[Peach]

The NYT editors originally said said they had to go public because it's the public's right to know about such a secret program. They have since changed that excuse to the fact that there is no harm in their reporting on this program because everyone knew about it anyway. So which one is it?

Civil rights groups certainly didn't know about it. But they do now and are threatening to sue the financial institutions involved in the EU.

Co-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Kean said that very few people even in the banking world know about SWIFT and how it works, and almost no one would have had any idea that the US was able to get access to this data.

Kean further said that: "The terrorists didn't know the financial transactions went through this one group. Treasury told me, this was a method of financial tracking that people didn't understand, that nobody knew this was how things were done. Top-notch people in the US didn't even know

[MitchCumstein]

I find it incredibly ironic that the NYT wraps itself in the First Amendment, the Pentagon Papers case and the "public's right to know" as an inpenatrable sheild against responsibility for knowingly endangering lives of soldiers fighting to protect those institutions. I wonder what they will say when a group of millitary personel that may be sent to Iraq in the future file a class action lawsuit against them for reckless endangerment.