
Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe - QUFB
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-records-probe
======
DanielBMarkham
Let's not forget the IRS having authority to pull all electronic
communications from an entity without any kind of oversight at all (because
they are a "special" agency) and now word that some of the documents they've
been pulling, perhaps against policy, were leaked to the press.

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.

~~~
aasarava
As far as I can tell, there was no real "intercept" in this case other than
the government asking for records of calls. So the software involved was
probably just a SQL query.

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.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
More to the point, _we're involved in this whether we want to be or not_

------
untog
This- to put it mildly- is Not Good. I'll quote David Carr's tweet[1],which
best sums up my feelings on the matter:

 _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.

[1] <https://twitter.com/carr2n/status/334055243379785728>

~~~
jacoblyles
If you're making a list of the most tyrannical Presidents ever, you'd have to
put FDR near the top of that. And his reputation has survived.

Obama is a progressive. So are history professors. His legacy will be fine.

~~~
harold
I'm not so sure. I think he's done some good work. But he's also on the
precipice of having a whole generation of young idealists getting the shaft
when it comes to the price of healthcare next year - if a new congressional
report is to be believed.

Disclosure: this is my submission from earlier today on the topic:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702248>

------
danso
Maybe my memory's failing me, but I can't think of a similarly-sized press
surveillance operation by the Bush Administration.

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...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/obama-pursuing-leakers-
sends-warning-to-whistle-blowers.html)

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.

~~~
tptacek
This was an interesting argument, so I did some quick research. Apparently,
six (6) Espionage Act cases have been filed under Obama. I found and read the
indictments for each (they're easy to find, since FAS tracks them). They were:

* 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!

~~~
nym
...But not Karl Rove

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Karl_Rove>

~~~
tptacek
Karl Rove was not a federal government employee when Obama assumed office.

------
jhspaybar
They told me if I voted for McCain that we'd end up living in a police state
after 8 years...and they were right!

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...](http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=%22They+told+me+if+I+voted+for+John+McCain%22)

~~~
kunai
Pretty much both sides of the spectrum look pretty grim.

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.

~~~
moens
Demosthenes and Locke are the only voices allowed... and you _must_ rabidly
adhere to one or the other. Ah, Ender, didn't you know?

~~~
kunai
<http://xkcd.com/635/>

------
sehugg
This is the May 2012 story the AP claims to have set off the investigation,
the writers of which were allegedly the targets (linked from Business
Insider):
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-07/al-
qaeda-bomb-plot-foiled/54811054/1)

~~~
revelation
Ironically, that story reads like yet another NYTimes "well informed insider"
report:

 _U.S. officials, who were briefed on the operation, insisted on anonymity to
discuss the case, which the U.S. has never officially acknowledged._

------
bcn
The CEO of AP, Gary Pruitt, responds to Holder (DOJ) regarding the record
seizure- [http://www.ap.org/Images/Letter-to-Eric-
Holder_tcm28-12896.p...](http://www.ap.org/Images/Letter-to-Eric-
Holder_tcm28-12896.pdf)

~~~
rapsourly
Have you come across any DoJ justification? As Pruitt notes, "[t]hese records
potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the
newsgathering activities." That's a pretty good way to inhibit future
"newsgathering operations," turning potential future sources into fearful non-
sources.

------
stfu
Actually we need more of that! Whatever it takes to help media wake up and
become more critical of government intrusion tactics.

~~~
rwmj
No we don't. Most of this is already reported, if you want to look for it. If
you're worried that citizens of your country aren't _interested_ in those
stories, _you_ should get out and make more people aware.

~~~
stfu
This is about agenda setting. Media coverage determines what gets covered and
what not.

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.

~~~
yew
You seem to be assuming the direction of causation there. Not that you're
wrong, necessarily, but you never can be sure.

~~~
stfu
Well, it is certainly bi-directional. Probably we can settle for the good old
echo-chamber description. :)

------
SpikedCola
Is anyone even surprised by the actions of the U.S. Government anymore?

------
Zikes
Are there currently any VOIP+Tor type technologies that could reasonably
replace existing telephone services and prevent this sort of thing in the
future?

~~~
kunai
VOIP is just as easily snooped as regular lines. It's not as easy, but you can
do it with the right tools.

~~~
evan_
> VOIP is just as easily snooped as regular lines. It's not as easy, but you
> can do it with the right tools.

Wait, is it just as easy or not as easy?

~~~
mpyne
The point is that there's no difference when the resources of the government
are put to the task.

------
smaili
How does the government "secretly" obtain information? Did they hack the AP?
Was it an inside job? Better yet, if it was so secret, how did the AP even
find out that the DoJ obtained their records? Something doesn't add up...

~~~
bcn
The AP was with "notified" in a letter...

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."

~~~
mpyne
I guess the point is that it's not really a "secret" (which implies that a
cover-up has been blown). Rather it's post-facto notification.

------
dweekly
I posted this on my FB wall, pretty outraged, and a friend of mine who is a
former federal prosecutor had this to say in response:

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.

~~~
swamp40
I am a fiscal conservative and a constitutionalist (don't confuse me with a
Republican). No fan of president Obama. Here is my viewpoint.

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.

------
r00fus
Shouldn't this posting be from a neutral source, say Reuters, or some
distinguished blog rather than the AP themselves?

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?

~~~
dstanchfield
Well, since the AP is breaking the story, do you suggest we hang out until
Reuters covers it?

