Are we scared yet?...
Ok so first we find out that the president authorized the NSA to listen to phone calls of United States citizens without a warrant. They said that it was only those who were calling known terrorist links. I cried foul but many disagreed. Then last week it was reported by USA Today that not only are they listening to some people's phone calls but they asked phone companies to give them a list of every phone call their customers made. AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth all said yes, while Qwest said no (if I ever have a landline in the United States I now know who to get it with). I was ready to cry foul but I knew the response would be that if they were only looking for terrorists then it didn't matter. Well now the stakes have once again beeen raised and I can no longer keep quiet.
On their blog, ABC News correspondents Brian Ross and Richard Esposito are reporting that a "A senior federal law enforcement official" told them to get new cell phones because theirs are being tracked by the government "in an effort to root out confidential sources".
Do you not see what is wrong with this. These reporters were the ones who broke the story on the secret prisons in Romania and Poland thanks in part to confidential sources. Of course the government wants to know who these whistleblowers are and the way they are doing this is by trackng reporters phone calls. Giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt(which they don't deserve in light of recent events) and assuming that they had a subpeona for this tracking (and I would be very interested in knowing who the judge that issued it was if there is one) it is still an attack on the freedom of the press. I mean how are we supposed to know what is going on if potential whistleblowers are scared out of reporting government wrong-doing to journalists because the government is monitoring their calls?
What the hell else does the government have to do before we finally say they have crossed the line?
The ABC News Blog:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html
On their blog, ABC News correspondents Brian Ross and Richard Esposito are reporting that a "A senior federal law enforcement official" told them to get new cell phones because theirs are being tracked by the government "in an effort to root out confidential sources".
Do you not see what is wrong with this. These reporters were the ones who broke the story on the secret prisons in Romania and Poland thanks in part to confidential sources. Of course the government wants to know who these whistleblowers are and the way they are doing this is by trackng reporters phone calls. Giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt(which they don't deserve in light of recent events) and assuming that they had a subpeona for this tracking (and I would be very interested in knowing who the judge that issued it was if there is one) it is still an attack on the freedom of the press. I mean how are we supposed to know what is going on if potential whistleblowers are scared out of reporting government wrong-doing to journalists because the government is monitoring their calls?
What the hell else does the government have to do before we finally say they have crossed the line?
The ABC News Blog:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html
posted by Oscar at 3:17 PM
1 Comments:
oh my God....
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