Spying

US Subpoenaed All Visitor Logs From Online News Publication; Falsely Said Site Couldn't Tell Anyone | TechDirt

We've seen it over and over again: when the government can hide behind the veil of secrecy, it can abuse its power. That's why we're supposed to have checks and balances on power, but all too often governments figure out ways to get around that. The latest example is that US attorneys issued a subpoena to the person hosting the news website Indymedia, demanding a logfile of all visitors from a particular day and ordered the woman not to reveal the existence of the subpoena itself. Indymedia doesn't keep its logfiles, so it simply had nothing to turn over, and after realizing this, the government withdrew the request. However, the requirement to stay silent about it still was there, and the woman asked the EFF for help. With the EFF involved, the government finally backed down and admitted that there was absolutely no legal basis for demanding that the woman not talk about the subpoena, and "chose not to go to court" over the matter, despite threatening to at an earlier time.

This is hardly the first time we've heard about the government using (and abusing) procedures like national security letters to not just demand all sorts of info, but also demand that the recipient not tell anyone about it. Read more.

U.S. to pay DEA agent $3 million in spying case
By Josh Gerstein | Politico

The U.S. Government has agreed to pay $3 million to a former Drug Enforcement Administration official who claims he was spied on by a CIA agent and a U.S. diplomat while working at the U.S. Embassy in Burma more than a decade ago.

The settlement of a long-running lawsuit brought ex-DEA agent Richard Horn was filed tonight [11/04/09] in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Horn claimed that in 1993 a CIA officer in Rangoon, Arthur Brown, and the chief of mission there, Franklin Huddle, conspired to place a listening device in a coffee table at Horn's residence and that the pair then relayed information they obtained to Washington.

The case became a massive headache for the government recently after U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth found that government lawyers committed fraud on the court by pressing forward with state secrets claims in the case even after Huddle's cover was formally rolled back by the CIA. Read more.

By Jared Allen, The Hill

The CIA may have misled Congress at least five times since 2001, two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday.

Intelligence subcommittee Chairwomen Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) are leading an ongoing investigation into what they described as a practice of incomplete and often misleading intelligence briefings, which arose in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta’s June 24 admission that intelligence officials failed to notify Congress about a top-secret program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders.

“That is an example of a failure to notify but we think a symptom of a larger disease,” Schakowsky said on Tuesday.

BBDY 4 Pack

Even the least of us deserves justice and accountability starts with you. So why don't you send out a reminder. Even Bush deserves all the justice he can get and we should ensure he gets his day in court.

Use these images as a 4 PAK and send 4 different cards to the same person; or, choose your favorite and send the same postcard to 4 different persons.

It's easy. Each individual postcard is formatted to the dimensions of 4.25"x5.5". Quarter a sheet of paper and combine the cards as you like. Don't forget to print the other side. Remember the postage stamps. Then mail one to your best beloved, your friends and neighbors, some acquaintance--your politicians and their parties. Show someone you care about them and about justice. Don’t forget Cheney, Condi, Gonzales and Rove: CCGR 4 PAK.

MAY BE USED AS HANDBILLS W/O REVERSE SIDE.

Justice for Bush

Justice for Bybee

Justice for Delahunty

Justice for Yoo

Reverse Side Postcard

More Proposed Oversight from John Conyers
By emptywheel | FireDogLake

John Conyers has been busy. In addition to drafting bills to improve FISA and PATRIOT (more on that later), he has introduced three more bills that would improve Congressional Oversight of the Executive.

The Department of Justice Inspector General Authority Improvement Act of 2009

This Act will authorize the Department of Justice Inspector General to investigate attorney misconduct within the Department of Justice. Under current law, all allegations of wrongdoing by the Department of Justice attorneys are required to be investigated by the by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, rather than the Inspector General. In contrast with the statutorily independent Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility is supervised by the Attorney General.

This limitation on authority does not exist for any other agency Inspector General. The Department of Justice Inspector General Authority Improvement Act of 2009 will make the authority of the Department of Justice Inspector General consistent with that of all other agencies and will prevent future abuses and politicization within the Department.

DOJ’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, has been pushing for this authority for some time (and not just because it would give him more authority). It fixes two problems that exist right now–one, that lawyers in DOJ are not held legally responsible in the same way as others might be, because they escape IG oversight (and often benefit from quiet settlements on complaints handled by OPR). And, more importantly, the current situation (in which OPR–which reports to the Attorney General–conducts investigations of lawyers) makes it almost impossible to investigate the actions of the Attorney General or his close allies. Alberto Gonzales was able to put off investigations into the US Attorney scandal for some time this way. Read more.

Ordinances Offer City Councils Opportunity to Help Restore the Rule of Law | Press Release

City Councils Across U.S. to Consider Limits on Local Surveillance and Immigration Enforcement;
Local Investigation of Torture and Prosecution of Federal Officials

Today, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) released model legislation for city governments that support the rule of law. Two ordinances provide an opportunity for individual municipalities to do what the federal government has not: protect the fundamental rights and liberties of law-abiding Americans to be free of arbitrary monitoring, surveillance, detention, search, or arrest by local law enforcement authorities; and bring to justice senior government officials complicit in torture.

BORDC offers these pieces of model legislation to activists and public officials across the country as Congress considers reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act without meaningful protections for civil liberties, and on the eve of two major events: the federal government’s renewal of controversial 287(g) local immigration enforcement agreements; and the 15th anniversary of the United States’ ratification of the Convention Against Torture.

Obama Administration Accused Again of Concealing Bush-Era Crimes
By Matt Renner | Truthout

President Obama promised to usher in a new era of government transparency when he was sworn into office nine months ago.

On January 21, Obama signed an executive order instructing all federal agencies and departments to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and promised to make the federal government more transparent.

"The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed or because of speculative or abstract fears," Obama's order said. "In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public."

But since that time, the Obama administration has sought to conceal information in several high-profile court cases, in an effort that civil libertarians say amounts to covering up crimes committed by the Bush administration.

Last week, in a federal courthouse in New York, Obama's Justice Department attorneys again argued in favor of secrecy. The case involved 23 lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay who alleged in court papers that they were targets of the Bush administration's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program(TSP), an initiative operated by the National Security Agency (NSA) that Obama called "unlawful and unconstitutional" during his presidential campaign in 2007.

"Our work with our clients may have been deeply compromised by illegal surveillance carried out by the last administration," said Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, a civil rights organization. "The new administration has no legal basis for refusing to come clean about any violations of attorney-client privilege by the NSA." Read more.

Big Brother FBI
Data-Mining Programs Resurrect "Total Information Awareness"
By Tom Burghardt | Global Research.CA

Like a vampire rising from it's grave each night to feed on the privacy rights of Americans, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is moving forward with programs that drain the life blood from our constitutional liberties.

From the wholesale use of informants and provocateurs to stifle political dissent, to Wi-Fi hacking and viral computer spyware to follow our every move, the FBI has turned massive data-mining of personal information into a growth industry. In the process they are building the surveillance state long been dreamed of by American securocrats.

A chilling new report by investigative journalist Ryan Singel provides startling details of how the FBI's National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is quietly morphing into the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system of convicted Iran-Contra felon, Admiral John M. Poindexter. According to documents obtained by Wired:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store. (Ryan Singel, "FBI's Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records," Wired, September 23, 2009)

Among the latest revelations of out-of-control secret state spookery, Wired disclosed that personal details on customers have been provided to the Bureau by the Wyndham Worldwide hotel chain "which includes Ramada Inn, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson and Hawthorn Suites." Additional records were obtained from the Avis rental car company and Sears department stores.

Singel reports that the Bureau is planning a massive expansion of NSAC, one that would enlarge the scope, and mission, of the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force (FTTTF) and the file-crunching, privacy-killing Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW).

"Among the items on its wish list," Singel writes, "is the database of the Airlines Reporting Corporation--a company that runs a backend system for travel agencies and airlines." If federal snoops should obtain ARC's data-sets, the FBI would have unlimited access to "billions of American's itineraries, as well as the information they give to travel agencies, such as date of birth, credit card numbers, names of friends and family, e-mail addresses, meal preferences and health information." Read more.

More below the fold. Click "Read more" to view.

Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit
By Ryan Singel | Wired

The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: The nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying.

Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn’t enough to squash a rights group’s open records request for communications between the nation’s telecoms and the feds.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to see what role telecom lobbying of Justice Department played when the government began its year-long, and ultimately successful, push to win retroactive immunity for AT&T and others being sued for unlawfully spying on American citizens.

The feds argued that the documents showing consultation over the controversial telecom immunity proposal weren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act since they were protected as “intra-agency” records:

"The communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest."

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffery White disagreed and ruled on September 24 that the feds had to release the names of the telecom employees that contacted the Justice Department and the White House to lobby for a get-out-of-court-free card. Read more.

It's Not the Prosecutors' Committee, it's the Judiciary Committee
by Senator Russ Feingold | Daily Kos

...I want to say how disappointed I was in the debate in the committee. Today particularly, I started to feel as if too many members of the committee from both parties are willing to accept uncritically whatever the executive branch says about even the most reasonable proposed changes in the law. Of course we should consider the perspective of the FBI and the Justice Department. Keeping Americans safe is everyone’s priority. But we also need to consider a full range of perspectives and come to our own conclusions about how best to protect the American people and preserve their freedoms. Protecting the rights of innocent people should be a part of that equation.

Bad news today from the Judiciary Committee. At the beginning of the year, I had high hopes for the Patriot Act reauthorization process. We had just elected a President with a strong civil liberties record in the Senate. His Attorney General had supported some reforms during consideration of the last reauthorization bill in 2005. And Democrats controlled the Senate by such a large margin that our advantage on the Judiciary Committee ended up at 12-7 after Sen. Specter switched parties. Even as recently as 10 days ago, I hoped to be able to support a reauthorization bill introduced by Sen. Leahy that, while narrower than the JUSTICE Act that Senator Durbin and I have championed, did contain several important and necessary protections for the privacy of innocent Americans.

Events over the past two weeks dashed those hopes. Over the course of two business meetings, Sen. Leahy’s bill was diluted to the point that I had to vote against it. It falls well short of what the Congress must do to correct the problems with the Patriot Act. Read more.

Beneath the hype: Is Iran close to nukes?
Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern speaks on disinformation, Iran, and "faith-based intelligence"

More at The Real News

CCR Argues in Court Government Cannot Keep Secret Whether It Spied on Guantánamo Attorneys | Press Release

October 7, 2009, New York, NY – Oral arguments in the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) warrantless surveillance case Wilner v. National Security Agency (NSA, will take place Friday, October 9, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. in the Ceremonial Courtroom of the U.S. Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in New York. CCR and co-counsel will be arguing that the executive agency must disclose whether or not it has records related to wiretapping of attorney conversations without a warrant. It is an appeal of the government’s Glomar assertions from litigation seeking information about NSA Program surveillance of attorneys representing detainees at Guantánamo.

“Our work with our clients may have been deeply compromised by illegal surveillance carried out by the last administration,” said Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney of the CCR Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative. “The new administration has no legal basis for refusing to come clean about any violations of attorney-client privilege by the NSA.”

New DoD Website Fosters Secret Science
By Steven Aftergood | Secrecy News

"The key to maintaining U.S. technological preeminence is to encourage open and collaborative basic research," wrote then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 2001. “The linkage between the free exchange of ideas and scientific innovation, prosperity, and U.S. national security is undeniable.”

The Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) last month announced the creation of a new password-protected portal where authorized users may gain access to restricted scientific and engineering publications.

"DTIC Online Access Controlled… provides a gateway to Department of Defense unclassified, controlled science and technology (S&T) and research and engineering (R&E) information," according to a September 21, 2009 news release (pdf). "As defense S&T information advances, so does the unique community to which it belongs," said DTIC Administrator R. Paul Ryan.

The cultivation of controlled but unclassified scientific research by DTIC seems to represent a departure from a longstanding U.S. government position that scientific research should either be classified, if necessary, or else unrestricted. (There have always been exceptions for export controlled information and for proprietary information.) Read more.

DoD Suppressed Critique of Military Research
By Steven Aftergood | Secrecy News

“Important aspects of the DOD basic research programs are ‘broken’,” according to an assessment performed by the JASON defense science advisory panel earlier this year, and “throwing more money at the problems will not fix them.”

But that rather significant conclusion was deliberately suppressed by Pentagon officials who withheld it from public disclosure when a copy of the JASON report was requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, it was made public this week by Congress in the conference report on the FY 2010 defense authorization act, which quoted excerpts from the May 2009 JASON report, “Science and Technology for National Security.”

“Basic research funding is not exploited to seed inventions and discoveries that can shape the future,” the JASONs also determined, as quoted in the congressional report (large pdf, in discussion of the act’s section 213). Instead, “investments tend to be technological expenditures at the margin.” Read moer.

Announcing National Use Zazi to Gain New Surveillance Powers Day!
by Marcy Wheeler | Common Dreams

The last line of this article on how the Najibullah Zazi arrest was a victory for the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism boasts that the Administration didn't have a John Ashcroft-style press conference on the day of the arrest.

With Zazi's arrest, administration officials said they had a renewed sense of confidence that they could approach security threats in a new way. "The system probably worked the way it did before, but we made a conscious decision not to have a big press conference" about Zazi's arrest, a senior official said.

Which is pretty hysterical, coming as it does in one article of several that are obviously similarly seeded, boasting of Obama's new approach to terrorism....The last line of this article on how the Najibullah Zazi arrest was a victory for the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism boasts that the Administration didn't have a John Ashcroft-style press conference on the day of the arrest.

With Zazi's arrest, administration officials said they had a renewed sense of confidence that they could approach security threats in a new way. "The system probably worked the way it did before, but we made a conscious decision not to have a big press conference" about Zazi's arrest, a senior official said.

Which is pretty hysterical, coming as it does in one article of several that are obviously similarly seeded, boasting of Obama's new approach to terrorism....the WaPo focuses on one of the least controversial of the practices, roving wiretaps. It does not discuss how the Administration wants to lower the legal standard for allowing FBI agents to get business records and things like medical records on people who may have no tie to terrorism. It does not talk about National Security Letters, which let the FBI get certain records with no court review. And it does not discuss how the Administration is using more and more data mining of US persons. Read more.

Conyers to Holder: Give Us the 215 Info
By: emptywheel | FireDogLake

I guess I'm not the only one who noticed that DOJ is trying to reauthorize Section 215 without leveling with the American people how they're using it. John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, and Bobby Scott have written Eric Holder, requesting that he make more information on the way Section 215 is used public.

In order to meaningfully consider whether and how to extend the "business records" section of the Act, however, we ask that the Department work to provide additional public information on the use of that provision.

Specifically, at the September 22 hearing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hinnen testified that orders under Section 215 of the Act, which authorizes compulsory production of "business records," have been used to obtain "transactional information" to support "important and highly sensitive intelligence collection." He explained that some members of the Subcommittee and cleared staff have received some briefings on this topic, and that additional information could be made available to them "in a classified setting."

We have appreciated the information that has been provided, and fully understand the importance of safeguarding our country's national security secrets. Too often in 2007 and 2008, however, crucial information remained unknown to the public and many members of Congress when Congress voted on important surveillance legislation affecting the interests of all Americans. Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and other big city cops are calling for a new system of “citizen watch” programs, allegedly to help them spot hidden terrorists. I view this new call for a nation of private spies with a deep suspicion born of experience with the LAPD and its historic penchant for spying on law-abiding residents of that city.

Will airports screen for body signals? Researchers hope so
By Pamela Benson | CNN

The days of being able to walk through airport security checkpoints while wearing shoes and a jacket could return if an experimental program proves successful, some Department of Homeland Security officials say.

The Homeland Security-funded project is Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST. Instead of focusing on whether you have hidden explosives or whether you're carrying a weapon, sensors and cameras located at security checkpoints would measure the natural signals coming from your body -- your heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and fidgeting. Read more.

DiFi and Pat Leahy, Silencing the Librarians
By emptywheel | FireDogLake

There's a cynical passage in the new PATRIOT language that DiFi put forward the other night. It basically creates an exception in the worsened Section 215 language just for libraries.

‘‘(B) if the records sought pertain to libraries (as defined in section 213(1) of the Library Services and Technology Act (20 U.S.C. 9122(1)), including library records or patron lists, a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the records sought—‘‘(i) are relevant to an authorized investigation (other than a threat assessment) conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against inter-national terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities; and ‘‘(ii)(I) pertain to a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power; ‘‘(II) are relevant to the activities of a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of such authorized investigation; or ‘‘(III) pertain to an individual in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power;

This language requires that before investigators demand libraries turn over records, they must first prove that the person to whom the records pertain is either an intelligence investigation suspect, or is in contact with one. So for library records, and library records only, the new language requires some showing of reasonable cause first before the investigators can request the information. Read more.