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Holder to Tighten Rules for Obtaining Reporters’ Data

July 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The new guidelines, which the official said would take effect almost immediately, would prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from portraying a reporter as a co-conspirator in a criminal leak as a way to get around a legal bar on secret search warrants for reporting materials, as an agent did in a recently revealed search warrant affidavit involving a Fox News reporter.

They would also make it harder — though not impossible — for prosecutors to obtain a journalist’s calling records from telephone companies without giving news organizations advance notice, as the department recently did in obtaining a sweeping set of phone records for reporters with The Associated Press. Notifying news organizations in advance would give them a chance to contest the request in court.

“This is as far as the department can go on its own until Congress passes the media shield legislation,” the Justice Department official said, referring to a bill, which the Obama administration backed amid a furor over leak investigations, that would let judges rather than prosecutors be the ultimate decision-makers about subpoenas for journalists’ phone records, among other matters.

Mr. Holder briefed President Obama about the changes at the White House on Friday morning, officials said. Mr. Holder had held a series of meetings with newsroom leaders and lawyers for media companies in recent weeks.

In May, a 2010 affidavit was unsealed that sought a warrant for e-mails from the Google account of James Rosen of Fox News in which he corresponded with a State Department analyst who was suspected of leaking classified information about North Korea. The disclosure touched off a furor among journalists.

Congress, under the Privacy Protection Act, has generally forbidden search warrants for journalists’ work materials, but a federal statute makes an exception to that rule if the reporter is suspected of committing a crime. In the Fox News request, an F.B.I. agent wrote that Mr. Rosen qualified for that exception because he had violated the Espionage Act by seeking secrets to report, including by flattering the analyst and trying to conceal their communications.

No American journalist has ever been prosecuted for gathering and publishing classified information, so the language raised the prospect that the Obama administration — which has brought an unprecedented number of leak cases — was taking its crackdown to a new level. But the administration insisted that it never intended to charge Mr. Rosen.

The revision to the guidelines would essentially forbid prosecutors to use such a tactic to get around the Privacy Protection Act by imposing additional barriers to obtaining a search warrant for a reporter’s records.

The revised policy, the official said, will say that the exception to the Privacy Protection Act may be invoked only when the member of the news media “is the focus of the criminal investigation for conduct going beyond ordinary news-gathering activities.” Search warrants directed at reporters will not be allowed “if the sole purpose is the investigation of a person other than” the reporter.

In addition, the new guidelines will require the attorney general to sign off on any exception to that prohibition. Previously, a deputy assistant attorney general could do so.

The Justice Department also disclosed in May that it had obtained calling records for more than 20 telephone lines of A.P. offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones, in connection with an investigation into a leak about a foiled bomb plot in Yemen in 2012.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/us/holder-to-tighten-rules-for-obtaining-reporters-data.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

American Public Opposes Action in Syria and North Korea

April 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

While the public does not support direct military action in those two countries right now, a broad 70 percent majority favor the use of remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, to carry out bombing attacks against suspected terrorists in foreign countries.

Interest in the Syrian conflict has waned, with 39 percent of those surveyed saying they are following the violence closely, a 15-percentage-point drop since a CBS News poll conducted in March, before the Boston Marathon bombings.

Sixty-two percent of the public say the United States has no responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria between government forces and antigovernment groups, while just one-quarter disagree. Likewise, 56 percent say North Korea is a threat that can be contained for now without military action, just 15 percent say the situation requires immediate American action and 21 percent say the North is not a threat at all.

Louis Brown, 50, a poll respondent from Springfield Township, Ohio, described Syria and North Korea in a follow-up interview as “political hotbeds.” In his view, “we don’t need additional loss of American lives right now.”

Instead, Mr. Brown said he thought that now was the time to “concentrate on our own backyard,” and he cited the economy as the most important problem facing the country. Mr. Brown said Congress and President Obama should “address the economic situation in the country and stop infighting.”

Many Americans agree with Mr. Brown as the economy and jobs continue to top the list of the most important problems facing the country while foreign policy issues barely register. Four in 10 Americans cite the economy and jobs as the most important problems facing the country, while only 1 percent named foreign policy.

Another poll respondent, Pat Bates, 63, of Parkville, Mo., said she would “hate to see us trot into yet another country and try to fix things when we’re not quite sure what we’re doing.” She went on to say that “we’ve certainly got enough to keep us busy here without sending our young people over somewhere again.”

The nationwide telephone survey was conducted on both land lines and cellphones with 965 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. More results will be released at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday on nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/world/american-public-opposes-action-in-syria-and-north-korea.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Penalty for Chinese Editor Critical of Korea Stance

April 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The editor, Deng Yuwen, told the South Korean paper Chosun Ilbo that the Foreign Ministry had called the Communist Party’s Central Party School in Beijing to complain about his article in the British paper, The Financial Times. It argued that China’s strategic alliance with North Korea was “outdated” and that the wayward ally was no longer useful as a buffer against United States influence.

Mr. Deng also wrote in the article, published on Feb. 27, that the government in Pyongyang could use nuclear weapons against China.

Because of Mr. Deng’s stature — he is deputy editor of Study Times, a weekly journal of the Central Party School, which trains rising officials — the article garnered attention in Washington and Europe. Some took it as a sign that perhaps the new Chinese government led by President Xi Jinping was fed up with North Korea after its third nuclear test in February and that it would modify its support.

Chosun Ilbo quoted Mr. Deng as saying in a telephone interview: “I was relieved of the position because of that article, and I’m suspended indefinitely. Although I’m still being paid by the company, I don’t know when I will be given another position.”

Mr. Deng declined to comment on Monday afternoon.

So far, Chinese government policy makers have shown little sign of paying heed to Mr. Deng’s advice on Pyongyang.

China backed a new round of sanctions imposed by the United Nations in the wake of the third nuclear test. But as is often the case with sanctions, the question became how seriously China would enforce them.

Official Chinese statements routinely say sanctions are not the solution to the North Korean problem.

Three senior United States officials have come to Beijing in the past two weeks to request enforcement of the United Nations sanctions and to ask that China stop doing business with the North Korean Trade Bank.

The American officials left Beijing without announcing any specific agreement with China on enforcement.

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, who met with Mr. Xi, said after two days of talks in March, “The U.S. views the provocative actions of North Korea as very serious, and we will continue to pursue methods available to change the policy perspective in Pyongyang.” He added, “We share a common objective of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, and we will continue to discuss it.”

Shortly after Mr. Lew’s visit, the United States under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, David S. Cohen, and the State Department coordinator for sanctions policy, Daniel Fried, went to Beijing to discuss sanctions enforcement in more detail. They left without any announcements.

Mr. Deng’s article in The Financial Times did not deal with sanctions, but it offered a harsh critique of the Chinese government’s policy of support for North Korea and, in particular, its new leader, Kim Jong-un.

“It is entirely possible that a nuclear-armed North Korea could try to twist China’s arm if Beijing were to fail to meet its demand or if the U.S. were to signal good will toward it,” Mr. Deng wrote.

North Korea, he argued, did not view its relationship with China through the same lens of “friendship sealed in blood” that came from Chinese soldiers’ fighting and dying in the Korean War against the United States. “North Korea does not feel like this at all toward its neighbor,” he wrote.

And in a response to the Chinese policy of urging North Korea to overhaul its economy, Mr. Deng wrote: “Once the door of reform opened, the regime could be overthrown. Why should China maintain relations with a regime and a country that will face failure sooner or later?”

While working at Study Times, Mr. Deng also developed a reputation as a combative commentator for other news publications less bound to official orthodoxy. He wrote an article last year on the failures of President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who both recently retired, saying that during their decade in power they squandered chances to make much-needed changes.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/asia/chinese-suspend-editor-who-questioned-north-korea-alliance.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

South Korea Banks and Broadcasters Hit by Possible Cyberattack

March 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Two television stations KBS and MBC, whose computers were affected, broadcast normally but said that hundreds of their computers were frozen. The cable channel YTN reported a similar problem.

Shinhan Bank reported that its Internet banking servers had been blocked temporarily. Technicians were able to restore operations, the government’s Financial Services Commission said in a statement.

Two other banks, NongHyup and Jeju, reported that operations at some of their branches were paralyzed after computers were “affected with virus and their files erased,” the commission said. A fourth bank, Woori, reported a hacking attack but suffered no damage.

The government, the military and the countries’ nuclear power plants reported no disruptions. But they said they were putting their computer technicians on a higher alert against possible hacking attempts, following North Korea’s threat of unspecified “counteractions” against South Korea for supporting a tightening of United Nations sanctions against the North following its recent nuclear test.

The police did not immediately establish a link between the simultaneous shutdowns on Wednesday and North Korea. But the incidents came five days after North Korea blamed South Korea and the United States for cyberattacks that temporarily shut down Web sites in Pyongyang last week.

North Korea suspected the allies of hacking its Web sites as part of the joint military exercises they have been conducting since early this month. North Korea “will never remain a passive onlooker to the enemies’ cyberattacks that have reached a very grave phase as part of their moves to stifle it,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Friday.

Tensions remain high after North Korea recently issued a torrent of threats, including warnings of a ‘‘pre-emptive nuclear attack’’ at the United States and South Korea, as retaliation against the joint military drills and new U.N. sanctions imposed because of the North’s Feb. 12 nuclear test.

North Korea keeps an army of hackers trained to disrupt South Korea, where government operations and daily life depend greatly on its broadband Internet, South Korean officials said. North Korean hackers have been blamed for crashing the Web sites of government agencies and businesses in recent years, including a server at a state-run bank. Last May, South Korea accused the North of jamming signals, forcing hundreds of commercial flights to switch off their global positioning systems.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/world/asia/south-korea-computer-network-crashes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,