US Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks 213
NotSanguine writes with this quote from a NY Times article:
"The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined. This week, a grand jury in Virginia heard testimony in a continuing investigation of WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group, a rare effort to prosecute those who publish secrets, rather than those who leak them. The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand, endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods."
LOL, American Freedom! (Score:3, Interesting)
LOL, is this the "American Freedom" I always heard so much about as a youth growing up in Eastern Europe just after the fall of Communism?
ok i am just super confused (Score:5, Interesting)
"endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods."
I would like someone to explain to me how the Thomas Drake case involved anything remotely resembling the endangerment of intelligence agents. Furthermore, the domestic spying he exposed was illegal. Exposing that is not a crime, and nobody should be 'worried' about 'exposing' crimes. Furthermore, he did not release any classified information, nor was he even charged with doing so.
I do not understand how the Kim case, has no relationship whatsoever to intelligence agents, nor spying. It is about educated guessing about North Korea's weapons testing. One time, in a single telephone conversation, with a reporter. Where is the 'intelligence agent' here? Where is the 'spying methods'?
The Manning case has almost nothing to do with spying methods, as far as we know. Otherwise, they probably would have charged him under 18 USC 798 - they didn't. They charged him with 34 other things. 3 of those charges relate to the Icleandic banking scandal - i do not understand how that has anything to do with spying methods nor with intelligence agents. Is every state department employee now an 'intelligence agent'?
The Leibowitz case - we have no idea what the details of the case are. Even the judge doesn't know the details of the case. Leibowitz plead out because they scared him. What little we know is that he found out the FBI was engaged in illegal activity related to signals intelligence work. Two guesses as to what that is.
I will admit, the Sterling case is about intelligence agents and spying methods. It is about how the CIA accidentally screwed up and gave Iran accurate nuclear weapons information instead of inaccurate information. Let me just ask you - do you think the public is better off knowing that, or not?
The Wikileaks case - well, please let me know when there is concrete evidence that any intelligence agents have been harmed by wikileaks. Some ambassadors have been harmed - then again, ambassadors are quite often simply the biggest campaign donors to the president. That's how ambassadorships work. If those people are 'intelligence agents', well, I have to wonder about the wisdom of making campaign donors into intelligence agents. Shouldn't we be picking professionals instead?
I also haven't seen anything yet about any wikileaks cables that reveal spying information. Gun camera footage is all over youtube, should all of those youtube users now be charged under the Espionage act too?
new lessons to teach kids in school (Score:5, Interesting)
1) the US does whatever the hell it wants. it does not ask permission and it seeks out those who disagree for intent of harm.
2) this is not a disney movie, this life we all lead. the line between good and bad guys is often non-existent. stop thinking in binary fashion. the US isn't good and it isn't evil, its JUST ANOTHER COUNTRY run by rich white men who like to keep the power base the way it is (and pretty much has been).
3) we spy. they spy. everyone spies. not only that, but countries do not respect their own people and will spy on them. kids, learn this. be watchful of EVERYTHING you say or write or photo. this is now universal since all countries have latched onto this 'we control your life, entirely' mentality.
4) power corrupts and the more you give the government, the more they'll screw you over (now or later) with it. no such thing as 'temporary powers'. don't ever fall for THAT line again, please.
5) cops, judges, politicians, lawyers; those in authority are there because they are mentally unbalanced and have this need for control. the higher the position, the more corruptable the job is and the more 'attractive' it is to such sick people. beware of those in authority and realize WHY they seeked out those kinds of jobs. avoid dealing or interacting with these people in life, they are not your friends and not worth your friendship. they'll stab you at first chance if it suits them.
none of this is taught in schools (on purpose). we intentionally lie to our kids when we raise them. then, about teen age, they see the lies we have been telling them. problem is, we have already raised generations of people on pure lies who believe in this 'two party system' and that if you have done nothing wrong, (...). we have a lot of really dumb cattle walking around as human beings with a totally false idea of how the world really works.
start with truth about what our world is like. you can't fix things if you don't even see them for how they really are.
Ever-greater power grabs by the executive branch (Score:5, Interesting)
This is bi-partisan because grabbing more power for the executive branch is bi-partisan. The book "Takeover" by Charlie Savage (also of the NYT) details much about how the Bush 2 administration worked to increase executive power, but also how it has been a tradition for a century before that - and persecution of whistleblowers is an important part of it.
Two stories from "Takeover" stuck with me.
One was the story of an ethics advisor for the Justice Dept, Jesslyn Radack. When John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban", was charged with many counts that led to 20 years in jail, based almost entirely on his own statement given while duct-taped to a board, naked and blindfolded with an untreated bullet wound in his leg, Atty. Gen. Ashcroft stated publicly that while the statement was given without a lawyer present, that was fine since he did not have a lawyer at the time. Alas, Ms. Radack had already notified the FBI that Lindh's father had retained council for him and notified Justice, and that they should not interrogate him - they just did, anyway. And Radack had kept the E-mails, then sent them to a reporter. It was not in her mind at the time that this was "whistleblowing" she felt she was correcting erroneous statements; releasing the information was no crime at all, since it was unclassified. For this, she found herself:
* Fired, from the private law firm she worked for (they consulted to Justice)
* Subjected to a year-long criminal investigation, though no charges were ever filed, since she had committed no crime
* Referred to for "discipline" by the bar associations in all the states she was licensed to practice in, via a secret report that she was not allowed to see
* Placed on the "selectee" version of the no-fly list - meaning she was *always* "randomly selected" for full off-with-the-underwear search for every single flight.
Talk about a chilling effect. Thou Shalt Not Embarrass The Justice Department, even with the simple truth that it got excited and eager for a headline and made a mistake.
Just so that this isn't seen as partisan, the other story is about a democrat: Harry Truman. (Who also felt the whole Korean War(!) was strictly an executive branch decision, no congressional authorization needed ... take THAT, Libya protestors!) A major avoidance of government transparency is enabled by the "state secrets" privilege, in which the government can tell a court, "dismiss this lawsuit; to argue it, we'd have to reveal State Secrets". It's been used to shut down every lawsuit about torture and unlawful detention that came after 9/11. But there's no such privilege in the Constitution. It comes from a Supreme Court decision, "US vs. Reynolds", where the survivors of 3 civilian scientists killed in a B-29 bomber crash in Georgia, 1948, while doing missile research. The government argued that the judge had to dismiss the suit without even seeing the crash report himself, lest "secret electronics" be revealed, and it was upheld - then used about 60 times since. In 2000, the daughter of one of the victims found the crash report, declassified, on the Internet. It contained NOTHING about secret electronics - it contained proof that there had been negligent maintenance of the bomber, and negligent lack of training for the civilians on how to escape the aircraft. The government had used the claim to avoid embarrassment, not to mention losing a lawsuit.
As Charlie Savage summed it up, "The central case on which the State Secrets Privilege rests, then, was a fraud. The Truman administration had lied to the courts and gotten away with it."
So that's why you need whistleblowers. And that's why governments persecute them as ruthlessly as possible; it's about executive power, the effort to restore America to the status of having a King who is above the law - partly by exempting the executive from laws that the rest of us must obey, partly by ensuring that most of their lawbreaking is never revealed in the first place, so they don't have to fight for that exemption very often.
Re:Non Classified data (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes. When I read "The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand.." I immediately thought it should be
"The string of cases reflects a broad belief across the American public that the actions of the two administrations and both parties in Congress have gotten out of hand..."
Re:LOL, American Freedom! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it is. I believe that was the Regan era you speak of? Well this is pretty much the same mentality.
Chomsky referred to the dems and repubs as "two arms of the business party" and it could never be more true than today.
What you are seeing with wiki (and other) leaks is an open challenge to the government-corp-media stranglehold on the truth that currently exists. (Not just in the US BTW - Murdoch and CO. are worldwide now)
Obviously the government-corp-media machine needs to kill this and the legislators faithfully rise to the challenge.
This "machine" of course is now heavily blurred in terms of who does what, but then you would expect that considering how closely they work together. Eg. ex politicians on the news, ex CEOs of Goldman (& others) advising the POTUS, new people hired as PR and spokespeople, lobbyists etc
So what is the big surprise?
PS: Sorry for being so cynical but at this point I really cannot see any other appropriate response, can you?