ABC reports that it's been warned that its reporters' phones are likely being tapped:
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources."It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
Do I need to say anything about the implications this has for a free press? No, I thought not.
Update: The FBI admits it's doing this.
Posted by Linkmeister at May 15, 2006 01:07 PM | TrackBackLooks like Arlen Specter sold out and they're on the way to making warrantless snooping legal and virtually impossible to challenge in court. Glenn Greenwald has a post on it today. Chilling.
Posted by: Kate at May 16, 2006 11:21 AMSpecter is/has been the Pa. equivalent of "all hat no cattle" since he was seriously challenged in his primary election by a right-wing loony in 2004. There aren't a whole lot of Senators still around who have a high regard for the country or its Constitution.
Posted by: Linkmeister at May 16, 2006 12:17 PMAnd they said Nazi-ism could never happen here!
Welcome to (as we in the blue states have been trying to tell the ignorami in the red states for years!) the Most Evil Dictatorship In The World.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at May 17, 2006 05:22 PMI dunno. Isn't competence required to qualify for that title? I mean, Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler rebuilt the German economy after Weimar...
Posted by: Linkmeister at May 17, 2006 05:29 PM