One of ABC News' reporters says that he's been warned that call records, possibly even the ones that the major telecom companies are now routinely turning over to the NSA, are being used to track down the sources for reporters at several major news services. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html I realize many people might disagree with me, but from my point of view, the use of such heavy-handed counterintelligence tactics against the press is a substantial threat to freedom in this country. John Gilmore long ago warned us that once we'd built the total surveillance state, all that would be needed to build a new totalitarianism would be a change of attitude on the part of the governors. Well, we've built CALEA into everything, and we've built computerized systems for siphoning all call data in existence, and now we have an administration with, to say the least, a serious change in attitude about the law and morality. We have crossed a rubicon. It can be argued by some who do not agree with me that the reporters in question are somehow "helping the terrorists" by revealing things like the fact that the US Government has SigInt operations, but in fact anyone who isn't an idiot already knows we have SigInt operations. What the reporters have done -- heroically, I might add -- is reveal that the government has far exceeded the bounds of legality in performing such operations, even when legal methods existed to gain the same information. Some may call said reporters traitors, but it has become increasingly clear to me that the real traitors are those who do not respect the principles this country was founded on and who would sell our hard won freedom and mortgage the rule of law, not for security but for political gain. The surveillance against reporters is being used not to save lives but to save the administration political embarrassment, and there will be no end to the political uses of surveyance if it is not stopped now. I implore everyone who agrees with me not to be silent. If you do not call your representatives to complain about this, it will eventually be too late to complain. Tell them you want hearings with teeth, tell them that you want a special prosecutor, tell them that you do not want to see them rubber stamp universal surveillance with legal fig leaves, and that you will work to see someone else elected, no matter how much you like them otherwise, if they refuse to do anything about this issue. Tell your friends and family to make those calls as well. I do not know that screaming loudly about this will work, but I know what silence will bring. Perry --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]