Wednesday, May 17

Legal Fiction

publius

EXHIBIT A
__________

Assuming this ABC News story is accurate, this is precisely the sort of activity that I was describing in my prior post (via Billmon):

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.
That's now how these programs begin, but that's how they end.

My comment:

What good would getting new cell phones do them? The phone numbers already have names attached to them, and the new phone numbers will still have their names attached to them. Now, getting pay-as-you go phone, paying with cash, bein[g] careful about who you call on that phone and probably changing phone numbers every so often (maybe exchanging phone SIMS, like people exchange those customer reward cards), and you're getting somewhere. Public phones, if you could find them for outgoing calls.

Noticed I had a finger fumble and left out the g in being.