I’ve been taking a brief hiatus
from blogging, but I had to come back for this one. And yes, this is a long one.
By now you all know what happened
to James Rosen.
Here’s
a decent summary if you haven’t heard.
But the short version is this. A
long time ago, Rosen reported on a story based on a leak of information. Now, to leak classified information to a
reporter is a crime. But it is not a
crime to receive such leaks. Or until
now, anyway. In an
affidavit,
the Obama administration decided that Rosen was likely a co-conspirator or
aider and abettor based on little more than the fact Rosen received a leak. They
even declared him a flight risk. So they
got access to his emails, phone records, tracked his movements in and out of
the State Department and even checked his parents’ phone records. And they did similar things to
two
other reporters. And the AP in an
unrelated case.
Well, thanks to Glenn Greenwald
we found out yesterday that we are all James Rosen now*:
The National
Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US
customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top
secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of
which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing,
daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its
systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows
for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication
records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in
bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April
25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a
specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of
the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is
location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of
all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
...
While the order
itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal
information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection
would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any
individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.
It is not known
whether Verizon is the only cell-phone provider to be targeted with such an
order, although previous reporting has suggested the NSA has collected cell
records from all major mobile networks. It is also unclear from the leaked
document whether the three-month order was a one-off, or the latest in a series
of similar orders.
Do
read the whole thing. As I said on
Twitter, I disagree with him a lot but this is an extremely well-written and
necessary report. Since he is an
American at least by birth, I can say it is a patriotic thing he has done in
this reporting.
So consider this. First, every call you have made to or from a
Verizon cell phone has been collected.
Consider the implications of that.
If you called a clergyman, they know.
If you called a psychiatrist, they know.
If you called a gay bar, they know.
If you called a phone sex line, they know. If you called your lawyer, they know.
For instance, if you went to
church on a certain day and as is often the case you received a call while the
minister was giving his sermon, they know you were in that church and are
likely an adherent to that religion. I
admit I don’t lay awake at night worried that someone will find out I am a
Presbyterian who often goes to my wife’s Catholic church, but there is a
historical reason for being concerned about the government identifying what faith
a person belongs to.
The same applies if you were at a
porn store when you received the call.
Or a gay bar. Or just at a
psychiatrist’s receiving help.
Or a political meeting. I don’t worry overly much about the
government knowing about my politics (seriously, it’s not a secret), but that
doesn’t mean no one ever has a right to keep their political associations
secret. For instance, in
NAACP v. Alabama (1958), under the
banner of investigating possible communist infiltration of the NAACP, the state
of Alabama asked for the NAACP to disclose its membership lists. The Supreme Court had long established the
right to freely associate as an important First Amendment protection. In other words, the ability to gather
together to advance your agenda is an important right. Where would we be if those who want to
protect Constitutional Rights couldn’t gather together as the ACLU or the NRA? Or if those who wanted to advocate for women’s
rights couldn’t form NOW? And it’s not
limited associations with a political agenda: where would we be without the
ability to form the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts?
And here, the Supreme Court quite
wisely recognized that even if the state of Alabama had no intent to suppress
the NAACP (right!), if the NAACP was
forced to reveal who their members were, it might lead to the intimidation of
those members and a chilling of new memberships. Or to put it plainly, the KKK might frakking
kill them, and that might scare off new people from joining because they don’t
want to be killed. So the NAACP was
allowed to refuse to turn over that information.
Except now if you receive a call
while at an NAACP meeting, the government will know you are a member. Admittedly the NAACP doesn’t have a lot to
fear in relation to revealing its membership these days, but rights do not
disappear just because the immediate danger they protect against had passed.
