‘Low-level NSA analysts can spy on Americans’
RT :: July 28, 2013
NSA spying programs give access to US citizens’ private data to low-level analysts with little court approval or supervision, says Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story on Washington’s PRISM surveillance system.
“[PRISM] is an incredibly powerful and invasive tool,” Greenwald told ABC’s ‘This Week.’ The NSA programs are “exactly the type that Mr. Snowden described. NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I’ve said.”
The NSA keeps trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases which they can access anytime with simple screen programs, he said.
“And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things.”
“It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.”
While the program conducts wiretapping with little court approval or supervision, there are “legal constraints” on surveillance that require approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, in which court judges can secretly review the government’s plans to track suspected terrorists in advance.
“You can’t target [Americans] without going to the FISA court,” Greenwald stressed. “But these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.”
“And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst,” he added.
Greenwald will testify before a Congressional committee on Wednesday, along with NSA officials who have previously downplayed Snowden’s claims about the agency’s easy-access data.
PRISM is a mass electronic surveillance data mining program operated by the NSA since 2007. The program was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this summer. Snowden leaked information about the program to the media, warning of a far greater extent of mass data collection than the public knew existed. The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6.
Snowden later leaked further information to Greenwald which pertained to mass security operations carried out across the world. He spoke of British spy agency GCHQ, which uses the Tempora surveillance program. The whistleblower also shared information regarding Germany’s cooperation with US intelligence, which reportedly combs through half a billion German phone calls, emails, and text messages on a daily basis.
A call for transparency on surveillance programs
The call for increased oversight and transparency for surveillance programs has been growing, even among supporters of the NSA.
“I do think that we’re going to have to make some change to make things more transparent,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told ABC.
Former federal judge James Robertson, who used to grant surveillance orders, said he was shocked to hear of changes to allow broader authorization of NSA programs – such as the monitoring of US phone records. He urged for a reform which would to allow counter-arguments to be heard.
“What FISA does is not adjudication, but approval,” Robertson said, speaking as a witness during the first public hearings into the Snowden revelations. “This works just fine when it deals with individual applications for warrants, but the 2008 amendment has turned the FISA court into an administrative agency making rules for others to follow.”
However, government officials have defended the surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, claiming they are necessary in order to guard the country against terrorist threats.
Following Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance, President Barack Obama assured US citizens in June that “nobody is listening to [their] telephone calls.”
He said the surveillance programs monitor phone numbers and the durations of calls, adding that if there are any suspicions and “if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.”
President Obama added that America is “going to have to make some choices” between privacy and security, warning that the highly publicized programs will make it harder to target terrorists.
Meanwhile, deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said that the “program is not intentionally used to target any US citizens” and is “key in our counter-terrorism efforts.”
Testifying on Capitol Hill before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in June, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander claimed that the NSA’s storage of millions of phone records has thwarted more than 50 terror attacks in more than 20 countries since September 11, 2001. However, evidence of the prevented attacks has not been revealed.
EU’s response to NSA? Drones, spy satellites could fly over Europe
RT | July 27, 2013
The European Union is pondering an EU Commission proposal to acquire a fleet of surveillance drones, satellites, and planes as part of an “ambitious action” to boost the European defense industry. It follows revelations of the NSA’s spying programs.
The European Commission has issued a 17-page report, proposing some concrete steps that would encourage pan-European defense cooperation.
“Maintaining and developing defense capabilities to meet current and future challenges in spite of severe budget constraints will only be possible if far-reaching political and structural reforms are made. The time has come to take ambitious action,” the Commission’s report said.
One of the actions suggested in the report is funding a pre-commercial procurement scheme to acquire prototypes of some technologies – including drones.
The full list of technology candidates includes equipment to detect chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives threats (CBRNE), “communication equipment based on software defined radio technology,” and remotely-piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), otherwise known as drones.
According to Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report, the European Commission has for long been eyeing the possibility of using drones over Europe.
“The European Commission has long identified the potential of this emerging technology and supported the market by investing in research and innovation relevant for RPAS through the Framework Programme for Research. A broad stakeholders’ consultation has demonstrated the necessity for action at EU level, setting as priorities the further development of RPAS civil applications and the integration of the systems into the European air space as soon as possible,” the document said.
It also claimed it would “take into account the data protection and privacy concerns associated with the civil use of RPAS.”
The drones are also proposed to be used in conjunction with other surveillance technologies, including aircraft and satellites.
Lamenting the absence of a structural link between civil and military space activities in the EU and saying that Europe “can no longer afford” the economic and political cost of such a divide, the Commission focused on several technologies that are said to be able to serve both civilian and defense objectives.
These include space surveillance and tracking (SST), which are said to be aimed at protecting satellites from space debris, boosting satellite communications (SATCOM), and building a pan-EU cutting-edge satellite surveillance capability.
The report said it is “crucial” for a number of technologies to be explored and developed in the EU, including “hyper-spectral, high resolution satellites in geostationary orbit or advanced ultra-high resolution satellites in combination with new sensor platforms such as RPAS.”
The Commission has yet to estimate to what extent the proposed moves are useful for EU security. Based on the assessment, it will “come up with a proposal for which capability needs, if any, could best be fulfilled by assets directly purchased, owned and operated by the [European] Union.”
A response to Snowden’s NSA leaks?
The Commission’s report is part of the ongoing debate on the common EU defense policy which is set to culminate in a summit of European leaders in December.
Media reports have said that the European Commission and Lady Ashton’s European External Action Service actually want to create military commands and communications systems to be used by the EU for internal security and defense purposes.
The UK, which stoutly opposes such motion, is said to be leading an intense behind-the-scenes battle against establishing an EU military operations headquarters in Brussels.
Curiously, senior European officials regard the plan as an urgent response to the recent scandal over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations on American and British communications surveillance.
“The Edward Snowden scandal shows us that Europe needs its own autonomous security capabilities, this proposal is one step further towards European defense integration,” a senior EU official said, as quoted by the Daily Telegraph.
However, plans to create the EU’s own security and spying agency and employ spy drones and satellites for “internal and external security policies” – which would reportedly include police intelligence, internet surveillance, protection of external borders, and maritime overwatch – will likely raise concerns that the EU is creating its own version of the NSA.
The Open Europe think tank has already warned that the EU “has absolutely no democratic mandate for actively controlling and operating military and security capabilities.”
“The fact is, European countries have different views on defense and this is best served by intergovernmental cooperation, not by European Commission attempts at nation-building,” Open Europe research analyst Pawel Swidlicki said.
Live ammunition shot at Youth Against Settlement house in Hebron
International Solidarity Movement | July 26, 2013
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Last night at 10 pm, a live ammunition bullet was fired at the headquarters of the human rights organisation Youth Against Settlements (YAS) in Hebron.
The spokesperson for YAS, Damer Atash, explains that a group of activists were sitting in front of the house headquarters when the bullet was fired. The bullet was shot from the nearby olive groves making it impossible to see the shooter, although two voices were heard. Luckily, the group of activists were not hurt, instead, the bullet bounced off the window right behind them. “At first we thought it was a stone but instead we found a bullet”, said one of the activists.
At 22:15 pm, the group called the Israeli police, who arrived some 40 minutes later at approximately 11 pm, after the police arrived the military joined them and stayed for about 20 minutes. However, none of them searched the premises for the bullet canister.
The shooter was not seen, but it is likely that it was an attack from one of the neighbouring settlers, as the bullet was bigger than those used by the army. Even though this is the first incident of shooting against YAS, this would not be the first time the house has been attacked by settlers. They have previously tried to burn the house, set the kitchen of the headquarters on fire and uprooted trees. In these incidents the Israeli army or police have not taken any action against the settlers.
Israeli army and police also participate in the harassment of YAS and its human rights organizers. On Wednesday alone, the army invaded the house three times during the evening and night for what it is believed to be a training exercise for the army.
The despair and fear this causes is not uncommon for the 35,000 Palestinians living under complete control of 1500 Israeli soldiers and police officers, and the constant harassment and violence from the 500 settlers illegally living in the Israeli controlled H2 area of Hebron.
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Netanyahu proposes new “Marshall Plan” for Egyptian economy to support coup
MEMO | July 26, 2013
Netanyahu hopes that his “Marshall Plan” would see the emergence of a new Arab middle class.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for the West to adopt a new “Marshall Plan” for the Egyptian economy in order for the coup to succeed. He is being backed by US Republican Senator Rand Paul in his efforts. If successful, Netanyahu will regard the burying of the democratic process in the neighbouring country as the achievement of one of his most important strategic objectives.
The original Marshall Plan was America’s way of helping to rebuild Europe after the Second World War to stem the tide of revolutionary liberation. According to Maariv newspaper, Netanyahu’s plan proposes significant economic growth in the Arab world in order to prevent “radical” Islamic groups from rising to power.
The deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, Eran Lerman, has been pushing the plan in recent meetings in Washington with Congress members. Netanyahu himself suggested such a plan during his own recent visit to the US; finance for the scheme would come from private sources, he claimed. The prime minister believes that Arab countries should be encouraged to have stable democracies free of Iranian influence and that the international community should work towards that objective. Maariv’s report claims that the Israeli officials are looking at possible funding for the project to come from Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Netanyahu hopes that his plan would see the emergence of a new Arab middle class, presumably more ready to do business with Israel. His thinking follows the logic behind US Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposal for massive financial investment in the occupied West Bank to boost the Palestinian Authority’s standing. “The capitalist West thinks that throwing ever more money at a problem will solve it,” said MEMO’s Senior Editor Ibrahim Hewitt. “The natural aspiration of a people to be free of economic, political and military occupation doesn’t register with Western governments for whom economic growth is the Holy Grail.”
The newspaper pointed out that the Israeli government is also preparing to ask the US Department of Defence for an increase in military aid on the pretext of potential threats from the popular uprisings in the Arab region.
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Does the Right to Privacy Now Apply Only to the US Government?
By JAMES ROTHENBERG | July 25, 2013
Whatever our opinion of Edward Snowden, if we’re fair we see it being formed from a neutral perspective. This is because he was, until recently, a complete unknown. Snowden’s antagonist, the United States Government (USG), occupies the established part of this relationship in our minds.
How do we come to form our opinions? Largely from assessing new information against the background of existing information, in this case, what we know, or, what we believe we know. It’s clear that whatever our opinion of Snowden is is every bit as much a statement about our opinion of the USG.
The USG is not a blank background against which to measure the pros and cons of Snowden’s actions. My contention is simply this: In order to have achieved a position on Snowden close to neutral supposes a worldview in which the US is a neutral reactor to world events and is bent on opposing evil in the interest of creating a more secure world. This is not the history of states, particularly ours.
Even with only an appreciation of very recent American history, we are brought face to face with incessant bombing, crippling sanctions that harm a country’s “little people”, white phosphorus, napalm, depleted uranium, civilian humiliation, indefinite “Devil’s Island style” detention, targeted assassination, robotized and sanitized drone warfare, killing as revealed in Collateral Murder video, and officially sanctioned torture.
No, not a blank background. And now we know, as we should have known, that the vaunted “right to privacy” extends only to, and stops at, the USG. We are to put ourselves in the position of the child whose “parent” knows what is best for us and insists on our trust.
The word “insists” is very important. It has to be backed by something. In the case of the USG it is backed by force, all the force at its disposal. Imagine the reciprocal. The people insist that their government trust them! The absence of force at this level explains the current citizen/state relationship.
There’s a recent, seemingly benign, revelation regarding the United States Postal Service (USPS). Seems like they’ve been photographing the outside of every envelope, package, and postcard passing through its hands. Chalk up 160 billion eavesdropping bits for the USPS last year.
What’s troubling is the legal rationale provided for the intrusion. Loosely stated it’s that the postman has from time immemorial had visual access to the outside of envelopes, so that this was never a privacy concern! And we’re supposed to swallow this whole. The dog-fearing mailman, nosybody that he is, feels free to cop a peek. And, naturally, since he is an agent of the government this “freedom to peek” obtains to the USG as well, because it is unthinkable that an agent should possess powers that do not extend to that for which he is performing his lawful function.
Now that we’ve placed the mailman on a par with the state, and made no distinction between his mild transgression (actually closer to overhearing than snooping), why not extend this to the “Big Brother” image? Could the legal rationale for that be that since we are eminently observable by people in our everyday lives then there is no privacy concern when a certain, larger group of people decide to observe us?
Since the USPS goes lacking for funds, and since it performs a “national security” function, a working idea might be to place the USPS under the Department of Defense, to which money flows freely. That way we could keep the post offices open and possibly slow the escalation of its prices in the bargain.
Snowden has come under criticism because he fled the country. Some believe he should face US justice, what I would characterize as the “martyr solution”, because that is what it would amount to. He fled because this country is no longer safe for whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg said as much.
Some believe he should have come in through the front door and taken his case directly to Congress instead of Hong Kong. Go to Congress? To push an approach like this would be to completely ignore the working agenda of a capitalist, militarist, imperialist state and the role its politicians play in it.
To expect the politicians that are complicit with the state in the furtherance of its agenda to play an adversarial role against the very institutions, the financial and corporate elite that sustains them, and upon which they are dependent for their current and future livelihoods is to expect the sun to obey the earth. Whatever bias the public might show toward the USG is magnified times over by those in Congress, with few admirable exceptions.
The term “full spectrum dominance” signifies the ambitious national military project to control all of land, sea, air, space, biological, and cyber fighting capabilities. The term does not originate with avid leftists but is used by them, in quotes, because it is the Pentagon’s preferred description, an open confession of sorts. So, no, Snowden is really only waking the people who have been sleeping.
According to Der Spiegel (whose bias is distinctly anti-left) Jimmy Carter remarked, in defense of Edward Snowden, that “America does not have a functioning democracy at the present time”. He’s been known to have walked away from previous statements, and this remark seems to have been made to a private audience (making it no less true), but the remark itself is totally unsurprising. One can doubt the need for the ending qualifier, “at the present time”. Whether viewed domestically or from abroad, American behavior reveals itself for what it is.
When you see something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and in constantly seen in the company of other ducks, you can assume that it’s a duck. That’s funny, but even better it’s funny and speaks to something more. It’s a valuable heuristic.
Take the case of the USG. When you see a country that seeks out right wing dictatorships in foreign countries, aids the right-wingers, deals with the right-wingers, fights with the right-wingers, and is never but never seen in the company of left-wingers, you can assume you have a right-winger.
The slide into fascism is smooth and the momentum is particularly strong at the bottom. In many respects we are already there.
James Rothenberg can be reached at: jrothenberg@taconic.net
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Palestinian photographer who was shot in the cheek could be imprisoned yet again
By Shamus Slaunwhite | IMEMC & Agencies | July 24, 2013
In the middle of the night on June 30, Israeli forces invaded the Aida-area home of Palestinian photographer Mohamed Al-Azza, assaulted him and his family, and then arbitrarily detained him until July 11 when he was freed on a bail of 1,500 shekels. On July 25, an Israeli military court will rule on his case.
Palestinian photographer Mohammed Al-Azza recovering in hospital after being shot in the cheek (Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)
After sustaining severe injuries during his arrest June 30, Al-Azza was transferred to a hospital for three days, and then sent back to prison. In an Israeli military court, the Israeli security forces charged that Al-Azza participated in “violent and illegal” activities. Reporters Without Borders reported that, “as a journalist, [Al-Azza] has covered demonstrations in support of detainees on hunger strike and protests against the November 2012 offensive in Gaza.”
On April 8, in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, an Israeli soldier shot Al-Azza in the right cheekbone with a rubber-coated steel bullet. Al-Azza, who was working for Palestine News Network, sustained a broken right cheekbone, and underwent two surgeries to remove the bullet. Reporters Without Borders has urged the Israeli security forces to investigate this deliberate shooting of a journalist, to punish the soldier responsible, and to end “the complete impunity enjoyed by IDF soldiers responsible for violence against journalists.”
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CIA Murder Claims Are Credible, but Too Late
By RYAN ABBOTT | Courthouse News | July 23, 2013
WASHINGTON – A federal judge dismissed claims that the CIA dosed a bioweapons scientist with LSD in 1953, killed him and made it look like a suicide.
Eric and Nils Olson say their father, Frank Olson, died shortly after expressing his disillusionment with his work as a CIA bioweapons expert during the early years of the Cold War. Olson had allegedly been involved in the highly classified MKUltra program, which sought to develop chemical and biological materials for clandestine operations. The program included testing LSD as a truth serum and a mind-control agent on human subjects.
Numerous works of investigative journalism and requests under the Freedom of Information Act ultimately brought the MKUltra project to light, and U.S. District Judge James Boasberg acknowledged that “the public record supports many of the allegations that follow, farfetched as they may sound.”
“Although mention of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) conjures in the popular imagination the 1960s escapades of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters … government study of its effects predates this by a decade,” Boasberg wrote.
The Olsons said their father “witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA committed murder using biological agents that Dr. Olson had developed.”
CIA officials allegedly believed that any misgivings Dr. Olson had about the work might drive him to commit security violations.
The Olsons said the CIA then spiked a bottle of Cointreau with LSD at an agency meeting, dosing their father without his knowledge and making him a “guinea pig for this ‘experiment’ into the effects of LSD on humans.”
The agency then shipped Olson to New York City, telling his family that he required psychiatric treatment and could be dangerous, his sons claimed.
A doctor allegedly met Olson at the New York hotel room he shared with another CIA colleague, Robert Lashbrook, and gave him bourbon and several sedatives.
“The men had two martinis each before bed that evening,” the sons said. “At approximately 2:30 in the morning on Saturday, November 28, Dr. Olson fell thirteen stories to his death from the window of room 1018A – the hotel room he was sharing with Dr. Lashbrook.”
They added: “The circumstances surrounding Dr. Olson’s wrongful death are substantially similar to a ‘secret assassination’ technique described in a manual that, upon information and belief, the CIA published the year of Dr. Olson’s death. The manual suggested ‘[f]or secret assassination … the contrived accident is the most effective technique’ because ‘[w]hen successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.”
Judge Boasberg again refused to cast doubt on the allegation.
“Indeed, this would be the precise modus operandi the CIA is alleged to have employed here,” he wrote.
Though the Olsons settled with the government in 1976, accepting $187,500 each for waiving their claims, CIA Director William Colby piqued their interest 18 years later, shortly before his own death under suspicious circumstances.
Colby apparently sent Eric Olson a message in 1993 that indicated there was more to tell about his father’s death.
The family exhumed Olson’s body and discovered a bruise on his skull that a forensic scientist attributed to a blow to the head prior to the fall.
After prosecutors reclassified Olson’s cause of death from suicide to “unknown,” the family has pressured the CIA to reveal more and ultimately filed suit in November 2012.
Boasberg concluded Wednesday, however, that the 1976 settlement wipes out the negligent supervision claim against the agency. The rest of the claims then fail under the statute of limitation.
The sons say the CIA cover-up of their father’s death also caused their mother’s descent into alcoholism, and that their “replacement father figure” sexually molested them for years.
“Concluding that most of the allegations are both untimely and waived by a prior settlement agreement, and that any timely or preserved claims fall outside of the United States’ waiver of sovereign immunity, the court will grant the Government’s motion,” Boasberg ruled.
Israel bans teacher from Al-Aqsa Mosque
Ma’an – July 22, 2013
JERUSALEM – Israeli police on Monday banned a Palestinian woman from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where she teaches, for three months.
Um Radwan told Ma’an that Israeli police telephoned her on Sunday, summoning her to the Russian Compound interrogation center.
She told police she was visiting a relative in hospital, and police went to the hospital and handed her a summons, which she refused to accept. More police arrived and detained Um Radwan.
Um Radwan was interrogated for two hours on and released with a summons to appear for further interrogation.
On Monday, Um Radwan was interrogated again at the Russian Compound for another two hours, and released with an order banning her from the Al-Aqsa Mosque for three months.
Um Radwan teaches the history of Jerusalem at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and leads guided tours for students around the holy site.
The tours are part of a program sponsored by the Al-Aqsa Foundation.
Um Radwan said Israel had banned nine other women involved in the program from the mosque.
Earlier in July, 25-year-old Hussam Sidir, an employee of the foundation, was banned from the mosque for three months.
Um Radwan said Israel was trying to keep activists away from the mosque so Israeli settlers could enter more easily.
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NSA docs prove Germany complicit in spying program: Report
Press TV – July 22, 2013
A report has revealed that German intelligence services themselves used one of US National Security Agency’s most valuable spying programs.
The new information was published by German weekly Spiegel on Sunday and was based on secret documents from the US intelligence service.
This report comes as another blow to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers, who all claim that they first learned about the NSA spying programs from press reports.
The documents show that Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, and its domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), both used an NSA surveillance program called XKeyScore.
The obtained documents also revealed that the XKeyScore program collected the major part of the up to 500 million phone calls and data activities monitored monthly by the NSA.
The XKeyScore program is able to reveal retroactively any terms the target person has typed into a search engine through collected metadata, i.e. information about which data connections were made and when, according to an internal NSA presentation from 2008.
The system is also capable of receiving a “full take” of all unfiltered data over a period of several days, including contents of communications.
Furthermore, the secret documents show that the BND head, Gerhard Schindler, had an “eagerness and desire” for Germany’s intelligence agencies to intensify cooperation with the NSA.
“The BND has been working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws to provide greater opportunities of intelligence sharing,” the NSA stated in January.
Elsewhere in the document, the NSA said that in Afghanistan the BND had proved to be the agency’s “most prolific partner” when it came to information gathering.
Moreover, the documents show that a 12-member high-level BND delegation was invited to the NSA at the end of April to meet with various experts on “data acquisition”, just a few weeks before first revelations by the NSA surveillance programs by Edward Snowden were published.
In June, Snowden, an American former technical contractor for the NSA and a former employee of the CIA, leaked documents showing the US spied on the European Union and monitored up to a half-billion German telephone calls and internet activities each month.
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Court rules journalists can’t keep their sources secret
RT | July 19, 2013
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that New York Times journalist James Risen must testify in the trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency officer accused of leaking classified national defense information to the media.
A lower court ruled previously that Risen could protect the source responsible for sharing intelligence about a CIA operation discussed in his writing, but the US Court of Appeals from the Fourth Circuit reversed that decision Friday morning with a 2-1 vote.
“The reporter must appear and give testimony just as every other citizen must. We are not at liberty to conclude otherwise,” Chief Judge William Traxler Jr. wrote for the majority opinion.
The appeal panel’s decision came just days after United States Attorney General Eric Holder presented President Barack Obama with a proposal that would re-shape current law as it applies to journalists in order to more greatly ensure that reporters aren’t targeted during investigations unless other routes are exhausted first. That maneuver came on the heels of two highly public recent Justice Department scandals in which the White House was revealed to have subpoenaed the phones records for several Associated Press offices and also the email history of Fox News reporter James Rosen.
“Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law,” Obama said during a May 23 address after those scandals first surfaced.
With Friday’s ruling, the appeals court weighed whether or not an established precedent would prevent Risen from being asked to disclose the source of his information, but Traxler said, “so long as the subpoena is issued in good faith and is based on a legitimate need of law enforcement, the government need not make any special showing to obtain evidence of criminal conduct from a reporter in a criminal proceeding.”
Next Risen will be expected to testify in the Espionage Act-case against Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA official accused of disclosing details about a Clinton administration plan to put faulty nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran in an effort to slow down their race to acquiring a nuke. He previously said he’d refuse to speak of his source, however, which would now open up the possibility of being held in contempt of court.
Sterling is one of seven persons accused by President Barack Obama of spying under the Espionage Act, a World War One-era legislation that has previously been used only three times before this administration began targeting leakers.
Judge Roger Gregory, the only justice to vote in the minority, said compelling Risen to testify was a “sad” decision that posed a serious threat to investigative journalism, the Times reported.
“Under the majority’s articulation of the reporter’s privilege, or lack thereof, absent a showing of bad faith by the government, a reporter can always be compelled against her will to reveal her confidential sources in a criminal trial,” Gregory wrote. “The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society.”
Judge Traxler disagreed, however, and along with Judge Roger Gregory wrote that even the US Constitution can’t keep Risen from being asked to take the witness stand.
“There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify by the prosecution or the defense in criminal proceedings about criminal conduct that the reporter personally witnessed or participated in, absent a showing of bad faith, harassment, or other such non-legitimate motive, even though the reporter promised confidentiality to his source,” Traxler wrote.
Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Times he viewed the verdict as “disappointing,” and even suggested it was a step-backwards only so few days after Holder’s alleged effort to ensure the privacy of sources and reporters.
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From the Archives
Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
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- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
