Brian Ross: Big Brother Is Watching
Not one, but two of my friends from the left who frequently comment here have brought this story to my attention:
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.
Our reports on the CIA’s secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials. The CIA asked for an FBI investigation of leaks of classified information following those reports.
People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.
Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.
The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded.
A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.
This doesn’t change my stand on the surveillance program or the phone database. It may (MAY, I stress) be an abuse of an otherwise useful tool. It’s important to note that we don’t have any proof for Ross’s allegations.
Nevertheless, I get the point – if the phone database is used to root out sources, there may be a chilling effect in that sources may not be willing to talk. Leave aside for the moment the arguments about whether they should talk about classified info as often as they do…it’s important that the government not descend into Nixonian paranoia…
I’m troubled by the allegation, and I’m troubled by the leaks, and I’m troubled by just about everything associated with this entire subject. More than ever, I stand by my call for a new regulatory surveillance framework…
did the government get warrants to focus on these targeted individuals? is it investigating the leak of classified information?
Good questions all, and I’m certainly not going to jump to any conclusions based on this one short article…
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the thrust of my previous comment is that, once you hand the Government the complete phone records of (nearly) everyone in America, there is no institutional impediment to this sort of (alleged) abuse.
Sure it’s a “useful tool” for tracking down terrorists. It’s also useful for a lot of other things. And there’s no one — not a judge, not Congress — standing in the way of those other uses.
It’s one thing to put a very low threshold for obtaining the phone records of any individual or group of people who might be even vaguely suspicious. It’s quite another to hand over everyone’s phone records and say, “Have fun with them.”
Well, Jacques, I think it’s just one more reason why we need an overhauled surveillance framework – to nail down what is or isn’t permissable, and to get the oversight in place. Sure, there’s some overlap with FISA – but I’m thinking bigger – God knows the blue-ribbon commission is an overused, seldom-acted-upon option, but this might be a good case for one. I’m talking more targeted than the 9/11 commission, and focused on the issue of surveillance, both foreign and domestic…
ABC NEWS CALL MONITORING: WHAT’S GOING ON?
Trying to have any kind of a conversation with a liberal over the revelation today that a government insider informed ABC News reporters that the government was “tracking” their phone numbers is an absolute impossibility. They are in hyste…