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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: The NSA's relationship with Reuters and AP Sometimes Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses produce unexpected results. Such is the case in a recent response from the secretive United States government’s National Security Agency (NSA) -- the agency that is now in the public limelight for listening to U.S. citizen’s telephone conversations without legal authorization or oversight. In a letter dated February 2, 2006 and signed by its Director of Policy, the NSA revealed that it has contracts with at least two of the major mainstream press wire services, Reuters and Associated Press (AP), and that the information that it had received from these wire services could not be released to the public. Here in part is what the letter said: “Information provided to NSA by Reuters and AP is protected against disclosure pursuant to 5 U.S.C. Section 552(b)(4). The NSA contract with these companies precludes our release of this information. Violation of these contracts could prevent the government from obtaining similar information in the future.” The way the NSA response is written makes it seem like there is something major to hide, but this may not be the case. Reuters and many other “mainstream” press agencies have contracts with not only the NSA, but with other U.S. government entities as well -- to supply news to these agencies as if they were newspapers. This is “business as usual” and more than likely occurs with other governments too. But it is also true that in a technical sense, Reuters and AP journalists work for these U.S. government agencies, although the funds from that work only represent an infinitely miniscule part of their salaries. And it is also a little strange that if Reuters and AP are only supplying the NSA with the same news that it is supplying the rest of us through our news media outlets – why can’t this information – apparently “old news” in this case – be released? Since this happens all the time and does not represent a very large chunk of these journalists' income, it seems to be no big deal. But this response from the NSA is certainly intriguing.
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