Comments on: SWIFT Program Revelations: Keller Responds (Again)

By: mtl

mtl — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 19:51:46 +0000

“Our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, take great care not to divulge operational intelligence in their news reports, knowing that in this wired age it could be seen and used by insurgents.”

Peter-this one was for you and Geraldo. By taking ‘great care’, I infer it to mean-we didn’t send Geraldo-fox did. I’d swap Tucker Carlson and Geraldo for Cynthia McKinney and HRC in a heartbeat.

“They may begin with a tip from a source who has a grievance or a guilty conscience, but those tips are just the beginning of long, painstaking work.”

I think it was a ‘greivance’ in this matter. Not against the program, but the WH itself. 00 and 04 have been maddening to Dems, far more so than 9/11.

“There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public’s interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information.”

We don’t know what we are doing, but if something we report on gets damaged, there is always an intangible gain. (I thought that was the problem with Iraq, metric of deaths versus intangible good).

The rest of the article basicly says-

‘We have policed ourselves and are still good cops. That we have to write this in our defense, unlike 90% of the other times we divulge does not mean that we have crossed any new boundary, despite the public outcry and the imminent demonstration that the program was effective- somewhere there is a silver lining.’

By: Blue Crab Boulevard

Blue Crab Boulevard — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 18:19:48 +0000

Althouse Versus The Times Two

Ann Althouse's smoke detectors are going off over the op-ed appearing in today's New York Times describing how the Times Two editors decide to publish secrets. Baquet and Keller's explanation rings hollow.
The two editors — …

By: peter

peter — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 15:19:57 +0000

Well, you can’t determine whether the program violates the law until a) the facts are known and b) a court reaches a judgment. Until then, all you have are assertions, and there are many people besides Keller who are making assertions that the program could be beyond the law.

The Times article refers to a “leading expert on banking privacy,” “Treasury and Justice Department lawyers,” and “SWIFT executives ” who expressed concerns about the program. It also referred to others who support the program. It is certainly an open question whether the program is within the scope of current law. If it is: fine. If not, then let’s discuss changing the law. I don’t see the justification for assuming that it must be OK and hence hidden from public view.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:17:53 +0000

Put another way: the U.S. Government has millions of employees; it’s not going to be hard to find one to back up these assertions – but I want a fact, not an assertion…

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:16:36 +0000

Well, peter, with all due respect, we only have Keller’s assertion that there are ‘questions about its legal basis and the issue of oversight’. The vast, vast majority of commenters have admitted that the program is perfectly legal, and successful. Give me an example of a law that the program may have broken…

By: peter

peter — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:12:19 +0000

Se we have a situation where the government is engaged in a program of unprecedented scope, where there are “questions about its legal basis and the issues of oversight.”

If the Times doesn’t run the story, they are not reporting the news. If they do run it, it is because they want to “paint an administration that tramples on privacy and throws away the Constitution.”

What are they supposed to do in this situation?