First Amendment Assault On Freedom Of The Press

Yard Dart · Feb 19, 2014

Last week, a little noticed clash took place on Capitol Hill involving the fundamental values underlying the First Amendment. The issue was the lawfulness of publishing the secrets that were given to reporters by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. The disputants were Rep. Mike Rogers, (R-Mich), and FBI Director James Comey.
Rogers is the chief congressional apologist for the massive NSA spying apparatus. He is the current chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and in that capacity, he is one of the dozen members of Congress from both houses who were privy to much of the NSA spying before the Snowden revelations.
In our perverse post-9/11 world, federal law actually permits this Gang of 12 to substitute for all 535 members of Congress with respect to knowledge of intelligence secrets.
In the clash between government secrecy and public transparency, the Framers placed a value judgment in the First Amendment.
Since 9/11, the Bush and Obama administrations have succeeded in claiming they have congressional consent for the massive NSA spying by merely getting a consensus from the Gang of 12. There is, of course, no provision in the Constitution for the substitution of all 535 members of Congress with a select group of 12 of them, but Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama have gone along with this.
The kicker is that all members of the Gang of 12 have been sworn to secrecy and threatened with prosecution if they reveal to anyone, including other members of Congress, what the NSA and other intelligence agencies reveal to them. What kind of representative democracy is that?
Rogers is one of the chief architects and cheerleaders of this post-9/11 unconstitutional version of representative democracy.
This is the same system that sends the NSA to judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for search warrants that purport to authorize the NSA to capture the content of every text message, email, telephone call, bank statement, credit card bill and utility bill of everyone in America.
This apparatus, too, involves another Gang of 12: the 12 federal judges on the FISA court. They suffer from the same secrecy kicker as Rogers’ gang does: They, too, are sworn to secrecy and have been implicitly threatened with prosecution if they violate their oaths.
These judges issue search warrants based on the NSA’s unchallenged wishes, not based on the constitutional requirement of particularly identifying for the court the target of the search and then presenting evidence to the court that constitutes probable cause of criminal behavior on the part of the target. This, too, is unconstitutional, as it is the product of a congressional alteration of the Constitution.
As most schoolchildren know, Congress cannot alter or amend the Constitution; only the states can. Yet, by instructing FISA judges to issue search warrants that do not meet the constitutional identity of target and probable cause standards, Congress has substantially altered the Constitution, and the judicial Gang of 12 has gone along with this.
As one of the architects of all this domestic spying, and as one of the believers that the public should be kept in the dark about it, Rogers has not been happy with the Snowden revelations.
Snowden subscribed to the same oath of secrecy as the two Gangs of 12, but he also swore -- as have both Gangs of 12 -- to uphold the Constitution.
To Snowden, the people have a fundamental right to know that their government has cooked up the most massive secret violation of civil liberties in the nation’s history, and his oath to uphold the Constitution compelled his revelations.
To Rogers, Snowden must be a traitor or a spy.
Even the Obama administration has not bought that argument, as it only charged Snowden with the delivery of classified materials to unauthorized persons. It did not charge him with treason (waging war on the United States or giving aid and comfort to enemies of the United States) or spying (giving classified secrets to enemies of the United States).
Frustrated that Snowden is apparently living freely in Moscow, Rogers summoned the FBI director before his House committee to float a truly novel and pernicious theory of First Amendment law.
At that hearing last week, he attempted to persuade Comey to accept his idea that publishing classified secrets is a crime if the publisher was paid for his work.
So, if the owners of and reporters at The Guardian of London or The New York Times or The Washington Post, who publicly revealed the secrets Snowden gave them, were paid for their work, the Rogers argument goes, they, too, could be prosecuted for espionage.
Rogers is not a lawyer, but he is an ex-FBI agent. He should know the law, but it was necessary for Comey to tutor him.
The law is clear and was stated by the Supreme Court in the Pentagon Papers case, and Comey publicly reminded Rogers of this: If classified materials are of interest to the public, their publication is protected.
Stated differently, it matters not how the journalist acquires the classified materials or whether the journalist and his bosses are paid for his work. If the classified materials are newsworthy, they can be published, and no one can be sued or prosecuted for doing so.
In the clash between government secrecy and public transparency, the Framers placed a value judgment in the First Amendment. Since the press is the eyes and ears of the public, and since the public needs to know what the government is doing so it can make informed decisions when electing people to the government, publishers and reporters are immune from criminal prosecution and civil liability for lifting the veil on the governments’ secrets. An informed public is more likely to make better decisions than an ignorant one.
I am happy that Comey did not fall for Rogers’ ignorant argument, and I am happy, too, that the argument will fall on deaf ears.
In a free society, knowledge is superior to ignorance. Politicians who would criminalize publishing the truth should be voted out of office.
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A new assault on freedom of the press | Fox News

tacmotusn · Feb 19, 2014

Unbelievably worse yet, I heard on talk radio today "Obozo the magnificently Inept", is planning to put monitors with reporters and in broadcast newsrooms. Seig Heil Obozo!!!

ghrit · Feb 19, 2014

He thinks he's riding sheep. He's apt to find out the sheep is really a tiger, hopefully soon.

DarkLight · Feb 19, 2014

tacmotusn said: ↑

Unbelievably worse yet, I heard on talk radio today "Obozo the magnificently Inept", is planning to put monitors with reporters and in broadcast newsrooms. Seig Heil Obozo!!!
Click to expand...

Not that I doubt it but is there a source for that?

tacmotusn · Feb 19, 2014

DarkLight said: ↑

Not that I doubt it but is there a source for that?
Click to expand...

Obama Plans to Put Government Monitors in Newsrooms - Conservative Byte

10brokenpromises · Feb 20, 2014

This is, unfortunately, going to happen. When? Who knows, but it will happen and most likely within the lifetime of the majority of us and almost assuredly in our children's lifetime. Things like this will continue to happen up until 51% of the country has had enough. By that time, however, it may very well be too late. I personally don't subscribe to the fact that it's already too late, although many seem to.

The current incarnation of our government bears little to no resemblence to that envisioned and outlined by the founders. Just look at all the "motivational posters" with quotes from John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the like. The last thing they wanted was a national government that spied on and attempted to control every facet of the citizen's life. Death by a thousand cuts is death nonetheless and this is just one more way that the country we know, the country we love, the country that some of us have fought for and in many cases died for is being systematically disassembled, subverted and destroyed.

Mark my words, people will have to die before this gets fixed and even if it doesn't get fixed because it can't. Whether it be by revolution or rebellion or the police state beginning to kill people for their own reasons, there will be blood and it will be bad.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am not advocating anything.

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First Amendment Assault On Freedom Of The Press

Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

DarkLight Live Long and Prosper - On Hiatus

tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

10brokenpromises Monkey++

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First Amendment Assault On Freedom Of The Press

Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

DarkLight Live Long and Prosper - On Hiatus

tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

10brokenpromises Monkey++

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