Government Secrets

Once again, this administrations is hiding the things it does, all in the name of the "war on terra". I, for one, am getting heartily sick of hearing about Bush avoiding the law, flouting the rules, and redefining the role of presidential power to allow him to be king. The latest sure looks to me like he's covering his ass over the illegal wiretapping and phone logging -- simply don't allow anyone to talk about it:

President Bush has granted his intelligence czar the authority to exempt publicly traded companies from reporting requirements — in the name of national security. [from APR]

DAWN KOPECKI: The President just delegated authority to John Negroponte that allows him to exempt any publicly traded corporation that is working on national defense issues or national security issues from the reporting and accounting requirements under the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act. It's basically the rules and regulations that require companies to keep accurate records, acurate books, accurate accounting . . . and then disclose those projects and that information to investors.

RYSSDAL: The memo that the President signed was dated May 5. Talk to me about the timing of this for a second.

KOPECKI: Well, May 5 is the day that Porter Goss stepped down from the CIA. It's also six days before USA Today published its story that three major telephone companies had turned over massive amounts of customer calling records to the federal government, that the NSA was using to data-mine and look for patterns and, basically, spy on.

RYSSDAL: Now, if you play this out, conceivably what this rule now means is that AT&T and Bell South and Verizon, who have these government contracts — it's been reported in the papers — have these government contracts to sell customer data to the government, they may never have to report that income or how the finances of that program worked.

Yeah. I feel safer. Lots safer. What about you?