publish state secrets.
I think the US government is acting properly here.
Otherwise, I'd recommend putting the quotes around the accusagion (ie, AP claims Govt has obtained their phone records, etc).
Perhaps the government here is actually in the correct?