noteworthy wrote:
From a selection of letters to the public editor regarding NYT's handling of the domestic surveillance story, here's an interesting if somewhat contrived legal question for you to consider:

I'll take the fact that the reporter went to jail as evidence that the "point" here is moot. But, for the sake of playing devil's advocate, there is a general need to allow people to blow the whistle on things using the press, and of course the press is going to defend that to the point of failing. As the Plame case is not a whistleblowing case the point is weak.

The administration is using the "sources and methods" argument to argue that their activities should not be criticised. Their argument is also weak. Details of how the NSA operates have been a matter of public discourse for decades, and have been detailed in numerous publications. If A'Q wasn't aware that their were being monitored they were made aware when we turned over the embassy bombing intercepts to the Taliban back in '99. The only new information that has been revealed here is that the administration may have been doing it without proper legal authorization. The argument sounds a lot like a contrived excuse to avoid criticism by calling the dialog a national security problem.

On the other hand, front page news about this does serve as a reminder to terrorists not to use the phone. It serves as a marketing campaign. This sucks, but it should have been handled in a different way. The administration shouldn't have subverted Congress. The Congress people, like Rockafeller, who got to look at the program shouldn't have dealt with the issue by squirrling away CYA letters. The buck had every opportunity to stop somewhere else and it didn't. The inevitable result is it became a public issue. If the Republicans had there way and these things could be prevented from being discussed by the general public we would ultimately be a lot less democratic.

RE: How The Times Handled the Surveillance Story