
Could Glenn Greenwald go to jail? The law is alarmingly murky - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/26/could-glenn-greenwald-go-to-jail-the-law-is-alarmingly-murky/?tid=rssfeed
======
pvnick
Previously I would say the American public would riot in the streets should a
reporter be charged with the crime of journalism. Based on the reaction to the
revelation that the NSA is watching every single piece of Internet
communication in the world, now I'm not so sure. The apathy to all matters
beyond "Kim Kardashian is fat now" is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Edit: Just wanted to add in a thought. The _only_ thing keeping a lawless
government from pulling stunts like this is the fear of citizen revolt, and
even then they generally proceed if the projected revolution strength is
sufficiently weak.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Because rioting is an immature, knee-jerk reaction people in countries without
proper avenues of political expression, e.g. the poor or uneducated, take?
Riots are a way to signal the elites that the population feels some way. The
U.S. has non-destructive ways of doing that, even if less emotionally
satisfying than burning shit to make a point.

Note that present polling indicates Americans, while holding a positive
opinion of Snowden, still feel he should be prosecuted.

~~~
jbooth
Non-destructive ways of doing that, like what? Electing a new President who
very believably promises to do the opposite of what the last one did?

~~~
rz2k
However, the problem is not that elected officials are not listening to the
people, it is that there is little concern from the electorate about privacy
rights.

Ultimately, the country does belong to you more for understanding the problems
of eroding privacy rights more than someone who doesn't. One could argue that
rioting would change the conversation in a productive way, but I expect it
would further the cause of authoritarians if a group of people behind a
minority viewpoint tried to advance their cause through the violence of
rioting.

I firmly believe that democracy can only function with transparency and a free
press, but those are means to democracy, not a goal in themselves. It makes no
sense to wish for riots, which are intrinsically anti-democratic when not
expressing the will of the majority, for the sake of making a country safer
for democracy.

Much as when our country was torturing people, the problem is less that of a
disobedient set of elected officials, and more that of some really bad ideas
that are held by a large portion of the population. Unfortunately, right now
the problem is not politicians who can be easily demonized, but a population
that for now is largely ignorant about the power of data.

~~~
jbooth
I'm not necessarily wishing for riots with innocent shopkeepers' livelihoods
being trashed.

But I am saying that the normal democratic methods seem to fail us here --
this is a real "don't blame me, I voted for kodos" situation. If Obama, who
was the most strident advocate against this stuff out of both parties in the
2008 primaries (except for maybe Kucinich), doesn't follow through on this
stuff, what are the democratic options?

~~~
mpyne
Has anyone considered that maybe Obama felt that he was actually able to tamp
down the excesses he railed against, and was able to be convinced of the _use_
of the NSA once he took office and was able to be briefed on what they
actually do?

America wouldn't have lasted very long if a minority group set the cities on
fire each and every single time an unpopular decision was made public.

P.S. the democratic options involve letting your representatives and elected
officials know that you are pissed, whether that's through letters,
complaining to the media, _peaceful_ protests, or all of the above.

Sometimes the people don't naturally do what _jbooth_ personally feels is
right for the entire nation. Welcome to Democracy.

~~~
jbooth
Did you read the first line of my comment where I said I wasn't in favor of
actual violent rioting? It's right up there.

I've knocked on probably 1,000 doors and made probably 5,000 phone calls for
democrats over the last 10 years. I'm not some slacktivist, and I'm not saying
that the whole world needs to agree with me, although the accusation of
arrogance is well taken.

We've seen no evidence that Obama changed anything about NSA wiretapping and a
fair amount of circumstantial evidence that he probably didn't (how those
drone strikes coming, and the medicinal marijuana crackdown)?

When someone runs and is elected by a majority as being "the opposite of
Bush", it'd be nice if he actually did something different.

~~~
mpyne
> We've seen no evidence that Obama changed anything about NSA wiretapping

The FISA was changed to require warrants in 2008 (though Obama was a Senator
then, not sure what part he played in that as I don't remember the discussion
from the time it occurred). The "watch list" the NSA was using was gigantic
when Obama took office and was shrunk down to focus on those who might
actually impact national security.

> how those drone strikes coming

Better than what we used to do, invade entire countries and drop 1000kg JDAMs
everywhere, which involved _far more_ "collateral damage".

That is, of course, unless you're saying that we should simply wait until a
group blows up something in America and _then_ go destroy whatever state the
operational cell was working out of. I personally prefer disrupting the cell
and leaving the state intact (as do the states that we surreptitiously work
with...) as it involves less human sacrifice on both sides, but that might
just be me.

> the medicinal marijuana crackdown

Yeah, I got nothing. The sooner we move away from giving a shit about
marijuana the better, as far as I'm concerned.

> When someone runs and is elected by a majority as being "the opposite of
> Bush"

They were both "opposite of Bush" so I hope you had more in mind than that
when you voted. As it stands though, if you think Obama is _just like Bush_
then you might want to re-evaluate history, as time has a habit of helping us
forget the bad and remember the good. There was a reason that as far back as
2004 that Bush was already well down the road toward becoming the most
unpopular President in decades, and that's because there was much worse things
going on than drones...

~~~
dragonwriter
> The FISA was changed to require warrants in 2008

No, it wasn't. FISA _always_ required warrants for certain surveillance, and
the 2008 FISA Amendment Act _increased_ the time period for warrantless
surveillance, and added new exceptions to the warrant requirements, and it
explicitly blocked investigations of illegal wiretapping that had occurred
before the Act.

~~~
mpyne
Well that was not what I had heard, so I'll assume I'm mistaken and apologize.

And then go read the damn law for myself. (Perhaps it's a good thing I
mentioned Obama wasn't President at that time. :O)

------
BrandonMarc
The question that keeps coming up is whether being a journalist means you get
special privileges. It's hilarious that David Gregory suggests Glen Greenwald
be charged with a crime, seeing as Gregory, it will be further recalled,
illustrated an anti-gun law by violating it on the air.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Hb6c2tWl0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Hb6c2tWl0)

So if you go along with the idea that a journalist gets special privileges,
what defines a journalist? Is Ariana Huffington one? Howard Stern? How about
Rush Limbaugh? How about a famous blogger? How about a not-so-famous blogger?
An anchor for Fox News?

Hmm. For many, these are uncomfortable questions. After all, what happens when
journalists fail to do their job, because they either can't get the info or
won't report on it? Julian Assange is proof of that issue. Is he a journalist?

Once upon a time you just needed to be bureaucrat. Today the thing to be is a
bureaucrat with a badge. Bruce Schneier calls this phenomenon "privilege
escalation". He cites the example of transit cops whose main ambition was to
drop the "transit" part of their job description.

Fascinating commentary here:
[http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/06/24/do-you-
know-w...](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/06/24/do-you-know-who-i-
am/)

It becomes a matter of "who you are" instead of equal application of the law
to everybody.

Frankly I despise the idea that journalists should have a different set of
rules from the rest of us. Equally-applied laws make should be beyond question
... I can't believe people are even arguing whether laws should be applied to
everyone equally.

Especially defenders of the 1st amendment.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
The companies behind an Investigative Journalist are ultimately responsible
for the content they agree to publish through their respective channels. In
the case of classified information, Greenwald received the information and
ultimately it was vetted by others in his department what could and could not
be published.

------
revscat
Again the conversation shifts away from the bureaucracy and towards those who
threaten it. While TFA brings up an important and interesting subject, we
would as a nation be better served by focusing energies on the NSA and the
various other intelligence agencies.

~~~
pyre

      | Again the conversation shifts away from the
      | bureaucracy and towards those who threaten it.
    

Journalism _is_ about presenting both sides of a story so that the reader can
make up their own mind. It's also worth noting that you're bringing up a
single article to show that "the conversation is shifting." By this logic, I
could bring up any story in any publication that doesn't have anything to do
with the NSA and claim that the MSM is trying to bury the story by reporting
on Hollywood gossip or something else.

I agree that the focus should be on the NSA, but hopefully all of the stories
about the subject matter keep the topic in the public's thoughts. Possibly
enough for some people to do more research and change their minds (from "All
the way NSA!" to "Hmmm. Maybe they went too far").

~~~
toyg
"Both sides"? What about Rashomon? Please don't fall in the bipolar disease
typical of modern politics. _All_ sides in a story should be covered.

Still, you have to agree that the MSM way too often derails the conversation
towards personalism and unrelated issues and away from actual policy topics,
usually following this or that agenda, just because novels sell better than
political essays. This should be taught in journalism school, nowadays, but
it's clearly not the case.

~~~
rtpg
>All sides in a story should be covered.

So I should let creationists speak on stage on the same level as everyone
else?

There was an editorial by (I think) the EIC of Nature. In it he talks about
how giving people the floor for discussion in some way validates their
positions, no matter how absurd, so the best solution is simply not to give
them the floor.

If someone knows what article I'm talking about , please link it, it was
extremely interesting read.

~~~
glenstein
That's not what I took toyg's meaning to be. All legitimate sides of a stories
should be reported. Sometimes that's two sides. Sometimes it's one. There
might be times when it's thirteen and there might be other times where it's
zero. The disease of modern politics is assuming it's always two.

~~~
toyg
This exactly.

------
ChikkaChiChi
I hope they do arrest him. If that doesn't start some sort of rebellion then
nothing will.

We already allowed Obama's administration to create laws that stop
whistleblower's from coming out of the shadows. Now the law is 'murky' on the
people that would report it in the first place?

What the hell happened to the country we (as in US Citizens) love? I didn't
pledge allegiance to this? If anything this sounds like a government that is
threatening our freedoms more than any domestic or international terrorists
ever could!

------
elmuchoprez
I don't know what the actual legal position on this is, but I think that
public sentiment usually recognizes that:

1.) There is a legitimate need for classified information within a government;

2.) The purpose of classified information is not to cover up illegal
activities by the government.

So when it comes to revealing classified information, if it is done to expose
a crime, I think the US public generally supports that. But in this case, near
as I can tell, no crime was exposed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't PRISM
conducted within the bounds of the law?

So now there's the question of whether or not PRISM should have been legal,
and whether or not exposing classified information to put a spotlight on that
discussion is legit. And I don't know how I feel about that let alone what the
public at large thinks about it.

~~~
pvnick
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't PRISM conducted within the bounds of the
law?

Remember, even the Stasi was legal. But no, these programs violate the 4th
amendment.

~~~
dclowd9901
Not technically, as they only get to search collected data with a warrant from
the FISC. Now we're getting into the territory of strict vs. liberal
interpretations of the Bill of Rights. In a world that could not have foreseen
the ability of the US government to quite literally record _everything_ , and
thusly didn't include in the 4th amendment a protection against ex post facto
search and seizure, something beyond even sci-fi at that point.

~~~
MichaelSalib
Putting aside Prism, I don't see how the cell phone metadata is compatible
with the fourth amendment at all. The 4A exists specifically to ban general
warrants that allow the government to seize whatever they want without any
specificity. That's exactly what the FISC order authorizing metadata
collection is. There really isn't any strict vs. liberal interpretation here
that I can see.

~~~
mpyne
Except this very issue about metadata was already deliberated in the courts
decades ago when it first came up that phone companies maintained these
metadata records, with the conclusion that they are phone company records, not
_your_ records, and that therefore the government could subpoena them if they
wished, as long as they didn't individually identify people (which would
require something more substantive).

~~~
LoganCale
Phone numbers individually identify people.

~~~
mpyne
Strictly speaking, phone numbers identify _phones_.

I mean, that's what we would say when the RIAA comes at us saying that IP
address umpty-squat was used to download a movie, right? "Must have been my
neighbor on my Wifi". "My friend was browsing my laptop".

But either way, that's why the NSA must get a separate subpoena to get the
subscriber information for a given phone number, if they don't already have it
from earlier. And only after that can they get a warrant to allow for grabbing
the data itself.

~~~
MichaelSalib
First of all, I don't find the IP address argument persuasive and I don't
think most courts have either.

Secondly, given that it is quite common for DHCP to give a single computer
different addresses and nothing like that happens to phone numbers (which are
intended to be persistent and not transient identifiers), I don't think your
analogy works.

------
freerobby
The good news is that the law notwithstanding, the politics of arresting a
journalist in a situation like this are unfavorable to the Justice Department.
Holder recently gave Congressional testimony saying he thinks it would be a
bad idea to charge journalists in leak cases. His words were: "That is not
something I've ever been involved in, heard of, would think would be wise
policy."[1]

Whatever you make of the rest of his testimony (and whether he lied about
investigating Rosen), it would be harder for him to go after journalists after
saying that to Congress.

[1] [http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/31/justice-
dept...](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/31/justice-dept-says-
holder-didnt-lie-before-congressional-committee/)

------
yardie
I think even the public can comprehend the 1st amendment. Could Greenwald go
to jail? Possibly. But then the justice department would have every lawyer
looking to make a name for themselves chomping at the bit. A case like that
puts you on the fast track to the Supreme Court.

------
DanBC
It's baffling to me that country like America with strong 1st amendment and
freedom of speech culture has people who think a journalist should be put in
prison.

So, now, a whistle-blower needs to have strong anonymity and privacy to pass
information on, and the newspaper needs to be strong enough to protect its
journalists. And when this might mean that the editor goes to jail (contempt
laws?) that's a lot to ask.

But would any sane government push things that far? Locking up the editor of a
newspaper for not handing over the name of a journalist?

(I'm about to web-search, but have any American journalists been jailed for
not giving up the names of their sources?)

~~~
geg3
I don't know about American journalists, but here's a thread worth unraveling:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulelah_Haider_Shaye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulelah_Haider_Shaye)

With the War on Terror coming home, should Americans expect special treatment?

------
zwegner
Funny that they don't mention that the Washington Post also published
classified info, and that perhaps they "aided and abetted" Snowden, to some
"extent"...

------
scottshea
And in a 5-4 decision the US Supreme court rules that he can be prosecuted
(just looking into my cystal ball)

------
gasull
I can't help thinking that the headline is more a suggestion than a question.

