Unleashing the fairness doctrine - when following the law by letter isn't good enough as the outcome is deemed unfair by those who decide which outcomes are fair or unfair....
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-20/apple-meets-fairness-doctrine-set-pay-whole-lot-more-tax
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/20/2013 20:23 -0400
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/20/2013 21:40 -0400
Monday afternoon, ABC News released a chilling report that details what journalists have faced while trying to get some answers from the Cincinnati IRS office, which is where a majority of the Tea Party targeting took place.
According to ABC, an "armed uniform police officer with the Federal Protective Service" "escorted" reporters through the public building. ABC says if the intent wasn't to "scare off" employees who might talk, "it was the effect."
ABC News is also hearing conflicting reports from Cincinnati IRS employees and the IRS Headquarters in Washington. A Washington spokesman told ABC that press queries are "referred to the press office," but that "people have First Amendment rights, they are entitled to speak."
An employee in OH said that is not the case and that staffers have been threatened with their jobs if they are caught talking to the media:
Source: Lee Rogers, Blacklisted News
The Obama regime is now in the midst of three separate scandals all of which are revealing just a small portion of the criminal activity that has been taking place in the federal government. Based upon historical precedent the actual nature of criminal activity within governments is usually much worse than is ever fully revealed to the public.
Let’s take a look at a few examples. Specifically the federal government has participated in covering up the true facts of many events including the JFK assassination, the Israeli military attack on the U.S. Navy warship the USS Liberty, the 1993 government sanctioned slaughter of women and children in Waco Texas, the FBI’s involvement in facilitating the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the government’s complicity in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City and most importantly Israeli and U.S. government involvement in the attacks of September 11th, 2001. The Obama regime and prior Presidential regimes have gotten away with these criminal acts because the big corporate controlled media outlets have willfully served as propagandists and mouthpieces for the government. Instead of asking real questions and applying basic common sense principles of journalism they have openly dismissed and mocked anyone engaged in seeking the truth. They have even resorted to calling these critical thinkers names or discrediting their work by using terms like conspiracy theory and the like.
There is little doubt that the corporate controlled media is at the very least partially to blame for much of the government criminality that we see today. Instead of serving as a government watchdog, they serve primarily as a government lapdog and merely repeat whatever official story the government puts out. The end result of this type of propaganda fueled journalism is that the people at the highest levels of government have become incredibly drunk and corrupt with power. The corruption has become so great that there were actually people in the Eric Holder run Justice Department that felt as if they could get away with broadly wiretapping phone lines with no judicial review at the nation’s largest news gathering organization the Associated Press. Holder has attempted to justify this activity by claiming it was for national security which is utterly insane and ridiculous. Like the “mistakes were made” quote, this seems to be another popular response given by government officials when they get caught breaking the law or worse.
With all sorts of garbage unconstitutional legislation passed like the 2002 Patriot Act and others, people at the highest levels of government feel as if they can get away with an increasing amount of criminality. If the Associated Press and other news gathering organizations were actually attempting to seek the truth instead of concealing it all of these years, it is doubtful we would be in this place we see today. It is insane that there are people in the government like Holder who believe that they can merely site national security in order to justify any number of unlawful programs such as these wiretaps.
Reporters at the Associated Press and at other news agencies should be outraged at this sort of governmental abuse. Considering that the government had the nerve to illegally wiretap a news gathering organization as large as the Associated Press, who knows how many other news gathering organizations they are or have been illegally wiretapping. It is hard to describe this as anything but a blatant attack on the First and Fourth Amendments which protect free speech and prevent unreasonable searches and seizures.
This should be a huge wake up call to all news gathering organizations that have been complicit in covering up the truth surrounding government crimes. Even if you willfully serve the system, the government has now proven it is so corrupt that it will even go after people and organizations that help spew their propaganda. It is time for the corporate media to blow the whistle on the truth surrounding the history of government corruption and criminality and fully expose what is happening in this country. Real reporting on subjects like government sponsored terrorism, the rigged two-party political system, the fraud of central banks, the fake terror war, illegal manipulation of financial markets, the Israeli and Zionist influence on American foreign policy and other important topics need to become a common narrative amongst the corporate media.
Unfortunately it is doubtful we will see anything of the sort. At this point the Obama regime could send goons in Darth Vader outfits with machine guns to shut down the Associated Press or another large news gathering entity and we’d probably still see the same level of compliance in supporting government sanctioned narratives from the corporate media. Unfortunately, much of the corporate media is inherently behind supporting the causes of international Zionism and exposing these lies would severely undermine these efforts. There is no doubt that this scandal is outrageous and criminal on so many levels, but it will be a big surprise if the Associated Press and other news outlets finally start seeking and reporting the real truth of what is going on in this country.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-20/apple-meets-fairness-doctrine-set-pay-whole-lot-more-tax
Apple Meets The "Fairness Doctrine", Is Set To Pay A Whole Lot More In Taxes
Last September, when we exposed the heretofore unknown entity actively managing Apple's $100 billion+ in offshore held cash (and thus untaxed in the US), we made the following "bold" prediction: "with the topic of finding effective tax loopholes which are perfectly legal, yet which apparently are unfair, serving as the basis of the entire presidential race to date, what Apple can be absolutely certain of is that once the farce culminating on November 6 is over, the government's eye will finally turn to minimizing "externalities" among such companies which have been able to pass through corporate tax savings to end consumers by abiding within the legal system that countless other muppet congressmen, senators and presidents have developed over the ages. Because while AAPL may have built the iPhone, very soon it will be only fair that it share its profits acquired over the years, and thus its cash balance...with the general public." Or in other words, in September we predicted the Apple "tax witchhunt" would take place shortly after Obama won his reelection. Today, it has officially begun.
For those confused, Congress has just announced it is shocked, SHOCKED to learn it has over the past several decades passed legislation making tax shelter loopholes - such as those used by AAPL, GOOG and every other multinational company - perfectly legal, and which will now be turned against those very companies in a kangaroo court of law, seeking nothing more or less than to extract all those pounds of flesh that the government so generously let slip between its fingers for so many years. Which is expected: when the entire world is broke, the government has no choice but to call in every favor accumulated over the years, because all is fair in, well, the fairness doctrine and in a world about to unleash global trade, and tax, war.
Of course, we have covered the background of this topic extensively in the past knowing quite well what direction the wealth redistributor-in-chief was heading. From Apple And Taxes:
As we have shown in the past, perhaps the one thing Tim Cook's company has loathed more than anything in the past, is to pay taxes, which is why it has some of the most convoluted legal tax shelters imaginable. Indeed, in the current quarter, according to the company's cash flow statement, a tiny $2.4 billion was paid in cash taxes. Putting this number in perspective, the company had an operating profit of $12.4 billion.Or, cumulatively, since December 2008, AAPL has generated a grand total of $149 billion in operating profit, while paying just $21 billion in total taxes.
Which brings us to today. From Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. (AAPL) has created a web of offshore entities to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes, including three foreign subsidiaries the company says have no home country for tax purposes, congressional investigators say.The world’s most valuable technology company has $102 billion in offshore accounts and shifted billions in profits out of the U.S. into affiliates based in Ireland where it negotiated a tax rate of less than 2 percent, according to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.The offshore entities of the Cupertino, California-based company have paid little or no tax in recent years, the probe found.One Apple affiliate -- Apple Operations International -- generated net income of $30 billion between 2009 and 2012, and declined to declare a tax residence, filed no corporate tax return and payed no income taxes to any nation, the report said. AOI is Apple’s principal offshore holding company.“Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven,” Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the panel, said at a news conference. “Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.
Of course, in AAPL's defense, what it has done is not illegal at all, and is in perfect compliance with both US and international laws. But that would mean Congress would have to read the laws it has passed over the ages: something which everyone knows never happens. One also knows that Congress is unparalleled when it comes to the hypocrisy of accusing others for following the rules it itself has enacted.
In prepared testimony to Congress posted on its website today, Apple defended its practices, saying it paid $6 billion in U.S. taxes last year and is one of the largest taxpayers in the country.Apple’s cash is largely held in U.S. banks in U.S. dollar-denominated assets, segregated into a portion that can be used for domestic operations and a portion that can be used only for international investments, the company said.The company doesn’t use foreign subsidiaries or gimmicks to avoid U.S. taxes, said the testimony.The company also said the Irish subsidiaries, which are cost-sharing arrangements, have helped to fund Apple’s research and development activities and taken on risks, leading to bigger profits and higher-paying jobs in the U.S.
None of this matters, however, in the abovementioned kangaroo court, in which...
Lawmakers in both parties are seeking a bipartisan agreement on how to tax income that U.S.-based corporations earn outside the country. Democrats and Republicans on the panel say Apple’s tax maneuverings, while not illegal, will help frame the debate about how to make the corporate tax system more fair.Senator John McCain of Arizona, the panel’s top Republican, said he and Levin are seeking to craft a bipartisan proposal that would end some of the tax benefits, although the timing of an agreement isn’t clear. He said both parties in Congress should seek to address the matter, even if it isn’t in the context of a broad rewrite of the tax code.“When you see egregious behavior like this, why wait?” McCain said.
And there it is again: "all in the name of fairness."
What is left unsaid is that Apple is merely the first Guniea pig in what is sure to be a long trail of wealth "redistribution" of evil companies (to benefit the Federal and State governments) who have used every legal loophole affored to them by the US tax code, in order to pad the government's soaring spending habits, and to assist in making it even bigger.
Sadly, for AAPL, and for many others like it, this means that the excess profits they generate are now known, in financial parliance, as "negative externalities" and Fair Uncle Sam is coming for his fair share.
Sadder for AAPL, and all those like it, it means that the company is now truly a utility in the eyes of the government, and one can stick a fork in any hopes that the growth company created by Steve Jobs ever has a chance of coming back.
and.....
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/19/former-google-exec-turns-whistleblower-on-companys-tax-avoidance-machinations-in-the-uk/
Former Google Exec Turns Whistleblower On Company’s Tax Avoidance Machinations In The UK
Google is under fire in the UK for its tax practices in the country, and a new key witness (who spoke to The Sunday Times) might put them in deeper hot water when he hands over a reported 100,000 emails and documents to the British Revenue & Customs (HRMC) services. Barney Jones, a former Googler who was at the company between 2004 and 2006, says he has material proof that Google’s London sales staff which would negotiate and close sales for the UK market, despite claiming its Dublin HQ handled finalizing all deals.
Jones was prompted to speak out by testimony given to the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last week by Google VP Matt Brittin, who said that London-based Google staff were never closing any ad sales deals, though some selling efforts were made there. Brittin had previously gone on record in November 2012 with statements asserting that no one in the London office was doing any kind of ad selling.
The matter of where the deals were finalized is especially important because if a sale closes in London, it’s likely they’d be taxable in Britain, rather than in the extremely low tax-rated Ireland. Jones told the Sunday Times that Google is fully aware of this, yet there are still records of Google staff closing major deals from companies like eBay and Lloyds TSB, but Google doesn’t seem at all certain that any of the documentation will absolutely prove that it has done anything strictly against UK tax law, according to a statement provided by Google Direct of External Relations Peter Barron to the Sunday Times.
“As we said in front of the public accounts committee, it is difficult to respond fully to documents we have not seen,” the statement reads. “These questions relate to Google’s business in the UK going back a decade or more. None of the allegations put to us change the fact that Google pays the corporate tax due on its UK activities and complies fully with UK law.” Google reiterated this statement to TechCrunch when we contacted them for comment.
Ireland uses its lower corporate taxation rate, which is 12.5 percent, or a little over half of Britain’s 23 percent, to attract big names who base their European corporate headquarters there, including Apple and Facebook in addition to Google. The search giant is currently under fire from UK parliament members for its tax practices, thanks to a Reuters investigation that revealed statements it made last November to the PAC about its London operations may not have been entirely accurate.
Amazon is next in the PAC’s sights for its UK tax practices, as Reuters has also recently uncovered evidence to suggest that it, too, is doing a lot of selling through an autonomous London-based unit, despite routing its sales on paper through a tax-exempt affiliate based in Luxembourg. In fact, for most on Google’s footing, avoiding taxes seems to be the exception, not the rule, and a recent piece by V3′s Madeline Bennett explains that even if this fresh round of hearings reveals that these schemes do run afoul of UK tax regulations, it’s unlikely we’ll see situations change all that dramatically. Governments are too dependent on the general economic benefits of hosting big corporations, and get too much out of awarding them contracts, she says, to risk doing long-term harm to those arrangements.
Still, what Jones claims to have would be incredibly embarrassing for Google, especially if it spells out in no uncertain terms that closing deals was regularly handled by Google’s London staff, in direct contradiction to what Brittin has told the committee, but until we see the goods, there’s no telling how deep down the rabbit hole his information actually goes.
Another example of the fairness doctrine - Bitcoin surely must be unfair After all , it could be used to launder money ( which would be unfair competition for the dollar / euro and pound - which of course used to launder money . If that's not enough , it could destabilize our monetary systems ( which is the job of Central Bankers and Politicians , thank you. ) And it's quite unfair that Bitcoin offers no customer protection - and what type of currency doesn't provide condom - like protection from Speculatively transmitted Diatribes from Pols and Central Bankers ?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-20/bitcoin-%E2%80%93-tyranny-test
Bitcoin – The Tyranny Test
Via Paul Rosenberg of Free-Man's Perspective blog (via Jim Quinn's Burning Platform blog),
An increasing number of people have complained about governments and central banks in recent years, even using the word “tyranny” to describe them. They are, of course, called names in the establishment press:conspiracy theorists, mainly.
Calling someone a name, however, does not erase their argument (at least not among rational people) and both the governments and the big banks stand accused.
Up till now, however, these accusations were never accepted by the general public. The average guy really didn’t want to hear about the evils of government money. After all, that was the only thing he had ever used to buy food, clothes, gasoline, cars, and so on. He didn’t want to acknowledge the accusations because he feared what might happen to him without his usual money.
Now, however, we have a brand new currency (called Bitcoin) available to us: something radically different. This gives us a new way to directly address the subject of monetary tyranny, providing a clear test for the governments and money masters of the world:
If they are truly NOT tyrannical, they will leave this new currency alone.
If they ARE tyrannical, they will attack the new currency because it eats into their scam.
In other words, Bitcoin is a test for “the powers that be.” The way they deal with this new method of exchange will reveal their true nature.
If they ignore Bitcoin, they refute the charges of tyranny. If they attack it, they verify those charges.
After all, what honest reason could there be to attack an inherently peaceful tool for transferring value?
Prospective Reasons
Reasons to attack Bitcoin have recently appeared in the “public square.” Here are the three most popular ones, each followed with some analysis:
It can be used for money laundering.
Of course it can be used for money laundering — ANY currency can be used for money laundering. Currencies are neutral — that is their purpose! Currencies are valuable precisely because they can be exchanged for anything else — that’s why we use them!
Moreover, dollars and Euros and Pounds are used for money laundering every day. Consider the recent money laundering crimes of HSBC and Wachovia/Wells Fargo. These banks laundered hundreds of billions of dollars for violent drug cartels. And consider that this amount of laundered money is several hundred times the value of every Bitcoin in existence.
No one from either bank went to jail. Neither bank was shut down. Neither bank suffered more than a minor fine. So, how much of a concern can money laundering really be to governments and banks? Clearly not much.
But, since they accuse Bitcoin of being used for bad things, let’s be clear about the situation:
- Every mafioso uses government money.
- Every drug smuggler uses government money.
- Every terrorist uses government money.
- Every pornographer uses government money.
- Every criminal of every type uses government money.
They also use the telephone system and the mail and banks and a wide variety of government services. But government money is good and Bitcoin is bad?
The argument fails.
It could destabilize the current system.
A tiny, new currency is a threat to the long-established king of the hill? Comparing Bitcoin to dollars, Euros and Yen is like comparing an ant to a dinosaur. This is a threat?
Please understand also that no one is forcing anyone to use Bitcoin. If you don’t think it’s a great idea, you don’t have to use it. If its price movements (relative to dollars) bother you, you don’t have to use it. How is that destabilizing to the current system? It is entirely separate.
And what of the current system? It was falling apart on its own before the Bitcoin program was ever written. And I could go on at length on the insane levels of government debt, hundreds of trillions in derivatives, rehypothecation, and innocent people being forced to bail-out failed banks.
The current system has massive problems, but none of them can be blamed on Bitcoin.
This argument fails also.
Bitcoin provides no customer protection.
Well, no, it doesn’t. Bitcoin is a currency, not a legal system.
What is implied by this argument is that the government banking system does protect customers. That is an outright lie. People are ripped-off via the banking system every day. And more than that, consider what happened just a month ago in Cyprus: Thousands of innocent people were ripped-off BY the banking system — purposely — all at once and without recourse. This argument is, really, an insult to one’s intelligence.
And I should add something else: If Bitcoin is used properly, the crime of identity theft (a big problem with government money) vanishes – there is no identity available to be stolen.
So, again, the argument fails. Only those people who believe anything a government says will buy it.
In the End
In the end, it is said, we judge ourselves. Bitcoin has now put governments and banks in the position of judging themselves. They will write their own verdicts.
It should be interesting to watch.
Fairness Doctrine snares Media - surely it isn't fair to honestly report the news and not the official story fed to the approved lapdogs of the press ?
The journalism world has been rightly outraged by the Justice Department dragging the Associated Press (and now a Fox News reporter) into one of its sprawling leak investigations. As we wrote last week, by obtaining the call records of twenty AP phone lines, “the DOJ has struck a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news.
But there are several other important lessons that this scandal can teach us besides how important free and uninhibited newsgathering is to the public’s right to know.
1. Weak Privacy Laws That Doomed AP Affect Everyone
The AP detailed in its letter to the Justice Department how its privacy was grossly invaded even though the government accessed only the call records of its reporters and not the content of their conversations. We completely agree. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a problem in the AP investigation. Law enforcement agencies routinely demand and receive this information about ordinary Americans over long periods of time without any court involvement whatsoever, much less a full warrant.
And as we said last week, the DOJ's decision to dive into these call records also shows the growing need to update our privacy laws to eliminate the outmoded Third Party Doctrine—which holds that anything you give to a service provider, or that a service provider collects as part of providing you a service—can retain no reasonable expectation of privacy. In an era where email is stored by our providers, cellphone companies keep records that track our location and cloud services hold our documents, it’s long past time to bring our interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and statutory electronic privacy laws in compliance with the 21st Century.
In response to the AP scandal, a bipartisan coalition in Congress just introduced a bill to partially fix this problem called The Telephone Records Protection Act. The bill would require the Justice Department to get a judge’s approval before seeking these records. At EFF, we think the government should have to go even further than a court order: a judicial warrant showing the kind of probable cause required by the Fourth Amendment should be the standard. But this bill is certainly an improvement over administrative subpoenas, which don’t need a sign-off from a judge at all and allow the Executive branch to seek information without any external check.
2. Reporter or Not, Phone Companies Need to Have Your Back
As the New York Times reported, the AP is still examining if and when any telephone companies tried to push back on the overbroad requests for its call records. “But at least two of the journalists’ personal cellphone records were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena,.” The Times reported. And it also seems clear that the AP itself wasn’t given notice before their phone company turned over the records.
In EFF’s 2013 “Who Has Your Back” report, which tracks several ways in which communications companies can help protect user privacy, we give a star for promising to notify users about government demands for data whenever whenever the company is not legally prevented from doing so. Notably, Verizon does not have a notification policy and did not receive a star. In fact, Verizon was the only company to receive zero stars.
This isn’t a small problem or just a problem for journalists. According to information released by the phone companies to Rep. Ed Markey, Sprint, for example, received a staggering 500,000 subpoenas for call records data last year. Verizon, the company at issue in the AP case, received 260,000 such subpoenas. The government requests this information with regularity, and given the phone companies control the data, communications company policies are all that stand between you and governmental overreach.
Users should demand that their communications companies notify them when the government comes seeking information, unless they are legally barred by a court order.
3. Government often Overstates National Security Claims, Overclassifies Information
We’ve written many times about the many ways “national security” has been invoked—and exaggerated—in order to cover up government embarrassment or wrongdoing, or to assert powers that would normally not be granted under the Constitution. The government routinely overclassifies information that should never be secret, according to reports commissioned by the White House itself.
The most glaring example for EFF is our lawsuit over the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, where the government won’t admit or deny that the program even exists, citing the danger to national security, despite thousands of pages of public evidence. The government has argued the same thing in cases about torture and the CIA drone program where, many times, the same information that they claim is secret is on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
In the AP’s case, while Attorney General Holder says this leak put “lives at risk,” John Brennan said the opposite around the time of the story (“Brennan said the plot was never a threat to the U.S. public or air safety,” reported Reuters). The AP also held its story for six days until the CIA told them it was safe to publish and the White House had a news conference planned the day after the story to announce the successful counterterrorism operation.
As the late Supreme Court Justice Huge Black once said, “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.”
4. There’s Not Much Recourse For Prosecutorial Misconduct
In this case, just like the case of Aaron Swartz, there has been widespread criticism that the Justice Department has abused its authority and aggressively pursued parties in an unprofessional manner. As we detailed last week, it seems the Justice Department didn’t follow its own guidelines when issuing subpoenas about[?] the reporters, or at least went to the very edge of its own guidelines.
Just like in the Swartz case, the specific prosecutor has a history of over-aggressiveprosecutions (even being accused of overzealous prosecution by Eric Holder himself when he was in private practice). Yet when Congress asked Holder at a hearing about the allegations, just like in the Swartz case, he did not admit to any wrongdoing, and was able to deflect questions about his department’s handling of the case. Unfortunately, there is not much recourse for meaningful remedy for the public in these situations, and this case is just the latest example.
5. Journalists Need to be Pro-Active in Protecting Their Digital Security
In an age where warrantless surveillance is skyrocketing and governments potentially have access to an astonishing amount of information, journalists must learn to proactively protect both themselves and their sources.
The Committee to Protect Journalists Journalist Security Guide is an excellent place to start. It addresses concerns faced by journalists working inside the United States and internationally.
Wired published an op-ed last week about the care one needs to take from the source’s end if one wishes to send information to the press undetected. Much of the advice is applicable to reporters talking to sources as well. Additionally, the New Yorker has just released a promising—but un-tested—anonymous leak submission system, coded by Aaron Swartz before he tragically died in January. In certain circumstances physical mail remains the safest option.
Overall, the final lesson is that journalists, and sources, need to take security seriously. Trusting that the government won’t come after you because you’re engaged in journalism, serving the public interest, or helping reveal wrongdoing is plainly not sufficient.
1. Weak Privacy Laws That Doomed AP Affect Everyone
The AP detailed in its letter to the Justice Department how its privacy was grossly invaded even though the government accessed only the call records of its reporters and not the content of their conversations. We completely agree. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a problem in the AP investigation. Law enforcement agencies routinely demand and receive this information about ordinary Americans over long periods of time without any court involvement whatsoever, much less a full warrant.
And as we said last week, the DOJ's decision to dive into these call records also shows the growing need to update our privacy laws to eliminate the outmoded Third Party Doctrine—which holds that anything you give to a service provider, or that a service provider collects as part of providing you a service—can retain no reasonable expectation of privacy. In an era where email is stored by our providers, cellphone companies keep records that track our location and cloud services hold our documents, it’s long past time to bring our interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and statutory electronic privacy laws in compliance with the 21st Century.
In response to the AP scandal, a bipartisan coalition in Congress just introduced a bill to partially fix this problem called The Telephone Records Protection Act. The bill would require the Justice Department to get a judge’s approval before seeking these records. At EFF, we think the government should have to go even further than a court order: a judicial warrant showing the kind of probable cause required by the Fourth Amendment should be the standard. But this bill is certainly an improvement over administrative subpoenas, which don’t need a sign-off from a judge at all and allow the Executive branch to seek information without any external check.
2. Reporter or Not, Phone Companies Need to Have Your Back
As the New York Times reported, the AP is still examining if and when any telephone companies tried to push back on the overbroad requests for its call records. “But at least two of the journalists’ personal cellphone records were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena,.” The Times reported. And it also seems clear that the AP itself wasn’t given notice before their phone company turned over the records.
In EFF’s 2013 “Who Has Your Back” report, which tracks several ways in which communications companies can help protect user privacy, we give a star for promising to notify users about government demands for data whenever whenever the company is not legally prevented from doing so. Notably, Verizon does not have a notification policy and did not receive a star. In fact, Verizon was the only company to receive zero stars.
This isn’t a small problem or just a problem for journalists. According to information released by the phone companies to Rep. Ed Markey, Sprint, for example, received a staggering 500,000 subpoenas for call records data last year. Verizon, the company at issue in the AP case, received 260,000 such subpoenas. The government requests this information with regularity, and given the phone companies control the data, communications company policies are all that stand between you and governmental overreach.
Users should demand that their communications companies notify them when the government comes seeking information, unless they are legally barred by a court order.
3. Government often Overstates National Security Claims, Overclassifies Information
We’ve written many times about the many ways “national security” has been invoked—and exaggerated—in order to cover up government embarrassment or wrongdoing, or to assert powers that would normally not be granted under the Constitution. The government routinely overclassifies information that should never be secret, according to reports commissioned by the White House itself.
The most glaring example for EFF is our lawsuit over the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, where the government won’t admit or deny that the program even exists, citing the danger to national security, despite thousands of pages of public evidence. The government has argued the same thing in cases about torture and the CIA drone program where, many times, the same information that they claim is secret is on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
In the AP’s case, while Attorney General Holder says this leak put “lives at risk,” John Brennan said the opposite around the time of the story (“Brennan said the plot was never a threat to the U.S. public or air safety,” reported Reuters). The AP also held its story for six days until the CIA told them it was safe to publish and the White House had a news conference planned the day after the story to announce the successful counterterrorism operation.
As the late Supreme Court Justice Huge Black once said, “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.”
4. There’s Not Much Recourse For Prosecutorial Misconduct
In this case, just like the case of Aaron Swartz, there has been widespread criticism that the Justice Department has abused its authority and aggressively pursued parties in an unprofessional manner. As we detailed last week, it seems the Justice Department didn’t follow its own guidelines when issuing subpoenas about[?] the reporters, or at least went to the very edge of its own guidelines.
Just like in the Swartz case, the specific prosecutor has a history of over-aggressiveprosecutions (even being accused of overzealous prosecution by Eric Holder himself when he was in private practice). Yet when Congress asked Holder at a hearing about the allegations, just like in the Swartz case, he did not admit to any wrongdoing, and was able to deflect questions about his department’s handling of the case. Unfortunately, there is not much recourse for meaningful remedy for the public in these situations, and this case is just the latest example.
5. Journalists Need to be Pro-Active in Protecting Their Digital Security
In an age where warrantless surveillance is skyrocketing and governments potentially have access to an astonishing amount of information, journalists must learn to proactively protect both themselves and their sources.
The Committee to Protect Journalists Journalist Security Guide is an excellent place to start. It addresses concerns faced by journalists working inside the United States and internationally.
Wired published an op-ed last week about the care one needs to take from the source’s end if one wishes to send information to the press undetected. Much of the advice is applicable to reporters talking to sources as well. Additionally, the New Yorker has just released a promising—but un-tested—anonymous leak submission system, coded by Aaron Swartz before he tragically died in January. In certain circumstances physical mail remains the safest option.
Overall, the final lesson is that journalists, and sources, need to take security seriously. Trusting that the government won’t come after you because you’re engaged in journalism, serving the public interest, or helping reveal wrongdoing is plainly not sufficient.
and....
IRS Scandal: Armed Police 'Escort' Reporters Through Cincinnati Office
May 20, 2013
Source: Breitbart
Monday afternoon, ABC News released a chilling report that details what journalists have faced while trying to get some answers from the Cincinnati IRS office, which is where a majority of the Tea Party targeting took place.
According to ABC, an "armed uniform police officer with the Federal Protective Service" "escorted" reporters through the public building. ABC says if the intent wasn't to "scare off" employees who might talk, "it was the effect."
ABC News is also hearing conflicting reports from Cincinnati IRS employees and the IRS Headquarters in Washington. A Washington spokesman told ABC that press queries are "referred to the press office," but that "people have First Amendment rights, they are entitled to speak."
An employee in OH said that is not the case and that staffers have been threatened with their jobs if they are caught talking to the media:
At the [Cincinnati] IRS office on the fourth floor, a woman who answered the buzzer referred reporters to officials in Washington, though they were not returning very many calls. That staffer also said she was not allowed to speak to anyone – a line that was repeated by agency personnel during the week.
IRS headquarters in Washington denied that a no-talk rule was official policy because, after all, agency staffers still have a constitutional right to talk to whomever they want. …
Not so, said IRS folks in Ohio.
One of them, who asked not be named, told ABC News that security guards did remind employees of the official policy not to talk with the press – a warning cemented by the punch line "or risk losing our jobs."
The Obama administration's Culture of Intimidation knows no bounds, apparently.
and.....
DOJ Spy Scandal: Associated Press Got What It Asked For By Serving As Lapdog Government Propagandists
May 20, 2013Source: Lee Rogers, Blacklisted News
The Obama regime is now in the midst of three separate scandals all of which are revealing just a small portion of the criminal activity that has been taking place in the federal government. Based upon historical precedent the actual nature of criminal activity within governments is usually much worse than is ever fully revealed to the public.
There is little doubt that the corporate controlled media is at the very least partially to blame for much of the government criminality that we see today. Instead of serving as a government watchdog, they serve primarily as a government lapdog and merely repeat whatever official story the government puts out. The end result of this type of propaganda fueled journalism is that the people at the highest levels of government have become incredibly drunk and corrupt with power. The corruption has become so great that there were actually people in the Eric Holder run Justice Department that felt as if they could get away with broadly wiretapping phone lines with no judicial review at the nation’s largest news gathering organization the Associated Press. Holder has attempted to justify this activity by claiming it was for national security which is utterly insane and ridiculous. Like the “mistakes were made” quote, this seems to be another popular response given by government officials when they get caught breaking the law or worse.
Reporters at the Associated Press and at other news agencies should be outraged at this sort of governmental abuse. Considering that the government had the nerve to illegally wiretap a news gathering organization as large as the Associated Press, who knows how many other news gathering organizations they are or have been illegally wiretapping. It is hard to describe this as anything but a blatant attack on the First and Fourth Amendments which protect free speech and prevent unreasonable searches and seizures.
This should be a huge wake up call to all news gathering organizations that have been complicit in covering up the truth surrounding government crimes. Even if you willfully serve the system, the government has now proven it is so corrupt that it will even go after people and organizations that help spew their propaganda. It is time for the corporate media to blow the whistle on the truth surrounding the history of government corruption and criminality and fully expose what is happening in this country. Real reporting on subjects like government sponsored terrorism, the rigged two-party political system, the fraud of central banks, the fake terror war, illegal manipulation of financial markets, the Israeli and Zionist influence on American foreign policy and other important topics need to become a common narrative amongst the corporate media.
Unfortunately it is doubtful we will see anything of the sort. At this point the Obama regime could send goons in Darth Vader outfits with machine guns to shut down the Associated Press or another large news gathering entity and we’d probably still see the same level of compliance in supporting government sanctioned narratives from the corporate media. Unfortunately, much of the corporate media is inherently behind supporting the causes of international Zionism and exposing these lies would severely undermine these efforts. There is no doubt that this scandal is outrageous and criminal on so many levels, but it will be a big surprise if the Associated Press and other news outlets finally start seeking and reporting the real truth of what is going on in this country.
