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Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

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Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#11

Post by mtgx »

jbooth wrote: post #4
Nrsolis wrote: post #3

I supported Obama and worked for the campaign in 2008. I'm sad to see that this administration has been more aggressive in leak persecution than GWB. I don't think there is anything wrong in pursuing illegal leaks of classified information. I DO think it's wrong to target bona fide journalists for criminal prosecution based on their reporting. The optics of this kind of thing are bad no matter how you look at it. As…

Yeah, I thought this was settled with the Pentagon Papers. But apparently everyone changed their mind after Wikileaks, and without court oversight. Can Fox News sue here? It seems like calling him a co-conspirator (aka journalist) just to get the search warrant with no plans to charge him is super fishy. And even more puzzling than Holder's actions, why isn't Fox News trumpeting this instead of Benghazi?

There was an article on BI a few days ago saying how "Americans don't care" about the AP spying (from a survey), and that they cared a lot more about IRS and Benghazi.

But let's put things in context. The IRS scandal, and especially the Benghazi one, have been trumpeted at least 10x more than the AP one. Maybe 100x more. With such "awareness campaign" is it really a surprise most people responded in the surveys with IRS or Benghazi?

So what this really means is that the media themselves don't really care about the AP spying - which is actually quite frightening, and a worse situation than I thought. You'd think they would want to turn this into another Watergate or something - but apparently not. Same for the Fox News journalist.

These two stories would be reason enough to call for the impeachment of the president in my book. I mean it threatens a core power in the society - the press. The Benghazi story, and even the IRS one to "some" degree, are the real distractions here.

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#13

Post by sigzero »

rayiner wrote: post #10
jbooth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I thought this was settled with the Pentagon Papers. But apparently everyone changed their mind after Wikileaks, and without court oversight. Can Fox News sue here? It seems like calling him a co-conspirator (aka journalist) just to get the search warrant with no plans to charge him is super fishy. And even more puzzling than Holder's actions, why isn't Fox News trumpeting this instead of Benghazi?

There was a warrant, so I'm not sure what lack of court oversight you're talking about.

That they "lied" or at least tried to change the rules to get the warrant?

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#14

Post by bradleyjg »

Nrsolis wrote: post #3

I supported Obama and worked for the campaign in 2008. I'm sad to see that this administration has been more aggressive in leak persecution than GWB. I don't think there is anything wrong in pursuing illegal leaks of classified information. I DO think it's wrong to target bona fide journalists for criminal prosecution based on their reporting. The optics of this kind of thing are bad no matter how you look at it. As…

Between signing off on warrants against journalists, signing off on the CIA murdering American citizens abroad (via OLC), and giving de facto immunity to banks and bank employees, Holder has been a terrible Attorney General.

It's time for him to go.

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#15

Post by jbooth »

mtgx wrote: post #11
jbooth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I thought this was settled with the Pentagon Papers. But apparently everyone changed their mind after Wikileaks, and without court oversight. Can Fox News sue here? It seems like calling him a co-conspirator (aka journalist) just to get the search warrant with no plans to charge him is super fishy. And even more puzzling than Holder's actions, why isn't Fox News trumpeting this instead of Benghazi?

There was an article on BI a few days ago saying how "Americans don't care" about the AP spying (from a survey), and that they cared a lot more about IRS and Benghazi. But let's put things in context. The IRS scandal, and especially the Benghazi one, have been trumpeted at least 10x more than the AP one. Maybe 100x more. With such "awareness campaign" is it really a surprise most people responded in the surveys with…

Yeah, I hate that circular logic. Americans drink more coke than pepsi, look at the advertising budgets. You hammer something on prime time every night for 6 months and people will think it's a bigger deal than the story you don't.

There's not an actual scandal behind Benghazi. Literally none. They're alleging a cover-up, "of what?", "they're covering it up!". That's the whole story and somehow it's 6 months of airtime.

The IRS story is just bad CYA by the administrators there. Political groups applying for charity status is in fact something that the IRS should be auditing and cracking down on, regardless of political party, and there were a lot of tea party groups applying for charity status -- The dept head was actually a Bush appointee, they just weren't tactful enough about how they set their filters to make it look more bipartisan.

This leak case, on the other hand, is actual erosion of press freedoms. And the media (?!?!?!!) seem to care the least about it.

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#17

Post by 3825 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #14
Nrsolis wrote: post #3

I supported Obama and worked for the campaign in 2008. I'm sad to see that this administration has been more aggressive in leak persecution than GWB. I don't think there is anything wrong in pursuing illegal leaks of classified information. I DO think it's wrong to target bona fide journalists for criminal prosecution based on their reporting. The optics of this kind of thing are bad no matter how you look at it. As…

Between signing off on warrants against journalists, signing off on the CIA murdering American citizens abroad (via OLC), and giving de facto immunity to banks and bank employees, Holder has been a terrible Attorney General. It's time for him to go.

Can an Attorney General sign a warrant? Isn't it supposed to be a judge who signs warrants?

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#18

Post by adolph »

dllthomas wrote: post #12

It sounds like there was an actual warrant in this case? Not a huge fan of the actions taken here but it's not as horrendous as the end run around oversight that the subpoenas entail.

I am not a lawyer, but my naive understanding of how it works is that a judge (or magistrate, somesuch from judicial branch) "signs off" on a warrant to authorize it. Maybe the article means that the AG approved requesting a warrant from a judge?

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#19

Post by symfoniq »

pekk wrote: post #16

This is part of an extremely strong partisan streak in HN's political postings over the last year or two which I find irritating and inappropriate. If I wanted right-wing skewed tech news, there is already Slashdot.

I agree that the less politics on Hacker News, the better. However, I think there is a grave risk in writing off the possible abuse of political power because the alleged victims are not in your camp. As Martin Niemöller said:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

Re: Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

#20

Post by joshuahedlund »

tptacek wrote: post #8
Nrsolis wrote: post #3

I supported Obama and worked for the campaign in 2008. I'm sad to see that this administration has been more aggressive in leak persecution than GWB. I don't think there is anything wrong in pursuing illegal leaks of classified information. I DO think it's wrong to target bona fide journalists for criminal prosecution based on their reporting. The optics of this kind of thing are bad no matter how you look at it. As…

The idea that Obama has been more aggressive than Bush in leak investigations is popular, but I'm not sure it's anything more than circumstantial. Here are the leak prosecutions that have actually happened since he took office: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701813

The fact remains (as far as I know) that the Obama administration has prosecuted more leaks under the Espionage Act of 1917 than all other presidents up to now combined. So we have a few possibilities:

1) Obama is prosecuting at the same rate of aggressiveness as previous presidents but has happened to have more prosecutable leaks under his watch than all previous presidents combined.

2) Obama is prosecuting at the same rate of aggressiveness as previous presidents, and there has not been a sudden increase in prosecutable leaks, but Obama has found out about them better, and thus been able to prosecute more.

3) Obama is prosecuting at an increased rate of aggressiveness compared to previous presidents, because there has not been a sudden increase in prosecutable leaks the president knew about

4) It's all irrelevant because comparing 0 vs. 2 vs. 6 prosecutions among 20-some presidents is too small a sample size

There's a lot of missing information here, so it's easy to see how some biases would tend towards 3 and others would tend towards 1-2 or 4

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