Phone Records of Journalists Seized by U.S.

[air2004]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/u...he-associated-press-seized-by-us.html?hp&_r=0

While congress is busy unlocking your phone, I hope this isn't what they mean.

Federal investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year.

 

[the_randomizer]

Hooray for douchebag government officials! Yay for compromised freedoms and violated rights! Land of the free, home of the brave! We're the most perfect country in the world, how can the government POSSIBLY be this corrupt? Surely, this cannot be the case!

Spoiler

We're far from the most perfect country, especially when we have losers in Congress who dictate right and wrong for us and we have no say. As much as I love living here, everyday I see something that makes our country less free, I weep for the future. I want to defect. What a bunch of retards, I hope they sod off

 

[Veho]

Since the phrase "get his/her phone records" pops up twice per episode of any crime show I've ever watched, I didn't know phone records were protected and the acquiring of same was such a big deal (as opposed to, say, wiretapping and similar).

 

[the_randomizer]

Since the phrase "get his/her phone records" pops up twice per episode of any crime show I've ever watched, I didn't know phone records were protected and the acquiring of same was such a big deal (as opposed to, say, wiretapping and similar).

Not a violation of rights at all!

 

[Veho]

Not a violation of rights at all!

Is it illegal?

 

[war2thegrave]

Is it illegal?

It is not.
Phone records are the property of the corporation providing the service.
The phone company can choose to take legal action to deny the government access to those records,
but for the most part, the companies willingly give those up unless there is a compelling financial reward
for selling those records to a third party like facebook and google do.

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

It is not.
Phone records are the property of the corporation providing the service.
The phone company can choose to take legal action to deny the government access to those records,
but for the most part, the companies willingly give those up unless there is a compelling financial reward
for selling those records to a third party like facebook and google do.

Pretty sure you are grossly incorrect. Privacy issues and such, I'm pretty sure this has been ruled either illegal or inconstitutional at some point.

 

[Veho]

Pretty sure you are grossly incorrect. Privacy issues and such, I'm pretty sure this has been ruled either illegal or inconstitutional at some point.

[...] police don't need a warrant — which requires showing "probable cause" of a crime — to get just the numbers you called and when you called them, as well as incoming calls, from phone carriers. Instead, police can get courts to sign off on a subpoena, which only requires that the data they're after is relevant to an investigation — a lesser standard of evidence. Police can get phone records without a warrant thanks to Smith v. Maryland, a Supreme Court ruling in 1979, which found that the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure doesn't apply to a list of phone numbers.

http://www.alternet.org/8-ways-police-can-spy-you-without-warrant

 

[Gahars]

Sensationalism, ho!

 

[the_randomizer]

Doesn't make it any less of a dick thing to do. Legal or not, doesn't make it morally right. If they can do that, I can tell them to sod off.