The right not to know (NY Times discloses more sensitive info, helping terrorism!)

The Washington Times ^ | June 24, 2006 | MASTHEAD EDITORIAL

[neverdem]

Once more the spoiler. Despite the earnest persuasion of the White House to preserve a useful weapon in the war against the terrorists, the New York Times has revealed the workings of a covert surveillance program, indisputably within the law, to use administrative subpoenas to examine, through a Belgian financial consortium known by the acronym SWIFT, the financing of international terrorism. Once the story was out, the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal covered it as well. Now the program is damaged, perhaps severely so, and the financing of terror is harder to track. This is another unnecessary leak, six months after the New York Times revealed a secret National Security Agency terrorist surveillance program.

In its earlier scoop, the New York Times could reasonably argue legal uncertainty. Not this time. The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Miller in 1976 that no right to privacy attaches to the type of third-party financial-transaction information SWIFT has provided to the Treasury Department. The Right to Financial Privacy Act, enacted by Congress in 1978 in the wake of United States v. Miller, allows just the administrative subpoenas Treasury has been using. So does the Patriot Act. The SWIFT transactions that Treasury has been examining are international in nature. The searches are specifically targeted at suspected or known terrorists, a "sharp harpoon aimed at the heart of terrorist activity," as Treasury Secretary John Snow puts it. The claim that the rights of American citizens are infringed is irrational, unduly partisan, or both.

The program clearly works. Treasury pointed immediately to the capture of the terrorist known as "Hambali." Hambali, or Riduan Isamuddin, masterminded the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 innocent men and women. He has been in U.S. custody since his arrest in 2003 in Thailand, and the SWIFT...

[AmeriBrit]

The terrorists committed an 'Act of War' on 9/11 when they attacked us.

[Young Scholar]

I meant that no one has any idea how it is actually properly applied. Something like this (even were it illegal) does not even come close.

[AmeriBrit]

Congress declare war by joint resolution.

Considered in the Senate, 09/12/01

Passed in the Senate, 09/12/01

Considered in the House, 09/13/01

Passed in the House, 09/13/01

Presented to the President , 09/13/01

Became Public Law, 09/18/01

[EDINVA]

RICO is set up to nab those who commit seemingly independent crimes which are connected by an overarching criminal goal.

So, one could say, were the publication of these articles a criminal act, that the publication, first of the NSA surveillance program, and then the publication of the SWIFT program, with interspersed articles on Abu Grahb, or Haditha, would conspire to achieve the overarching goal of undermining the US WOT effort.

You may recall that RICO was used against Operation Rescue, whose overarching goal was shutting down those facilities that performed abortions. The various protests at abortion clinics around the country, as part of the Operation Rescue program, were brought forward by the pro-abortion groups under RICO as part of an overarching criminal enterprise.

[jess35]

Section 793(e) of Title 18, U.S. Code

If you have unauthorized possession of classified information and you pass it on to others not entitled to receive it you are in violation of federal law.

[AmeriBrit]

We're at war?
And this would not count as "aiding and abetting the enemy" the way revealing specific spying activities might.

---

Then pray tell 'O Learned One,' just exactly what would you call it?

A Hiccup?

[neverdem]

And we're not in a time of war.

Maybe you think so, but I beg to differ. Al Qaeda issued a fatwa against the United States. Congress passed a resolution equivalent to a declaration of war.

I noticed that NY State appears to be your home. I didn't need television to see that smoke was coming from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. This was a second attempt on the World Trade Center. I hope your scholarship is not supposed to include current events, especially those involving terrorism.

[GVnana]

I didn't elect the New York Times to make these decisions for me and I don't see that they have the right to decide national security issues.

[D-fendr]

It's legal. It (was) secret. It helps stop people trying to enslave and kill us. Telling them our tactics helps them win.

The NYT knew it was legal and secret and effective against our enemy. They told anyway. Helping your enemy by informing them of your tactics against them aids them and their cause.

This isn't rocket science.

[Mo1]

The survival and safety of all of us hang in the balance

WOW ... The WT sure smacked the Times upside their heads

[xzins]

This is an extraordinary commandeering of public policy from elected officials and the government they administer, committed ostensibly in the name of "the public interest" but more likely stemming from hostility to government as administered by George W. Bush. There is no other persuasive explanation.

Yes there is.

They are on the SIDE of the terrorists. Not to say they don't hate GW Bush, because they probably do.

But, the logical answer to all of their behavior....the Occam's razor that most easily explains it all...is that they are supporters of the terrorists.

[Mo1]

And we're not in a time of war.

What planet do you live on?

[Diogenesis]

Because the NYTimes, always a traitor to America, has NEVER
been prosecuted for treason, it will continue.

The US AG is responsible for doing NOTHING again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana

[rvoitier]

1. There were no alleged abuses of the SWIFT program. The Times just up-and-decided to give the terrorists a freebie because their hatred for Bush overrode their desire to help America win the WOT.

2. The Times say it's a secret program. Not so. Many European bank executives knew of the program, obviously the SWIFT execs did, Dems & Rep of authorized congressional committees from both houses knew.

3. The Times gave the impression the U.S. rifles through, at will, databases for consitutionally protected data. The data is not constitutionally protected. More importantly, there are safeguards to view the data. Here is my brief recollection of the safeguards from the head of the U.S. SWIFT program from Brit Hume's Special Report:
A request is made to SWIFT for info on Abu Al-whatever along with valid (determined by SWIFT) reason/evidence for the search. The request is reviewed for approval. IF approved, the focused search is done. In realtime, SWIFT authorities monitor the 'viewing' and can shut it down if the 'view' goes outside the prescribed criteria.

Thanks NYT. You really saved the planet from a great injustice...not.

[mo]

"... the code. It requires cause and notification to the customer"....do these laws and regulations apply to non-citizens? IMHO, a non-citizen (alien) should not expect Constitutional protection.

[Terabitten]

And we're not in a time of war.

Tell that to the wives, parents, and children of my fourteen friends who aren't coming home from Iraq.

[CGVet58]

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." -
Marcus Cicero

The above is also the best description of the ACLU.

Why, you may ask, do I point this rather obvious fact out to you? Because I suspect your career goals have you headed for a seat in that organization.

[samtheman]

The only way to successfully handle this issue, in my opinion, is for the White House and the national Republican party to somehow fold this into the big picture of the war on terrorism, and the danger of having liberals in charge of anything in this country, and though of course because of a free press we can't shut down the Slimes (too bad) we can at least keep the Slime-bots out of positions of power in this country. Something like that. Somehow taking the extreme indignation that all patriotic Americans feel reading about the treason of the leftist media and channelling it into the electorial defeat of the party of Treason: the rats.

[mware]

A Heads-up. Watch Fox News Sunday. Peter King broke the story to WABC radio first but (Religion On The Line,) that he will call on the Attorney General to institute a criminal prosecution of the New York Times, under the Espionage Act and the Comint Act.