Domestic spying continues

Domestic spying quietly goes on

NSA faces new limits, but surveillance thrives

By Bradley Olson |Sun reporter

July 7, 2008

With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy.

These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity.

The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and other communications, not for selective information, but in search of suspicious patterns.

Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency.

"There's virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn't in some way involved in monitoring or surveillance," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at The George Washington University. "We're operating in a brave new world."

Federal rules limit the ways some of the information can be used and shared among government agencies. Pending changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act contain numerous provisions set up to safeguard the privacy of Americans. But there are few similar protections with other types of surveillance.

Under the FISA proposal, for example, a CIA transcript or NSA summary of an innocent social conversation between a foreign terrorist and his relative in the United States would not be shared with other intelligence analysts. Even if the conversation was later found to have investigative merit, the U.S. relative's name and other identifying information would either be redacted or revealed only under limited circumstances to select agencies.

The Bush administration argues that the privacy and civil liberties protections in place for surveillance not covered by the FISA rules are "unprecedented." In addition to the data-mining, use of financial transaction databases and satellite imagery, the surveillance includes monitoring the travel patterns of airline passengers.

Use of satellites by local law enforcement agencies, for instance, is supposed to go through a stringent approval protocol at the Department of Homeland Security's newly formed National Applications Office.

But critics say the safeguards don't always work. Some blunders in the use of such protections have become public. NewYorker writer Lawrence Wright wrote in January about one such experience. In 2002, while he was researching The Looming Tower, his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on al-Qaida, two members of an FBI terrorism task force arrived at his home. Why, they asked, had his daughter been speaking with someone in the United Kingdom who was in touch with suspected al-Qaida operatives?

It wasn't his daughter, he told them flatly. Wright himself had made the calls. And the person he contacted was a British civil rights lawyer who had asked him not to speak with her clients, some of whom are relatives of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant.

"My daughter is no terrorist - she went to high school with the Bush twins," Wright said. "I was taken aback. They were apparently monitoring my phones."

Wright said he was particularly surprised because he was aware of protections supposedly in place to conceal his name and other identifying information that would have been gathered during the creation of transcripts of the call.

Wright said he doubted the government would have been able to get a warrant for the information, and he said he didn't know how the FBI obtained his daughter's name, let alone got the impression that she was communicating with the British lawyer.

Critics say such stories recall 1960s and 1970s-era abuses - the CIA's involvement in political activities, and the FBI monitoring of peace groups and civil rights activists - that prompted Congress to pass far-reaching laws bringing foreign-intelligence gathering and any domestic surveillance under strict controls and judicial oversight.

Although the latest FISA proposal includes numerous provisions for a secret court to monitor and authorize surveillance, and for inspectors general to keep tabs on who's being monitored by various agencies, little oversight exists for surveillance programs that fall outside FISA scrutiny.

Congress has requested, and in many cases received, briefings on some of the programs. But its dissatisfaction with the amount of information provided by the administration has frequently resulted in holding back funding for programs.

The House Appropriations Committee took such a step this week, holding back funding for the National Applications Office's effort to use U.S. satellites for domestic purposes until August, when the Government Accountability Office will release a report about how the program will handle civil liberties and privacy concerns.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the department had repeatedly met with lawmakers and would comply with any review process. He called efforts to stall the funding "misguided" and a potential threat to public safety and security missions.

Even when Congress has received information, lawmakers say their questions or concerns are often addressed within the agency that is responsible for the surveillance, amounting to a practice of self-policing.

"You don't have to look far into history to know that when the government, any government, is given secret authorities, that those authorities are ultimately abused," said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "You don't even have to attribute bad motives to anyone. In an intelligence officer's zeal to protect the country, they often will overstep their bounds."

In part to assuage privacy concerns, the Department of Homeland Security has established a privacy czar to ensure that the technologies and programs initiated by the federal agency do not erode privacy laws or violate civil liberties. While many have lauded the creation of such a position, some believe it should be expanded to a Cabinet-level post in the executive branch, a step that some advocates say would send a powerful message in an age when digitized communications have ballooned and made safeguarding private information vastly more complicated.

"We should have what Canada has, which is a minister of privacy, someone looking out for the privacy issues of Americans," said James Bamford, an intelligence expert and author on two books about the history of the NSA. "We have armies of people out there trying to pick into everyone's private life, but we have nobody out there who's an advocate."

bradley.olson@baltsun.com

DHS ignores civil liberties in domestic spy satellite plan, lawmakers say

DHS ignores civil liberties in domestic spy satellite plan, lawmakers say

Nick Juliano

Homeland Security Committee members fault Chertoff for delaying legal framework for new office A controversial plan that would allow domestic law enforcement agencies to use data gathered by US spy satellites still lacks necessary civil liberties and privacy protections, and three Democratic lawmakers are urging Department of Homeland Security Chair Michael Chertoff to established a legal framework for the new plan he promised six months ago. DHS plans to create a new office that would expand law enforcement and other civilian agencies' access to data gathered by powerful intelligence and military satellites orbiting the earth. The National Applications Office will oversee who can access such satellite data, which is typically used to monitor climate change and track hurricane damage, among other uses. DHS still has not laid out legal frameworks or standard operating procedures for the office, according to a letter from three members of the House Homeland Security Committee. "We recently learned that the Department has begun to advertise for positions at the NAO. While we applaud the Department's efforts to prepare for the future, we are disappointed by its continuing pattern of putting the cart before the horse," wrote Reps. Bennie G. Thompson, the committee's chair; Jane Harman, chair of an intelligence subcommittee; and Christopher P. Carney, chair of an oversight subcommittee. The lawmakers said they were concerned about the "privacy and civil liberties challenges" posed by the domestic satellite program. They said a legal framework for the program was missing from the NAO's charter, which "had been finalized without any input from this committee ... or the privacy and civil liberties community. "Instead of crafting a privacy and civil liberties solution for the Department's NAO law enforcement customers or updating us about a summer date for its completion, the NAO Charter now makes clear that this critical undertaking will be postponed until an unspecified time in the future," they write. "This is unacceptable." The domestic spy satellite plan was first proposed last August, and its expected launch in October was delayed because of privacy concerns. The lawmakers' letter, which was sent Monday, makes clear those concerns remain. Although we support any Department effort to engage in more effective and responsive information sharing with our nation's first preventers, the serious privacy and civil liberties issues that the NAO raises are manifold and multifaceted. Doing business with the NAO's law enforcement and other customers therefore requires a robust and detailed legal framework and SOPs that provide clearly defined privacy and civil liberties safeguards. Merely mentioning Posse Comitatus and other laws in the NAO Charter does not provide needed assurances that the Department will not transform NAO into a domestic spying platform. Furthermore, delaying the hard work of addressing the privacy and civil liberties issues specific to law enforcement customers further erodes our confidence that you are serious about serving their needs. It's frankly time for the Department to lead on privacy and civil liberties in this area -- not shirk a difficult duty. The NAO would expand access to data gathered by Measurement and Signal Intelligence (MASINT) satellites, which according to reports use radar and infrared imaging technologies to see through cloud cover, forest canopies and even concrete barriers. Allowing local police forces access to such data raises substantial questions about whether the door to 4th Amendment violations is being flung open. A Congressional Research Service report prepared last month outlined some of these concerns. It concluded that privacy concerns were likely to be dependent upon the type of technology used. That, the lawmakers said in their letter Monday, has still not been clarified by DHS. (A previous version of this story incorrectly defined MASINT as "Mass Intelligence." The error has been corrected. RAW STORY regrets the error.)

If Bush Is Leaving Office In Less Than A Year, Why Are They Still Intent On Destroying Our Privacy?

If Bush Is Leaving Office In Less Than A Year, Why Are They Still Intent On Destroying Our Privacy?

By William Cormier

For all practical purposes, President Bush is now a lame-duck President. If that’s the case, then why is his administration working so hard to take away even more of America’s constitutional rights and his departmental heads are ramping-up their efforts to increase the spying on Americans? The common logic is that when Bush leaves office, some semblance of sanity will return to the United States and we will continue conducting whatever “war on terror” that needs to be undertaken without violating the constitutional rights of innocent Americans. We are all hoping the 2008 elections will bring back the rule of law to Washington, and these illegal and unconstitutional programs will be dismantled. That’s what we are hoping…

But, the signals coming out of Washington speak of a different story - one that is too horrific to imagine! Based on the rush to dismantle almost off of America’s rights to privacy - and these actions and initiatives are being carried out at a dizzying speeds, it would appear that Bush has no plans of leaving office or this Presidency fully expects the next President to follow in his footsteps of tyranny and oppression. The stage is being set for these violations of our civil rights to escalate and careen out of control until eventually - perhaps within months, nothing Americans use their personal computers for will remain private. No, I’m not being melodramatic.

I’ve warned people myself that S 1959, The “Thought Crime Prevention Bill” is being partially implemented even though its still in committee and hasn’t been passed into law yet. Yesterday, a brilliant essay was a written on exactly what privacy the government is attempting to negate by Elliot Cohen, and he describes why this is happening within America. People must be noticing that none of the Presidential candidates are speaking in depth in regard the way that Americans are losing some of their most basic constitutional rights, and none are pledging to stop the constant fear-mongering that our government is using to push its policies through, nor are they pledging to stop those policies that infringe on our constitutional rights. The following Op-Ed is powerful and covers many of the issues that seem to be intertwined with S 1959:

The End of Privacy

Posted on Jan 24, 2008 (Excerpts)

By Elliot Cohen

Amid the controversy brewing in the Senate over Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the Bush administration appears to have changed its strategy and is devising a bold new plan that would strip away FISA protections in favor of a system of wholesale government monitoring of every American’s Internet activities. Now the national director of intelligence is predicting a disastrous cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S. if this scheme isn’t instituted.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has already been spying on the e-mail, voice-over-IP, and other Internet exchanges between American citizens since as early as and possibly earlier than Sept. 11, 2001. The National Security Agency has set up shop in the hubs of major telecom corporations, notably AT&T, installing equipment that makes copies of the contents of all Internet traffic, routing it to a government database and then using natural language parsing technology to sift through and analyze the data using undisclosed search criteria. It has done this without judicial oversight and obviously without the consent of the millions of Americans under surveillance. Given any rational interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, its mass spying operation is illegal and unconstitutional.

But now the administration wants to make these illegal activities legal. And why is that? According to National Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell, who is now drafting the proposal, an attack on a single U.S. bank by the 9/11 terrorists would have had a far more serious impact on the U.S. economy than the destruction of the Twin Towers. “My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens,” said McConnell. So the way to prevent this from happening, he claims, is to give the government the power to spy at will on the content of all e-mails, file transfers and Web searches.

McConnell’s prediction of something “horrendous” happening unless we grant government this authority has a tone similar to that of the fear-mongering call to arms against terrorism that President Bush sounded before taking us to war in Iraq. Now, Americans are about to be asked to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights because of a vague and unsupported prediction of the dangers and costs of cyber-terrorism.

The analogy with the campaign to frighten us into war with Iraq gets even stronger when it becomes evident that along with the establishing of American forces in Iraq, the cyber-security McConnell is calling for was, all along, part of the strategic plan, devised by Dick Cheney and several other present and former high-level Bush administration officials, to establish America as the world’s supreme superpower. This plan, known as the Project for the New American Century, unequivocally recognized “an imperative” for government to not only secure the Internet against cyber-attacks but also to control and use it offensively against its adversaries. The Project for the New American Century also maintained that “the process of transformation” it envisioned (which included the militarization and control of the Internet) was “likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” All that appears to be lacking to make the analogy complete is the “horrendous” cyber-attack—the chilling analog of the 9/11 attacks—that McConnell now predicts.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the resolve of the Bush administration. But it would be a bigger mistake for Americans not to stand united against this familiar pattern of government scare tactics and manipulation. There are grave dangers to the survival of democracy posed by allowing any present or future government unfettered access to all of our private electronic communications. These dangers must be carefully weighed against the dubious and unproven benefits that granting such an awesome power to government might have on fending off cyber-attacks. (Emphasis added.)

Elliot D. Cohen, PhD, is a media ethicist and critic. His most recent book is “The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship.” He is a first-prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.
LINK

Only selected excerpts are published and this is an Op-Ed worth reading.

Using a rationale that can only be described as bizarre, the government’s position is that if we don’t allow them (NSA, CIA, etc.) unfettered access to our private computer activities, documents, searches, and downloads, it opens-up the United States and make us vulnerable to being hacked in a “terror attack” on a massive scale.

So the way to prevent this from happening, he claims Mike McConnell, is to give the government the power to spy at will on the content of all e-mails, file transfers and Web searches.

Mr. McConnell’s statements are ridiculous and absurd on their face! I’ve been a computer technician for almost 20 years and have worked for some of America’s premier IT companies along the way and the government being able to monitor your email, downloads, and have access to your private documents has nothing whatsoever to do with large-scale computer attacks supposedly sprung on us by Al Qaeda or another foreign entity! There is absolutely no correlation to our personal computer privacy and hacking on a large scale whatsoever, and to even make such a patently false and misleading statement should insult the intelligence of anyone that takes the time to analyze the statement!

When people in the IT field first heard that electronic voting machines were being contemplated for federal elections, in unison the IT Community gasped in horror; all of us know that anything can be hacked and to trust our elections to electronic voting equipment bordered on insanity. Now we are faced with these blatant lies and falsehoods that are almost comical if they weren’t so absurd. I’d like Mike McConnell to explain to the American people how the government being able to monitor our personal computer systems will help to ward-off a “horrendous” cyber-attack. We know where the primary threats from organized hacking usually emanate from, and that’s Russia and China. It wasn’t so long ago that the “Chinese Military Shut-Down Pentagon Network in Cyber Attack for One Week!” , so those of us with good memories know exactly where the danger of America being hacked is located and monitored 24/7 by the US Department of Defense.

While he’s at it, Mr. McConnell should be honest with the people and tell us exactly what the government wants that Americans possess at a personal level. High level planning was being implemented the second month Bush was in office to begin wiretapping Americans on a massive scale, so don’t hand us that BS that we’re monitoring the Internet because of 911. That is a misconception the Bush administration attempts to peddle-off every time they get the chance, but those that are aware of QWEST and their heroic stand to protect the rights of their subscribers is well-aware that the Bush administration was involving itself in illegal wiretapping within two (2) months after they took office. LINK

Tomorrow, the Senate will reconsider whether to give retroactive immunity to the Telecoms, which will then equate to giving immunity to President Bush and Dick Cheney - and very slick maneuver that will be Filibustered in the United States Senate! Tomorrow is a day that we need to make our voices heard and say No to illegal wiretapping and retroactive immunity for the telecoms. Below is an ad that will run in the New York Times - and we as Americans need to heed the call to action and say no, loud and clear, to government spying and the further erosion of our constitutional rights. This is a bipartisan issue, and whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, or Independent, all of us should be furious that the government now wants to treat the entire civilian population of the United States as suspects and to make matters worse, now contend that Americans are not entitled to their constitutional rights of privacy!

Tomorrow could be a historic day, and if you lend you voice to the cause, you too could help make history This is the email I received with the below image, and I couldn’t agree more!

Dear William,

I need your help to turn up the heat. Senators Clinton and Obama must lead America forward instead of protecting President Bush and his friends at AT&T and Verizon. This critical vote is scheduled for Monday at 4:30 pm.

Please take a moment right now and contact MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, one of the strongest media voices in opposition to President Bush’s reckless abuses of power, and ask him to cover the telecom fight tomorrow.

Tell Keith how you feel, send him the link to the NYTimes ad, and ask him to interview Jim live before the vote Monday night.

Here’s the ad link:
www.DemocracyforAmerica.com/ProveIt

Here’s Olbermann’s contact email:
countdown@msnbc.com

President Bush and Vice President Cheney are counting on the media silence to let Republicans win. They both know this is the American people’s last chance to hold the Bush administration accountable for warrantless wiretapping of innocent Americans.

Keith Olbermann and MSNBC could help Jim shine a national spotlight on this incredibly important issue and turn up the heat on our Democratic leaders to stand up, fight the Bush administration, and win.

Please send your email to Keith right now.

William Cormier

Authors Website: http://justanothercoverup.com/

Authors Bio: I am nothing more than a patriotic American that is doing whatever I can to further the cause of democracy, the rule of law, and am absolutely outraged on how the Bush administration is defying our Congress, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights! Footnote: I write in a style that I believe is appropriate in today’s world where we can’t trust the Mainstream News Media, and rather than concentrating on one article alone, which may or may not receive the exposure and emphasis it should, I prefer to meld several relevant stories together, that each taken alone may not expose the entire situation, but when taken-in as a whole, tend to give the reader a better understanding of the subject. One article or story alone does not represent the “Big Picture” - but when several are effectively tied-together it often reveals a trend or broader view of the subject matter that is important to completely understand any given situation. http://justanothercoverup.com/

Cafferty: I trust government to guard our privacy, don't you?

Cafferty: I trust government to guard our privacy, don't you?

CNN's Jack Cafferty of the Cafferty File joined CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday to discuss a Bush Administration intelligence's official suggestion that the American people need to "redefine privacy" in order to confront the threats of the 21st century.

In late October, as the Associated Press reported, Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Directory of National Intelligence, delivering the keynote address at GEOINT 2007 (the annual United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation symposium), said that today's times called for a new definition of privacy.

"Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it's an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture," Kerr said. "The Long Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn't seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You'd think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity -- or the appearance of anonymity -- is quickly becoming a thing of the past."

Kerr added, "We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.... I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that up doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."

According to Kerr, privacy should mean only that government and business are safeguarding people's sensitive information, rather than relying on anonymity.

"Of course, I trust the government to do that, don't you?" Cafferty asked facetiously. Cafferty went on to explain how, in his view, Congress' handling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act demonstrates that the government may not have the people's best interest in mind when it comes to privacy.

"Remember last summer when it was threatened they might be held and not be able to go on their break in time, they hastily changed the law and gave the government powers to eavesdrop inside the United States without a warrant as long as one of the parties was reasonably believed to be outside the United States."

"Reasonably believed," Cafferty added. "That's a loophole you could drive a train though."

Cafferty asked CNN viewers to weigh in on the privacy debate.

"The question then for this hour is this: A top intelligence official says it's time for people in the United States to redefine privacy," Cafferty said. "The question is: why should we?"

One viewer wrote in, "Good God, I wouldn't want my personal information to fall into the hands of a bunch of unsavory characters. So I better do everything in my power to keep it out of the government's hands."

Another opined, "Redefining privacy is a bit like redefining virginity. Once it's gone, it's gone."

The following video is from CNN's Cafferty File, broadcast on November 12, 2007

More domestic spying from ATT

More domestic spying from ATT? by

John Aravosis (DC) · 6/13/2007

A very troubling article in today's Los Angeles Times about AT&T. You remember AT&T, the company that "reportedly" let the US government spy on its own customers without a search warrant? Well, it may not surprise you to learn that AT&T is now planning on making sure that the emails you send to family and friends don't contain things that corporate America might not like. How they plan to do that is anyone's guess. But it sure sounds like one possible way is prying into your emails to make sure you aren't attaching songs, tv clips, movie clips, or even, who knows, newspaper articles? Will they look at the video clips and photos and documents you send by email to make sure that they're really your private corporate work product, your communications with your attorney, or oh I don't know, a private sex video of you and your wife? What's next, AT&T listening in to phone calls to make sure you don't slander anybody? How about reading my postal mail? After all, it's possible I'm sending a friend a pirated DVD. Hell, I may even be carrying that DVD on my person - perhaps we should institute mandatory body cavity searches on every street corner.My favorite quote from the article, an AT&T spokesman says that "once a[n anti-piracy] technology was chosen, the company would look at privacy and other legal issues." That's nice. Once AT&T already decides how to pry into your online life, then they'll look at privacy and legal concerns. A bit like - hell, a lot like - consulting a lawyer after you've already committed to doing the crime.But please don't tell the Democrats in Congress that privacy is a big and growing concern. They have other more important issues to deal with, like making sure that George Bush isn't mean to them