U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/05/13/us/politics/ap-us-ap-phone-records-subpoena.html?pagewanted=all

by daegloe • 13 years ago

373 230 13 years ago

nytimes.com

raylu2• 13 years ago

Since when was it OK to even subpoena reporters?

tptacek5• 13 years ago

It has always been OK to subpoena reporters. Reporters enjoy no special protections in federal law.

raylu2• 13 years ago

But for their sources? Am I missing something or is that obviously not OK?

OGinparadise3• 13 years ago

Wow! Besides the new level of audacity, whatever happened to "Never picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel" ?

sneak4• 13 years ago

Second amendment's been gone for a while.

Fifth and fourteenth haven't been seen in a minute, either.

Peaceable assembly's overrated anyway. (RNC '04)

How much of the first needs to be gone until it's enough to recognize that the USA is no longer a free society?

How many whistleblowers, security researchers, and cryptographers need to be thrown in prison on bullshit trumped-up charges? How many hunger-striking political prisoners need to be held in secret prisons indefinitely without trial?

How many decades of PATRIOT Act abuses of individual privacy will be enough?

It's time to emigrate. Vote with your tax dollars.

grecy• 13 years ago

>It's time to emigrate.

http://www.reddit.com/r/iwantout

http://www.reddit.com/r/igotout

angersock5• 13 years ago

Yes, because as a foreign national you'll be so much more protected from the US. Don't be daft.

korethr• 13 years ago

But to where? There's not much space left on Earth that isn't held by a government that's worse in one regard or another.

Until such time as moon rockets become practical and affordable, I don't see emigration as a viable option.

hga18• 13 years ago

"Second amendment's been gone for a while."

Not even close. True if you live in one of 10 very bad states, two of which oddly are shall issue concealed carry ones that just went very bad (Connecticut and Colorado), but continuing that concealed carry theme, i.e. the "bear" in "the right to keep and bear arms" (RKBA), there's been a nationwide sweep of shall issue, starting in Florida in 1987 and ending with Iowa and Wisconsin in 2011. And Illinois has a Federal court deadline to go shall issue by June 9th. So that's ~42 states and ~2/3rds of the population.

And other good things have happened, and in general the political RKBA Zeitgeist has drastically changed. So there's hope here ... which is important, since it's the ultimate check on an out of control government.

sneak4• 13 years ago

I frequent NYC, Chicago, and SF. Try again.

What I'm pointing out is that when you have people like Bloomberg and Emanuel individually violating double-digit millions of individuals' constitutional rights on their whims, you don't have a free society.

Whether it's RKBA this month or the right to peaceably assemble during a political convention in an election year, they get to pick and choose which rights you are allowed, with no repercussions.

That's tyranny.

beedogs4• 13 years ago

> since it's the ultimate check on an out of control government.

Realistically, a bunch of pea-shooters stand no chance against the US military. This holds true whether it's Americans or hired sub-Saharan mercenaries driving the tanks.

mpyne6• 13 years ago

If people emigrated when the government was literally killing striking union organizers (e.g. the "Wobblies"), holding Nisei captive, holding blacks in bondage, locking up political dissidents (e.g. Lincoln), infecting the poor with syphilis, or ruining the lives of countless suspected Communists with the full authority of the state...

just imagine how far worse off we'd be.

Leaving is always your choice, but the U.S. would still have the power, just with less moderating influences such as yourself to ensure that it's used with a conscience.

sneak4• 13 years ago

> just imagine how far worse off we'd be.

"We" in this sentence would refer to the people who stayed.

Don't be one of those.

beedogs4• 13 years ago

I emigrated because there was no hope in my lifetime of the United States extending marriage rights to everyone (specifically, immigration-related.) I had no real choice other than to find someone else to fall in love with.

It's a fucking shitty situation, but I'm making the best of it, and I don't really miss my former country. Just some of the people in it.

sixothree2• 13 years ago

Yes, all of those gun friendly countries are doing so well and would love to have you.

hga18• 13 years ago

There's always Switzerland, although I expect it to go to hell WRT to guns in due course, they've been moving in that direction for some time.

cpursley• 13 years ago

"It's time to emigrate."

I'm up for it, but where?

baggers• 13 years ago

Norway

bicknergseng• 13 years ago

>It's time to emigrate.

I think the Civil Rights Movement would like to have a word with you.

lolcraft• 13 years ago

> Peaceable assembly's overrated anyway. (RNC '04)

You mean the assembly whose Wikipedia page has... ?

"Expected security expenditures reached $70 million, $50 million of which was funded by the federal government."

"The NYPD infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups (most of whom were doing nothing illegal), leading to over 1,800 arrests and subsequent fingerprinting."

"Over 1800 individuals were arrested by the authorities, a record for a political convention in the U.S. However 90% of those charges were eventually dropped."

Wow! Indeed, a great failure of the right to peaceful assembly!

(Who were they protesting against, anyway? An illegal act of war? Their leaders, who had lied to them into said war? Minutiae.)

dkl• 13 years ago

I think they were talking about free speech zones at the RNC in '04.

beedogs4• 13 years ago

I left 4 years ago and haven't looked back.

AJ0072• 13 years ago

Its sad that high profile news organizations in the United States now need to use secure communication channels out of fear of being harassed by their own government.

pavel_lishin• 13 years ago

They have always needed to communicate securely.

genwin• 13 years ago

They haven't shown the gov't who's the boss since Watergate. They've been content to be subservient since then. Next, gov't will require them to use decryptable communications.

guelo• 13 years ago

As far as we know the government only obtained records of the timestamps and endpoints of the communication, not the content. Encryption wouldn't help there, you need something like Tor. But the problem is that in order to setup a comm channel over Tor you would have to communicate over an insecure channel to set it up. Any idea of what could be the solution for a news org?

AJ0072• 13 years ago

I said secure, not encrypted, for that reason.

This isn't a problem that needs one solution, but multiple, layered ones. Communication should be disposable and deniable.

salimmadjd• 13 years ago

This is so strange! When was a last time AP released anything that wasn't more than government PR. On many important issues like lead up to Iraq war and now to a potential Iran war, AP has just reported what's been expected of them. My thought is the wiretap was set to catch potential whistleblowers than to do anything with reporters or AP itself.

johnvschmitt• 13 years ago

Correct. The government probably figured, they don't need a subpoena, because they already manage the AP so closely.

You aren't hearing any serious dissent from the AP.

That said, we have to be vigilant about any overreach, as civil rights are too hard to get back once you give them up.

mpyne6• 13 years ago

As far as I can tell this was done via subpoena (but it's uncertain under whose authority the subpoena was issued, it may not have been a judge or grand jury).

Had there not been a subpoena the U.S. would likely not have informed the AP of the search at all.

jbuzbee2• 13 years ago

Give me a break - I'll assume you're just woefully uninformed. For example:

http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD

_account2• 13 years ago

It's not strange at all. If the AP's sources just disappeared, the word would be out to any future sources/marks that the AP gives up sources...but if the big bad government did this rare, but effective overreach...the spooks can still terminate the leak and the AP has plausible denial.

The CIA wants to maintain the AP's ability to lure in more leaks in the future.

jbuzbee2• 13 years ago

Oh, another complex conspiracy theory. Rolls eyes...

rorrr2• 13 years ago

I hope AP switches to encrypted VOIP after this. Along with everyone else.

TWAndrews2• 13 years ago

I expect that will change the tone of coverage of news stories on surveillance issues.

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

So inside of just a few days, we have political opposition groups targeted for audits -- including questions about donors and volunteers -- and surveillance of the press.

The easier we make it for some analyst in FBI headquarters to determine everywhere a potential terrorist cell has been, the easier we make it for some other analyst to conduct political spying and harassment like the world has never seen before. You can't pick one and not get the other.

In many, many ways, the political side of this is the worst part. This has nothing to do with parties or politics. It's the normal and automatic result of the creation of systems without appropriate checks and balances.

MartinCron4• 13 years ago

we have political opposition groups targeted for audits

That could be extremely ugly politics, or it may not be. Paying special attention to tax status compliance of anti-tax activists might just be a pragmatic profiling. Kind of like giving extra attention to young men flying alone on one way tickets while checking no luggage.

hga18• 13 years ago

You really should check your facts before simply repeating the current party line. The acknowledged scope of the targeted investigations is so wildly beyond "anti-tax activists" the mind boggles. And see also e.g. Z Street's allegations about being questioned WRT to its views et. al. of Israel.

angersock5• 13 years ago

"Kind of like giving extra attention to young men flying alone on one way tickets while checking no luggage."

That's the only way I travel right now. Pragmatic or not, that's bullshit.

ThomPete• 13 years ago

This is exactly what Wikileaks was created to obstruct.

jellicle4• 13 years ago

> we have political opposition groups targeted for audits

What happened was the IRS decided to ask extra questions for groups attempting to register as charities but suspected to be engaged in political activities. If, as you say, they were "political opposition groups" then the IRS was completely correct in reviewing their applications; they didn't qualify to be charities.

Why do "political opposition groups" deserve special tax status? Why shouldn't the IRS enforce the law?

metaphorm3• 13 years ago

the IRS should enforce the law. they should enforce it equally. It appears as if they were a bit too selective. Their reasons for auditing were well justified, but they aimed those audits at a very specific group of organizations.

hga18• 13 years ago

Non-profits, not charities; many of the 27 types of 501(c) organizations are not charities. Here we're talking about 501(c)(4) groups, which are explicitly allowed to engage in politics, with limits. See this for more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5698931

tsotha3• 13 years ago

>What happened was the IRS decided to ask extra questions for groups attempting to register as charities but suspected to be engaged in political activities.

That's okay, in and of itself. The problem is they only did this to conservative groups, while leaving obvious law-breakers on the left (like MMFA) alone.

giardini• 13 years ago

"You can't pick one and not get the other."

Actually you can. But it requires ethics, something the current administration has tossed by the wayside.

rndmize• 13 years ago

By all means, point me to a single administration in the last fifty years that hasn't tossed ethics by the wayside. I'm of the opinion that ethics has very, very little to do with politics; the appearance of ethics is the important thing.

Flemlord• 13 years ago

Stellar. Maybe we'll finally see some real outrage in the media about the erosion of civil liberties in the US.

DamnYuppie4• 13 years ago

I sincerely hope we do, yet I fear we won't as the media is basically a bunch of whimpering liberals with no desire to ask the hard questions.

advisedwang• 13 years ago

I hope everyone noticed this is an AP-written article so might not totally impartial here.

electic• 13 years ago

I want to vomit. I feel very sick just reading this.

speeder4• 13 years ago

I am from Brazil, and I must ask:

Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom, when US ignores its own constitution, takes away freedom from its citizens, and most important to me, takes away freedom from citizens of other countries while claiming to do the exact opposite?

I am from Brazil, and many people here remember the US backed (and enforced sometimes) rightwing government that we had during the cold war.

Many people remember their loved ones that will never come back from our prisons, or from CIA hands.

Many people in many countries, why the US come to "save" them, and instead put in power people like Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Castelo Branco, Augusto Pinochet, Mohammad Pahlavi, and many, many, many others.

US only care about its corporations, it only fights to defend its profits, it is clear when it kicked João Goulart out of Brazil for supporting agrarian reform and other left-leaning policies, when it helped rebels kill both Lybia and Iraq leaders after they stopped selling oil for USD, when it "saved" Afghanistan from URSS by training Osama Bin Laden...

I think it is a outrage that people around the world only started to remember 11 of september after the Trade Center was attacked, not after US bombed Chile (9/11/1973) and forcefully kicked out a elected president to "save" chileans and give them "democracy" in the form of a oppressive dictator friendly to US business.

angersock5• 13 years ago

Now, you can hardly judge a country on one or two acts of unrelated political activism abroad... :P

More seriously, it's complex--painting it in the simplest broad strokes of "The US only cares about corporations" is unfair. The US is not the US; it's a combination of local, state, and federal governments and bureaucracies.

There's almost certainly near no magical evil council sitting atop it all scheming about how to wring profits from other countries at any cost; instead, we have the misguided actions and interactions of generally well-meaning people that are so segregated from the big picture and scared of losing their jobs that they make mistakes which snowball.

uptown2• 13 years ago

"instead, we have the misguided actions and interactions of generally well-meaning people that are so segregated from the big picture and scared of losing their jobs that they make mistakes which snowball."

That's a pretty generous supposition ... in regard to both intent and competency.

Cadsby• 13 years ago

It's always "complex" when it's our (the US) government involved.

When it's the actions of others, especially official enemies, it's usually regarded in pretty straight forward right/wrong terms. For example, for those old to remember, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80's was recognized for what it was, pure aggression.

Our military actions abroad? Well, it's complex, nobody's perfect, we all make mistakes, we had the best of intentions, etc, etc.

madaxe5• 13 years ago

> There's almost certainly near no magical evil council sitting atop it all scheming about how to wring profits from other countries at any cost

You're evidently not familiar with the concept of lobbying.

rsingel• 13 years ago

If you don't think there's the equivalent of an evil council, you need to read up on Kissinger.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...

coffeemug• 13 years ago

I don't disagree with you that the U.S. is a very complex system with millions of variables, and like any complex bureaucratic system is extremely difficult to change. I also don't disagree that there almost certainly isn't an evil council scheming to make corporations more powerful (I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, and this particular conspiracy sounds especially absurd -- I'm not even sure that the corporations are getting more powerful in the first place).

However, while "it's complex" is the right answer, it's almost certainly never a good answer. I run a company with a team of eleven, and "it's complex" often comes up as an answer to difficult challenges. Well, it is complex and it isn't. Difficult issues are difficult by definition, but doing nothing is almost never the right answer. There is sufficient body of evidence to at least establish a pattern of civil rights being eroded in the U.S., granted for very complex and often perfectly valid reasons. That's what leadership is about -- cutting through complexity to guide the overarching system in the right direction. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that from our government.

EDIT: I also agree that the original argument smells unnecessarily of conspiracy theories and drastically oversimplifies the issues.

PavlovsCat3• 13 years ago

There's almost certainly near no magical evil council

Uh... nice strawman?

the misguided actions and interactions of generally well-meaning people

Have you read "War Is A Racket"? And what big corporation are you the CEO of, or what public office did you hold for how long, so that you would even know what the priorities at top levels are? Are you, for example, telling me the Bush administration was genuinely worried about Hussein having WMD? Could you say that with a straight face?

And are you denying that quite a bunch of those individuals aren't generally doing individual actions for their own benefit? Eichmann was "just scared of loosing his job", too, so where exactly do we draw the line, how is that not just an euphemism you could apply to anything, how does this not apply to China or North Korea? It's just the son of a dictator afraid of loosing his job, his privilege, so he plays it the best way he knows how. And if you were born in China, you would make damn sure to do the right thing, too, which would be to join the communist party and do whatever you need to put food on your family. Who is anyone to judge a culture that is older than dirt, right?

Okay, so let's not judge people for what they do, nobody is without sin, so no stone throwing. Point taken. But can we still call out that they do things that, spoken about plainly without euphemisms, are generally agreed on to be bad and yes, even evil; and that others fall for them? Instead of hand waving the instant it is even brought up?

metaphorm3• 13 years ago

the United States federal government often does shitty things in the name of national security. the U.S. foreign policy has been pretty nasty over the years as well.

HOW-FUCKING-EVER...you really ought to be careful to make a distinction between those specific policies and practices and the rest of the United States as a whole. We have 300+ million people and we don't all agree with this stuff in lockstep with the factions within the federal government that do it. The fact that you're reading an article in The New York Times (the "paper of record" in the U.S.) that is calling out bad behavior of the government ought to give you a clue that you're painting with too broad of a brush.

notdang• 13 years ago

Well, you voted in the elections, didn't you?

3pt141594• 13 years ago

Chile is an interesting example because it is one of very few areas where US action saved a large number of people from death. In case it matters, I'm against interventionism and I'm Canadian, but I've visited both Cuba and Chile and even the nicest parts of Cuba are worse than the sketchy port city of Chile.

If I were Chilean I wouldn't be outraged. And many of the Chileans that I talked to were not. I think there are better examples of misused American power. Like encouraging war between Iran and Iraq, arming Mexican drug cartels, invading Canada under the auspices of Manifest Destiny, Japanese internment camps, slaughter of First Nations. Intervention in Chile was wrong, but it can also be used by neocons as a banner for effective Real Politik thinking and outcomes.

mullingitover• 13 years ago

> If I were Chilean I wouldn't be outraged.

I did some light reading on this topic. How exactly were a large number of people saved from death? Did you misspeak? Because from what I've read, the overthrow of Chile's elected government actually resulted in a large number of people dying/being tortured/'disappearing'. I'm guessing the Chileans who you spoke to weren't from that group.

cema• 13 years ago

  Intervention in Chile was wrong,
  but it can also be used by neocons

Why neocons specifically?

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

I'll answer this as if it wasn't a rhetorical question:

Because U.S. society values the concept of freedom. >'Why does the U.S. gov't ignore it's constitution?'

Well for some prerogatives, freedom is less important and some people decidedly make decisions that violate the law and freedoms of a people.

> 'takes away freedom from its citizens'

See above

>'takes away freedom from...'

U.S. gov't really doesn't have any obligation to citizens of another country unless explicitly stated. I of course, understand the general premise that the United States stay largely out of other nations affairs is well intentioned, however the previous two times that happened (beginning of WWI and WWII) did not go well. So while meddling U.S. foreign policy is far from perfect, it seems as there has yet been a WWIII to be better than the other alternative, and I'd say the track record is such that more freedoms have been guaranteed to more people via the U.S. than otherwise. I've got no data to back that up though.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

Very little of this is actually true, at least with regards to what the U.S. does internally. As flawed as the U.S. government is, it's still better than almost any government outside Western Europe, and is in some ways better than governments in Western Europe (e.g. with regard to free speech), though worse in others.

The U.S. government very rarely ignores the Constitution, although many things it does are greeted with cries of ignoring the Constitution. It goes to great lengths to lawyer it's way around the Constitution, no doubt, but most countries don't even bother.

As for externally--the Constitution puts almost no limits on the American government's ability to intervene in foreign affairs, and most Americans would agree that the U.S. has zero obligation to do anything internationally other than what advances its own interests. No other country in the world would do any differently if they were in the U.S.'s position. Remember, as far as global hegemons go, the U.S. is the most benevolent such entity in the history of the world.

oinksoft4• 13 years ago

  as far as global hegemons go, the U.S. is the most
  benevolent such entity in the history of the world.

Well, that's some real comfort. You heard it here, better than the Roman and British empires!

The reference point should be absolute moral good, not third-world dictatorships. The whole "city on a hill" idea and what have you. That is what the top-level comment is getting at: Blatant hypocrisy from a state whose denizens have proudly proclaimed it to be "the greatest country on Earth" or "the greatest nation in history", some beacon of freedom and humanism, throughout its existence: The farce that is American Exceptionalism.

nisse72• 13 years ago

http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy

Volpe3• 13 years ago

> ....it's still better than almost any government outside Western Europe, and is in some ways better than governments in Western Europe (e.g. with regard to free speech), though worse in others.

Only from an American view point is that true, lots of differing view points come to lots of different conclusions about which govt is "better". That is entirely the point with why the US insists on pushing it's value system on others (by force if neccersary).

coldtea2• 13 years ago

>Very little of this is actually true, at least with regards to what the U.S. does internally.

That's true. Internally the US functions as a quite good democracy. But don't get too complacent. Off of the top of my head:

- Death penalty. In 2013. Including for 15 year olds and the mentally ill in some states. - Disproportionate number of blacks in jail. - World incarcerations record. - Segregation until some 40 years ago (and "in practice" segregation still today). - Slavery until 140 years ago. - Mass surveillance. - Awfully class based health care system. - Horrendous labour laws. - McCarthyism.

>As for externally--the Constitution puts almost no limits on the American government's ability to intervene in foreign affairs, and most Americans would agree that the U.S. has zero obligation to do anything internationally other than what advances its own interests.

It's not that the US has ever done anything else ("other than what advances its own interests"). Except for some amounts of "foreign aid" and other crap to help secure a pro-American government lackeys here and there.

Unfortunately, it has also done a lot of stuff to "advance its own interests". After the big colonial powers declined, it has royally fucked up countries the world over like there's no tomorrow. Where "advancing it's own interests" means "doing whatever, from invasion to establishing a dictatorship to get whatever resources and military support it needs, in the terms it wants it, to the detriment of the locals".

>Remember, as far as global hegemons go, the U.S. is the most benevolent such entity in the history of the world.

Compared to what? The Roman empire? I'd say it has been on par with the European colonial powers (France, UK, Belgium, etc) in taking advantage of the poorer 2/3 of the world, from the enslavement of African people to work in the South, to direct invasions, proxy wars and establishing puppet governments and dictatorships.

calhoun137• 13 years ago

What? If you didn't sound so serious I would think your comment is meant to be a parody.

> Very little of this is actually true, at least with regards to what the U.S. does internally.

The majority of the OP's comment is not about domestic US politics, it's about support of dictatorships abroad. I'm guessing you are not very familiar with the history of Latin america, you should read up on that before making comments like this again. By the way, the US backed ex-president of Guatemala was just found guilty of genocide[1], Hillary Clinton said Egypt's dictator Mubarak was a "friend of her family", and the US strongly backs the regime in Saudi Arabia which is one of the most repressive in the entire middle east. When Madeleine Albright was asked if she thought the death of half a million Iraqi children due to the sanctions was too high a price to pay, she said "I think...the price is worth it"[2].

> The U.S. government very rarely ignores the Constitution

Are you aware that it was recently revealed that Henry Kissinger was recorded saying "The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer"[3] Or are you familiar with the regime of secret law that surrounds drone assassinations, do you think that just because the president can get his lawyer to write him a permission slip that it makes assassinating US citizens abroad constitutional? What about locking people up in Guantanamo bay without a trial? What about torture? What about the 4th amendment. Do you even know which one that is, or why that is relevant to the article about spying on reporters from AP? What about freedom of the press?

> As for externally--the Constitution puts almost no limits on the American government's ability to intervene in foreign affairs

Have you even read the constitution? It doesn't sound like it. The entire point of the constitution is to constrain the ability of the government to do things. It says that the government is bound by all foreign treaties[4]. It also happens to say that congress is the only body of government that can declare war, even though after Vietnam that clause has pretty much been ignored.

> as far as global hegemons go, the U.S. is the most benevolent such entity in the history of the world

are you serious?

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/13/us-guatemala-riosm...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8

[3] http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-assange-release-files-475/

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Six_of_the_United_State...

danenania• 13 years ago

The most benevolent murderer, pillager, and global tyrant in history. What a noble distinction!

Humanity can do better than that, and your comment is frankly sickening in its moral complacency.

This must be how engineers who help build nukes and drones and surveillance systems rationalize to themselves so they can sleep at night.

obstacle13• 13 years ago

You've provided literally no evidence or reasoning for any of your statements.

"The US government is better than every other government!" isn't a valid argument.

mathieuh2• 13 years ago

Please please please don't tell me people actually believe this. Some of the things you are saying here are laughable. I'm pretty sure people in Palestine, Korea, Chile, Cuba, Syria, Iran, Guatemala, and any other states where the USA has decided it should stick its gun in would have some choice words for you.

pedromorgan• 13 years ago

Typical USA can do no wrong reply (and am from UK) !

_wwz4• 13 years ago

U.S. government very rarely ignores the Constitution

You beat that drum all the time. I don't understand how anyone reasonably informed could ignore the weekly violations of the Constitution by the US Government.

The Constitution itself was intended to place very strict limits on the size and scope of the Federal Government. Its spirit as well as the letter of its rules have been almost totally breached. If the Constitution would be adhered to, we wouldn't have that monstrosity in Washington wrecking everything it touches.

olalonde• 13 years ago

> Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom

I didn't have this impression at all but then again I might spend too much time on http://www.reddit.com/r/libertarian.

thoughtcriminal• 13 years ago

As a Canadian, we see the same sort of hypocrisy regarding our natural resources, especially our wildlife. Provincial travel advertisments show sprawling forests, but what's really happening at a frightening rate is their destruction because of urban sprawl and deforestation.

Land developers are wiping out wildlife habitats with no conscience as to the animal life they're destroying so they can put up ugly, treeless cookie-cutter suburban neighborhoods for a quick buck.

What Canada is supposedly famous for is becoming no longer. Municipal and federal governments would rather have more highways and big box stores.

I wrote about it at length here: http://allsprawldown.com/activism/a-big-reason-canadians-are...

skue2• 13 years ago

You left out Ríos Montt, who was (finally) convicted of genocide in Guatemala this past week, some 30 years after Reagan's visit of support.

If it helps, there are many folks in the US who would agree with you, most especially those of us who have spent significant time abroad. Even Ron Paul (in all other respects a libertarian wacko) owes much of his popularity to being outspoken about the consequences of blowback due to American interventionalism abroad. He was in the news again today saying much the same about Benghazi: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/ron-paul-benghazi-9126...

speeder4• 13 years ago

I left him, and many african dictators out on purpose, I did not researched in depth yet how they came to power, many I know only as "supported" by the US, not necessarily put in power by the US, but the ones I posted were put in power by the US, directly, or with some behind the scenes direct help (Brazil case for example, brazillians for many years thought that whoever claimed the dictatorship was US backed was just another crazy conspiracy theorist, only CIA and Brazillian government recent declassified info proved the "crazy" people were right, and indeed US not helped only with intelligence, but sent a fleet here, complete with ground troops and carrier, to force João Goulart to resign peacefully instead of allowing his already positioned troops to fight the pro-coup military forces... I think it is rather sad that many people believed João Goulart to be a coward for ordering the troops already on the battlefield to stand down until well after his death)

skue2• 13 years ago

Thanks, that makes sense (I cannot reply to you directly).

The US did not directly put Ríos Montt into power. However, the CIA did orchestrate a coup in Guatemala in the 50s, which triggered a bloody civil war and years of conflict that culminated with Ríos Montt coming to power in the 80s.

DamnYuppie4• 13 years ago

Many Americans have not real knowledge of what their nation looks like from the exterior. Yet it is rapidly becoming apparent to many that we are being manipulated and controlled and that those we "voted for" are not abiding by their oaths and have no intention of supporting the constitution and will do whatever they can to stay in power.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

>Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom, when US ignores its own constitution, takes away freedom from its citizens, and most important to me, takes away freedom from citizens of other countries while claiming to do the exact opposite?

Why not? Have you seen a crook come at you and say "I'm a crook"? It's a facade, and as such, it helps with maintaining appearances, diplomacy, UN excuses and such. The "freedom" part is for lip service only -- well, and for the people to feel "privileged" and "patriotic".

When the facade doesn't help to maintain their interests, they strike will all their force, either directly, like in Vietnam or Iraq, or indirectly like tons of US backed dictatorships. If a nice pretext can be found, like "bringing democracy" (as if democracy can be brought with invasions from outside) even better. Else, the naked support of a dictator (like Pinochet) toppling the legitimate leaders will also do.

What the US does care for are it's "interests". Which are not exactly the interests of their people, mainly the interests of big corporations and large backers of politicians, those than can influence foreign policy.

(Yes, the explanation above is simplistic and naive. It's only meant to paint the big picture. And in their essence power and large interests work in a very simple ways too -- always had. It's the ideological manipulation and the feel-good excuses that are nuanced and very eloquent. The more nuanced, the more BS.).

That the population is not informed, doesn't understand, and doesn't even care for foreign policy also helps those in charge do whatever they want. Heck, the worst offenders are the "deeply informed", those that read supposedly "hi-quality" world and foreign policy coverage, which in the US, ever since the eighties, is full of self-censorship, bias, and ideology, when not a direct manipulation (from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird to the NYT Iraq war coverage).

>I am from Brazil, and many people here remember the US backed (and enforced sometimes) rightwing government that we had during the cold war.

As in my country, and in tons of other places.

OGinparadise3• 13 years ago

Short answer: As bad as US is, you should see the other countries.

If a US cope beats you, you most likely hit the lottery, in other countries if they didn't beat you, you hit the lottery. The rest of your examples are oversimplifications. What if US didn't exist and tyrants didn't fear anyone? How many local if not world wars would we have?

As for oil, US lost trillions fighting Iraq and Afghan war, not sure what you mean. But yeah, generally speaking US wants countries to drill as much as possible to have cheaper and plentiful oil.

speeder4• 13 years ago

Tyrants fear the US?

Like, Pinochet? Costa e Silva? Rios Montt? Hosni Mubarak?

Oh wait, those were US-backed and sold stuff that US wanted and bought stuff that were profitable from the US, thus they were not tyrants.

X-Istence• 13 years ago

This argument of "Look at everyone else, we aren't so bad" is a absolutely terrible argument. It means fuck all.

Shouldn't the US be showing how it is supposed to be done? Shouldn't the US be the one that is holding itself to the highest standards?

alan_cx• 13 years ago

It may well be foolish, but many peoples support tyrants out of fear of the US. They think the "strong" tyrant will protect them from the US. On the other hand, allies of the US, like my country, seem to bend over backwards to accommodate US demands, reasonable or otherwise. So, you can sort of see the point of supporting a tyrant, or strong government.

Also, didn't Bush threaten democratic Pakistan with a bombing back to the stone age if it didn't comply with US demands? Which strikes me as being a bit tyrannical.

I have to say that the idea that the US is the only thing stopping war and / or world war is arrogant and insulting, or just laughable, in the extreme. The rest of us are not savages on the verge of war, and we are capable of negotiating before knee jerking to shock and awe, torture, drone assassinations and Tom Clancy special forces TV events.

Ultimately, Im saying its more complicated than US good and those lot are tyrants, or terrorists.

But what bothers me more than any thing else though, is the sheer contempt and paranoia which which the US government treats it own people. It blows my mind that on one hand it's all "USA, USA, USA" (BTW, do Americans know how awful that looks? I, perhaps in my ignorance, only know two countries with a national chant. One lost WW2), while at the same time the US gov takes away their freedoms. The reason it bothers me is that at some point there has to be a tipping point where Americans have had enough, and I'm not sure a vote will solve it. Obama, the great hope, seems as bad, if not worse than Bush. So, who do Americans turn to?

Mean while, China grows......

smutticus2• 13 years ago

>Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom,

I'm a US citizen and I don't go around spouting this nonsense. Please realize that there are many Americans who would agree with much of what you're saying. Please also realize that many USians are terribly ignorant of the many things their government has done in their name around the world.

Mordor2• 13 years ago

You're being very latin oriented and biased to be honest. Look at all the great things the US has done for Palestine!

CurtMonash• 13 years ago

The US has for many decades been either the most powerful entity in the world, or close to being such. As such, it has both been one of the greatest forces for good in the world and one of the greatest forces for evil. That latter point should not be forgotten, even by those who think -- as I do -- that the evil is far outweighed by the good.

knowaveragejoe3• 13 years ago

This. There is a remarkable amount of bandwagoning in this thread to bash anything vaguely pro-American followed by some self-congratulatory posts about people today "not knowing history". That goes both ways, people.

The US has done an immeasurable amount of good in the world over the years, for example the US is by far and away the largest donor of foreign aid in the world and has been for a long time. I think most people are angry that what the country represents at face value is not always reflected in policy or actions. That's fine. Get involved and do something about it.

beedogs4• 13 years ago

USA is becoming Germany circa 1934.

twoodfin5• 13 years ago

hn is becoming reddit circa 2007.

brown9-2• 13 years ago

Most of the comments here are decrying the death of freedom, but isn't a subpoena the lawful and ideal way for the government to go about this sort of thing?

Is a leak of classified information not supposed to be investigated?

belorn• 13 years ago

The leak of classified information should be investigated in proportion to the damage that said leak caused. Otherwise its not an ideal way, and even questionable if its lawful.

If the government has clear and verifiable evidence of damage that has happen as a result of said leak, then there should be documents to show it. Where are the dead bodies or the loss of material goods?

vaadu• 13 years ago

This is not the US. This is the DOJ, which is not the same thing.

This is only going to make the hole deeper for Obama with the Benghazi and IRS scandals already aboil.

mikecane• 13 years ago

>>>The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

News organizations that have consistently rolled over and let the government have its way with secret this and secret that -- and they're shocked! shocked! that they are subjected to secret ops too? Wake the eff up, special snowflakes.

Zenst• 13 years ago

Well, for all those people who thought they had access to this information on-tap. Clearly that is not the case.

lettergram• 13 years ago

This post and (more predominantly) some of the comments seem to be swaying dangerously close to breaking the guidelines of the site...

Instead of arguing politics (ie the moral argument) it would be more interesting to discuss the reasoning behind the wire taps or the implications of such a wire tap.

Alex3917• 13 years ago

This is funny. First the NY Times purposely buries its own story about the warrantless wiretapping in order to get Bush reelected. Then they complain when it starts to look like they could be the ones getting wiretapped. What a bunch of morons.

grandalf• 13 years ago

There is not any kind of recourse that would result in consequences for the government officials who committed this crime.

If the public cared, this kind of thing could potentially result in Obama's impeachment. Since the public doesn't care, it's a tempest in a teapot.

The nice thing for the officials is that while this kind of story riles some people up a bit, it quite effectively sends a chilling message at journalists and would-be informants. Surely a cost-benefit analysis was conducted and ironically the NY Times coverage is part of the desired outcome.

Consider for a moment what the coverage would be like if there were truly a hostile/adversarial relationship between the press and the government.

The public does not care about the rule of law, so we don't have it. There is no better way to join the establishment than to become a reporter.

tantalor• 13 years ago

See also, "Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers...

In each case, a government accessed a newspaper's network without authorization to determine the source of a leak.

drill_sarge• 13 years ago

everyone should watch this from 29c3

Not my department [29c3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnuofn_DXw

Enemies of the State [29C3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBp-1Br_OEs

after this nothing of what happened here should surprise you

codex2• 13 years ago

The U.S. did not secretly obtain these records. It notified the AP that these records were obtained using a valid subpoena, which by law needs to be approved by the attorney general. Subpoenas of phone records happens all the time in both criminal investigations and civil cases.

This is just the AP using the propaganda power of its infinite supply of ink to attempt to protect itself from criminal investigations. Congratulations, HN--you fell for it. The amount of critical thinking on this site has dropped to unmeasurable levels.

obstacle13• 13 years ago

It isn't as cut-and-dry as you're pretending. The AP's complaint is that the records obtained were unreasonably broad in scope, which goes against the DoJ's guidelines w/r/t news subpoenas.

>Rules published by the Justice Department require that subpoenas of records of news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general, but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained through subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.

>A subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period," according to the rules.

>The reason for these constraints, the department says, is to avoid actions that "might impair the news gathering function" because the government recognizes that "freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news."

Regarding the attorney general approving subpoenas,

In general it is really shady that so many things are 'unknown' about this. Presumably the reporters who wrote this article should have been able to gather this information (since the article is itself written by the AP). That they didn't implies either a) that the journalists are supremely incompetent, or b) that the DoJ is intentionally withholding information it normally has to hand over by law or regulation. That may be why the journos are calling this "secret" information gathering.

codex2• 13 years ago

"Presumably the reporters who wrote this article should have been able to gather this information (since the article is itself written by the AP)."

This sums it up--the reporters who wrote this article are the ones whose records were subpoenaed. Classic conflict of interest, but the AP does not recuse themselves from writing this story. Thus, I cannot trust anything that they say. Facts are "unknown"? They will be if it helps the AP spread FUD. Subpoena is too broad? Says who--why, the AP, of course.

From what I can tell, the subpoena covers the five reporters involved in the article under investigation, plus all the communal phone lines used by all reporters in the office, lest reporters try to cover their tracks by using a phone that's not on their desk. That doesn't sound unusually broad to me.

Fuxy• 13 years ago

And this is why privacy is important. I think we should give the people from the AP a little basic surveillance avoidance tips. Like say... don't use your office, personal or work phones for confidential informants. Use a prepaid card from a location you wouldn't normally go to and trow it away. (single use)

rjohnk• 13 years ago

Can't we all just get along?

U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

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