Pretty new "guidelines" that don't address the problems they were supposed to address
by digby
In this post, Marcy Wheeler recaps her previous work on the DOJs shiny new "guidelines" with respect to the targeting of journalists and then brings us up to speed on the latest:
[L]ast year, after it got caught obtaining the call records of some Pulitzer Prize winners, DOJ pretended to roll out new protections for journalists.
Charlie Savage reports that DOJ has just rolled out the final version of those great new protections.
Here’s the last paragraph of his report on the “new guidelines.”
The rules cover grand jury subpoenas used in criminal investigations. They exempt wiretap and search warrants obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and “national security letters,” a kind of administrative subpoena used to obtain records about communications in terrorism and counterespionage investigations.
Which makes these “new guidelines” worth approximately shit in any leak — that is, counterintelligence — investigation.
This is the stuff that drives you crazy. They know they've gone too far and have to respond. But they simply create some razzled dazzle "reform" that addresses a different issue and pretend that they've done something. I'm sure there were abuses of their capabilities with respect to criminal cases. And it's good if they've agreed to rein that in in some small way. But that's not what the current controversy is about and they know it.
This is why I'm so cynical about 'reforms." It's probably the best we can do, but it won't solve our problem. We have created a bunch of powerful institutions that are not going to allow a little thing like the constitution to interfere with what they see as their mission. They are crusaders and bureaucrats --- a lethal combination. Until we reevaluate our role in the world in a holistic way I'm not sure I see any way to do much more that mitigate the worst of it from time to time and set them back on their heels a little bit.
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