Marisa Taylor is an investigative reporter and Jonathan Landay is a national security and intelligence reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, based in Washington, DC.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is turning down requests from individuals who want to find out whether the agency is holding records of their telephone communications. Simply answering yes or no, the NSA argues, is classified information that would jeopardize the effectiveness of its data-collection program. That means that innocent people whose communications data may be held by the agency have no way of even finding out. The NSA's refusal to provide that information is based on a legal precedent called a "Glomar denial," which claims that simply acknowledging the existence or …show more content…
The defendant, Jamshid Muhtorov, was accused in 2012 of providing material support to an Uzbek terrorist group. The American Civil Liberties Union is now seeking to have the evidence thrown out as part of its challenge to the constitutionality of the NSA's programs.
Journalists Were Monitored
During the George W. Bush administration, the Justice Department's inspector general uncovered widespread abuses in FBI programs that relied on administrative or emergency orders to obtain telephone records. As a result of the scrutiny, the FBI disclosed in 2008 that it had improperly collected the phone records of Washington Post and New York Times reporters four years earlier. It's unknown whether other journalists have been monitored improperly.
Last month, the FBI refused to rule out whether it had information about several McClatchy journalists, although it's likely that the FBI had records at some point related to one of the reporters. In 2007, the FBI opened a leak investigation to determine the sources for the reporter's stories on a public corruption
The National Security Agency (NSA) is turning down requests from individuals who want to find out whether the agency is holding records of their telephone communications. Simply answering yes or no, the NSA argues, is classified information that would jeopardize the effectiveness of its data-collection program. That means that innocent people whose communications data may be held by the agency have no way of even finding out. The NSA's refusal to provide that information is based on a legal precedent called a "Glomar denial," which claims that simply acknowledging the existence or …show more content…
The defendant, Jamshid Muhtorov, was accused in 2012 of providing material support to an Uzbek terrorist group. The American Civil Liberties Union is now seeking to have the evidence thrown out as part of its challenge to the constitutionality of the NSA's programs.
Journalists Were Monitored
During the George W. Bush administration, the Justice Department's inspector general uncovered widespread abuses in FBI programs that relied on administrative or emergency orders to obtain telephone records. As a result of the scrutiny, the FBI disclosed in 2008 that it had improperly collected the phone records of Washington Post and New York Times reporters four years earlier. It's unknown whether other journalists have been monitored improperly.
Last month, the FBI refused to rule out whether it had information about several McClatchy journalists, although it's likely that the FBI had records at some point related to one of the reporters. In 2007, the FBI opened a leak investigation to determine the sources for the reporter's stories on a public corruption