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DHS Subpoenas Two Journalists, leaked information

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
For some reason this reminds me of the conversation with schnurrbart, about leaked information.

He has the right to express his opinion but the bottom line is that it is all he has. Where is the phone con, the memo, the anonymous insider? In other words, where is the proof? Right now all I see are facts about how BRAC works and NO, NADA, ZILCH in the way of proof from him.
http://ranchers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41114&start=0


Updated December 31, 2009

DHS Subpoenas Two Journalists Who Published Leaked Airline Security Changes

By Judith Miller

- FOXNews.com

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Transportation Security Administration, sent federal agents to the homes of two journalists and served them with subpoenas on Tuesday night to try to identify the source of a leak about aviation security changes imposed after the failed attempt on Christmas Day to blow up Northwest Flight 253.



The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Transportation Security Administration, sent federal agents to the homes of two journalists and served them with subpoenas on Tuesday night to try to identify the source of a leak about aviation security changes imposed after the failed attempt on Christmas Day to blow up Northwest Flight 253.

In separate visits, the DHS employees told Chris Elliott and Steve Frischling that their computers and all e-mail correspondence related to the leak of the security directive were being subpoenaed as part of an investigation into who leaked the document to them, which both journalists published on their Web sites.

The directive, issued within hours after 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to detonate explosives that had been sewn into his underwear, restricted passenger movement and activities on all international flights. After being published by Elliott and Frischling, the restrictions were widely ridiculed by travel experts, bloggers, and news organizations, which deeply embarrassed the TSA and the homeland security agency, already under pressure for their missteps in the foiled attack.

The TSA backtracked almost immediately on the restrictions -- which had ordered airlines, among other things, not to permit passengers to go to the bathroom an hour before arrival on all international flights and to prevent them from holding pillows, blankets and personal possessions on their laps. A TSA spokesman said that the added security precautions were discretionary.

Elliott, the blogger who first published Security Directive SD-1544-09-06 and writes a travel column for The Washington Post, said he was surprised and somewhat intimidated by the TSA visit and being served with the subpoena. In his blog, Elliott wrote that he had "just put the kids in the bathtub when Special Agent Robert Flaherty knocked on my front door with a subpoena. He was very polite, and used "sir" a lot, and he said he just wanted a name: Who sent me the security directive?"
related links

*

CIA Prepared Report on Nigerian Terror Suspect Before Attempted Attack, Sources Say

Elliott said in an interview that he had declined to tell Flaherty the identity of his source or turn over his computer. He said he has referred further inquiries about his stance to Mark Holsher, an attorney, who did not return calls for comment.

Frischling, who runs a travel Web site called "Flying with Fish" and published the directive minutes after Elliott, said in an interview today that he had given his computer to the two federal agents who came to his house on Tuesday night. Frischling said he complied with their request after they asserted that he was "not a journalist" and handed him a subpoena, telling him he had now been "served." They also said they would return the next morning to confiscate his computer and other communications equipment if he failed to cooperate.

Frischling said his computer was returned this morning with several corrupted sectors and that he was running software to repair it. He said he had given the agents his computer because the directive had been sent to him anonymously, that he had deleted the original e-mails, and that it had been sent to him by someone who had undoubtedly used a phony e-mail name and address.

Francis DiScala Jr., Fischling's attorney, criticized the DHS for using "heavy-handed tactics" and "intimidating" his client. "Federal agents came and confiscated the tools of his trade at night in front of his three children," DiScala said. "When federal agents show up at your door with badges, their very presence is intimidating. The weight of the government is on you and just you. Steve was not motivated by generosity in giving up his personal computer, which he uses to earn a living."

Frischling said that the subpoena he received Tuesday, which was first reported by the Daily Kos, was almost identical to that posted by Elliott on his Web site. That subpoena, issued by the administrator of the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, orders him to "produce and permit inspection and copying of the records" related to the inquiry to Special Agent Flaherty "no later than COB (close of business) December 31, 2009, in furtherance of an official investigation." The subpoenas order the recipients to produce "all documents, e-mails, and/or faxsimile transmissions in your control possession or control" regarding the "receipt of TSA Security Directive 1544-09, dated December 25, 2009."

The subpoena also warns that failure to comply makes the recipient "subject to fines" and "imprisonment for not more than one year," or "both."

Flaherty, who is based in a TSA office in Orlando, Florida, did not return e-mails asking him for comment on his investigation, or why he and other agents went to the journalists' homes at night.

Spokesmen for the Department of Homeland Security declined comment on the inquiry and subpoenas. The TSA, which never posted its regulations which are set to expire after Dec. 30, confirmed the existence of a leak investigation. Its statement asserted that security directives were "not for public disclosure" and that the TSA's Office of Inspections was "currently investigating how the recent SDs were acquired and published by parties who should not have been privy to this information."

Both the TSA and its parent Department of Homeland Security have been heavily criticized not only for the temporary security restrictions but for their handling of the terrorist incident more broadly. The transportation agency has been lambasted, for instance, for having allowed Abdulmutallab to board the Detroit-bound flight that originated in Nigeria with virtually no luggage and having bought a round-trip ticket in cash. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has also faced heat for having initially asserted in talk shows Sunday that the aviation security system worked well because the attack was foiled and other planes in the air were informed of the incident soon after the foiled attack took place.

Stung by the criticism, Napolitano reversed course on Monday, saying her remarks had been taken out of context, and that the incident had raised troubling security concerns. On Tuesday, three days after the incident, President Obama emerged from his vacation seclusion in Hawaii to deliver a broadside attack on the handling of the incident, saying it reflected a "systemic failure" that he considered "totally unacceptable." He has ordered a review of the incident, which he called a "catastrophe." A preliminary copy of that review is supposed to be delivered to him Thursday.

That the TSA would spend time and resources pursuing journalists about the origins of the leak of its security directive rather than focusing on finding how Abdulmutallab was able to board the plane despite intelligence indicating he was a potential security risk says much about the agency's priorities.

Elliott said he did not regret having published the directive, since he was a "consumer advocate trying to help the flying public." The TSA's security restrictions following the failed attack, he said, were "poorly thought through and didn't match up with what the TSA was telling the airlines." No one knew what was going on, he said "because the TSA did not respond" to his questions. He published it, he added, because the document did not state that it was secret or classified. "And that's what led to the knock on my door."

Lucy Dalglish, who heads the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a non-profit group which defends reporters and news organizations fighting for freedom of expression, said that the subpoenas "border on the ridiculous."

"Certainly TSA is enraged that it's order not to release this information was violated. Yet, there's nothing national security-related in the directive posted by Chris Elliott," she said.

She said it pertains more to what travelers already know: "Carry-on luggage is being searched and folks are being frisked at the gate."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/31/dhs-subpoenas-journalists-published-leaked-airline-security-changes/
 

Steve

Well-known member
they asserted that he was "not a journalist" and handed him a subpoena, telling him he had now been "served." They also said they would return the next morning to confiscate his computer and other communications equipment if he failed to cooperate.

hmmm...

1 a : a person engaged in journalism; especially : a writer or editorfor a news medium b : a writer who aims at a mass audience

: a record of experiences, ideas, or reflections



seems the definitions of a journalist are broad and could include just about everyone who has a website... or posts on one...
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
December 31, 2009 - by Annie Jacobsen
Page 1 of 2 Next ->

At 7:00 p.m. on December 29, armed TSA agents banged on the door of photojournalist and KLM Airlines blogger Steven Frischling’s Connecticut home. “They threatened me with a criminal search warrant and suggested they’d call up my clients and say I was a security risk if I didn’t turn over my computer to them. They said ‘we could make this difficult for you,’” Frischling told me in a telephone interview the following afternoon. By then, TSA had removed Frischling’s computer from his home, made a copy of his hard drive, and returned the computer to him.

The federal agents, dispatched form the Transportation Security Administration’s Office of Inspection, had wanted Frischling, a respected travel journalist, to name names. They wanted Frischling to tell them who had given him “TSA Security Directive SD-1544-09-06,” which Frischling and another blogger had posted online three days earlier.

“It was a double-edged sword for me because I did not know who sent me the document. And it was absurd because that document had been seen by approximately 10,000 airline personnel around the world, including personnel in Islamabad, Riyadh, and Nigeria, so the idea that it was somehow in their control” was false, Frischling said.

Frischling explained that he posted the document because he wanted people to be able to read it and form their own opinions and ideas about it. The document was not marked “classified,” and it had already apparently been posted on some airline websites. The email had been sent to him anonymously from someone with a gmail address. TSA believed it was one of their own and wanted to know who, exactly.

For Frischling, thinking beyond the immediate safety of his three children — alone with him in the house — was difficult. His wife works at night and was already gone.

“I stood talking to the agents with my three-year-old in my arms,” Frischling told me.

While the agents were intimidating him, he feared if he were to be arrested then his children would be left without a parent present. He telephoned an attorney, who suggested he cooperate with TSA since there was no federal shield law to protect him in matters deemed national security threats. Besides, the agents “made it clear that if I said ‘no’ to letting them have my hard drive, they were going to come back with a search warrant,” Frischling explained.

But why come at Frischling with such heavy-handed tactics? In a statement, TSA later said that security directives “are not for public disclosure” — which hardly sounds like it’s against federal law per se. (If it were, it’s almost certain the TSA would have said so in its statement.) But that didn’t help Frischling in the heat of the moment.

So, why then?

In covering the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 for Pajamas Media, and also for a column I write at LATimes.com, I have spoken with five different FBI and TSA agents — none of whom are presently authorized to make statements about Northwest Flight 253 on the record. That job has been relegated to the Department of Justice, whose spokesman, Dean Boyd, had only this to say to me:

Because this is an ongoing criminal investigation, we are not at liberty to provide you with any comment beyond the public allegations that are contained in the criminal complaint.

But I did find my answer — in a pre-recorded message at the FBI’s Detroit Metro Bureau to which press are referred. The message there states that anyone seeking information about “the Christmas Day event at Detroit metro airport” should call the Department of Justice in Washington.

Wait. A Christmas Day “event”?

The FBI makes the attack against Northwest Flight 253 sound more like a shopping sale or a rock concert than the terror strike that it was. Trying to kill 298 airline passengers, destroy an airplane, and crash it into the suburbs of Detroit is now called an “event”? Could the jackbooted TSA visit to blogger Steven Frischling’s Connecticut home be just another trickle-down result of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s insistence that terrorist attacks be referred to as “man-caused disasters”?

You see, in the TSA directive which Frischling’s posted online, the TSA was caught calling a spade a spade:

INFORMATION: On December 25, 2009, a terrorist attack was attempted against a flight traveling to the United States.

Yup, “terrorist attack.” In plain old English, spelled out. When out of public earshot, apparently the TSA is allowed to call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack by name. But when the public is listening, it’s to be referred to as a Christmas Day event.

“We are a free society, knowledge is power, and informing the masses allows for public conversation and collective understanding,” Frischling wrote on his blog. “You can agree or disagree, but you need information to know if you want to agree or disagree. My goal is to inform and help people better understand what is happening, as well as allow them to form their own opinions.”

Prescient words. Another goal for journalists is to inform the people that a terrorist attack is not a “Christmas Day event.”
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday dropped its subpoenas it had issued to two Internet writers in its effort to find the leaker of an airline security directive.

The subpoenas were criticized by a leading journalism organization.

The TSA said the investigation is "nearing a successful conclusion and the subpoenas are no longer in effect."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AIRLINER_ATTACK_TSA_SUBPOENAS?SITE=MABED&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
 
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