Primary Sources: It’s Hard to Do PR for Warrantless Surveillance

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Bush%20phone.jpgThe White House certainly doesn’t make suing George W. Bush a cakewalk. A lawyer challenging Bush’s warrantless surveillance program darkly recounted on Salon the extreme lengths the government went to to ensure watertight secrecy in the case.

The Salon article is well worth reading, as this NSA oddity I unearthed recently while fact-checking.

The National Security Agency, apparently feeling the heat from a citizenry up in arms over their wiretapping program, released a factsheet in 2006 to clear some things up with the American public. The actual title:

“The NSA Program to Detect and Prevent Terrorist Attacks: Myth v Reality.”

Some examples of those myths:

Myth:

“The NSA program is illegal.”

Reality:

“It has long been recognized that the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless surveillance to gather foreign intelligence even in peacetime.”

Myth:

“The NSA program is a domestic eavesdropping program used to spy on innocent Americans.”

Reality:

“The NSA program is narrowly focused, aimed only at international calls and targeted at al Qaeda and related groups. Safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of ordinary Americans.”

And so on.

Now that Congress has handed the big telecoms a free pass for enabling government eavesdropping, can they at least throw us a safeguard to protect ordinary Americans?

Photo courtesy of whitehouse.gov.

—Nichole Wong

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate