{"id":62948,"date":"2013-08-26T19:20:06","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T18:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/former-salt-lake-city-mayor-wants-to-sue-nsa-over-2002-olympics-surveillance\/62948\/"},"modified":"2013-08-26T21:08:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T20:08:24","slug":"former-salt-lake-city-mayor-wants-to-sue-nsa-over-2002-olympics-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/former-salt-lake-city-mayor-wants-to-sue-nsa-over-2002-olympics-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Former-Salt Lake City mayor wants to sue NSA over 2002 Olympics surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Rocky Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah and last year\u2019s Justice Party nominee for president, says he plans to sue the United States government over the illegal collection of private emails ahead of the 2002 Olympics.<\/p>\n

Anderson served as mayor of Salt Lake City for eight years and
\nplayed a leading role in hosting the 2002 Winter Olympics Games
\nthere. Only last week, though, did he learn that the US National
\nSecurity Agency utilized equipment to intercept and monitor all
\nemail and text communications in the area for several months
\nbefore the event.<\/p>\n

The revelation, published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal,
\n\u201cfed into the Bush administration’s program of warrantless
\nwiretapping<\/i>,\u201d the paper reported, and \u201ccircumvented the
\nsurveillance court on the authority of the president’s power as
\ncommander in chief<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now just learning of what happened a decade down the road,
\nAnderson says he\u2019s looking to sue.<\/p>\n

“When we brought the Olympics to this city, nobody agreed that
\nwe would trade off our fundamental civil rights for the
\ngovernment to come in and spy on us<\/i>,” Anderson told the Salt
\nLake Tribune.<\/p>\n

“We have to stand up<\/i>,\u201d he added to KUTV News. “All of
\nSalt Lake City should be out in the streets outraged<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

According to the former mayor, he attended a number of
\nclosed-door security meetings ahead of the festivities.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecurity was number one to me<\/i>,\u201d he told the network.<\/p>\n

Never once, however, was he informed that specialized machines
\nwould be collecting the contents of emails sent in and out of his
\ncity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it had, I would have raised utter holy hell<\/i>,\u201d he told
\nthe Tribune. \u201cFor them to have done this to the people in Salt
\nLake City in every single instance was a federal felony under the
\nForeign Intelligence Surveillance Act<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

The Journal reported last week that the NSA arranged for that
\nsweep of communications with telecom provider Qwest
\nCommunications and it lasted for no longer than six months. Other
\nelected officials seem largely split on the issue for now,
\nthough, so Anderson may need to work towards building support
\nbefore launching a federal lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Olympics had been targeted by terrorist in the past and
\nso I cut them a little slack in that regard<\/i>,\u201d Governor Gary
\nHerbert responded during a recent press conference. Former Sen.
\nBob Bennett told the Tribune, “If they were not intercepting
\ntext messages then they were not doing their jobs at the center
\nof world attention<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

Others, like then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, also say they were never
\nkept in the know.<\/p>\n

“How do people feel about our federal government illegally,
\nwith no notice whatsoever, tapping into communications that were
\nabsolutely privileged under the law: reporters and their sources;
\nphysicians and psychiatrists with their patients; lawyers with
\ntheir clients. All of that, the government thinks, it can capture
\nbecause we are the host city of the Olympics<\/i>?” Anderson asked
\nthe Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I can find the representation, I will sue everybody who
\nhad anything to do with this<\/i>,\u201d he added to KUTV.<\/p>\n

Before becoming mayor of Salt Lake City in January 2000, Anderson
\npracticed law for more than two decades and was editor-in-chief
\nof the Voir Dire<\/i> legal journal. He unsuccessfully ran for
\npresident of the US during last year\u2019s election and garnered a
\ntotal of 43,011 votes, or around 0.03 percent of the national
\npopular vote.<\/p>\n

Republished from: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rocky Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah and last year\u2019s Justice Party nominee for president, says he plans to sue the United States government over the illegal collection of private emails ahead of the 2002 Olympics. Anderson served as mayor of Salt Lake City for eight years and played a leading role […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-62948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}