Creative Ways to Beat the Developing Global Surveillance State

"Surveillance takes far more from the people than it gives."

REDUX: Mexican biometrics, EU-US Data privacy, Egypt [International Edition]

Senate Intel Chair: Torture Did Not Lead To Bin Laden In Any Way @TPM

More and more evidence suggests a key piece of intelligence -- the first link in the chain of information that led U.S. intelligence officials to Osama bin Laden -- wasn't tortured out of its source. And, indeed, that torture actually failed to produce it. 

:::MORE HERE:::

Here is second life for news that matters: 

The 10 tools of Online Oppressors

WIRED: Domestic Surveillance Court Approved All 1,506 Warrant Applications in 2010

Commentary c/o Julian "squeaky clean" Sanchez: 

 Record Number of Americans Targeted by National Security Letters

NYTimes Op-Ed: Personal Data: Safer in America or in Europe

Children of Guanajuato, Mexico in Biometric Database

U.S. Attorney Escalates Attacks on Civil Liberties of Anti-War, Palestinian Human Rights Activists


Homeland Security Suspends Ineffective, Discriminatory Immigration Program

SEC’s Schapiro says surveillance tools ‘inadequate’

Canada, U.S. in talks to share surveillance data

REDUX: Catching up on important news and news presenters

Here is second life for news that matters.

BOSTON TEA PARTY OPPOSES NATIONAL ID,  PERIOD. I guess national id cards are officially unamerican.  That doesn't mean they aren't still trying to sell the EDL in Michigan.  Florida is fighting it.  Downsize D.C. amid coalition efforts wants their repeal.  Real ID after 5 years is still getting consistently bad press from the blogosphere.

Facecrook's Mark Zuckerberg, dubbed Little Caesar, waits for someone to defend his privacy.  We hope for a different haircut and to know how much money is awarded to the person who sues the pants off of him .... again.

Facebook as Caesar

GPS tracks again... that's what it does.  Now it gets your kids and the prisoners.  All sitting prospects in the public-private target range for the gubmint market.  I'll bet you're really surprised. Commentary by EFF.

FUSION CENTER UPDATE:  CIR reports... Special word goes out to the Electronic Privacy Information Center.  What do they do? They provide information about Electronic Privacy. It's awesome when they do.

Alternet tackles naked body scanners on the street in broad daylight. God, what a weird feeling that must have been...

STATUS: We are wondering about the individual mandate for a national healthcare ID.

India's issues with the Unique Identification Authority of India.  FYI...Don't buy a cell phone in China...

BEIJING — China wants people who buy new cell phone numbers to register their personal details, joining many European and Asian countries in curbing the anonymous use of mobile technology.

There have been some changes to  FISA,  warrentless cell or telephone tapping are up for PUBLIC INPUT until OCTOBER 24, 2010.   I'm TELLIN'!!

Germany's national ID cards move to contactless technology citing NXP as national ID card chip of choice.  c/o Contactless News

"The German government has selected NXP as the supplier of an inlay solution containing a SmartMX chip, packaged in an ultra-thin module. Issuance of German contactless ID cards, which will replace the current paper-based IDs, will start in November. More than 60 million cards are expected to be rolled out over the next ten years."

FLOGGER Jim Harper takes you on an East German train ride and makes some connection you may have missed.

Denver has a nasty case of Bad Cop according to ProLibertate. However, here's a report causing cognative dissonance in the deliverance of justice in a UK case where CCTV got a bad cop off the streets.

CNBC: Big Brother, Big Business

BTC - CNBC's David Faber produced Big Brother, Big Business in 2006 right around the time FISA and other US tech capacities to surveill the public became apparent.

To date, it's one of the only mainstream media releases of it's kind which convey's the role of Big Tech in the surveillance industrial complex.  If you've been catching up on the digest of information released via  WaPo's TOP SECRET AMERICA, some of this starts to look glaringly familiar.

Police wiretapping jumps 26%

c/o WIRED Threat Level

The number of wiretaps authorized by state and federal judges in criminal investigations jumped 26 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a report released Friday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Courts authorized 2,376 criminal wiretap orders in 2009, with 96 percent targeting mobile phones in drug cases, according to the report. Federal officials requested 663 of the wiretaps, while 24 states accounted for 1,713 orders.

Not one request for a wiretap was turned down.  :::MORE HERE::: 

The criminal NSA eavesdropping program

c/o Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

"UPDATE: Dan Froomkin echoes, and elaborates on, several of the points here, in his Huffington Post piece entitled: "Ruling Against Bush Wiretaps Also Slaps Down Obama's Executive Overreach." He writes: "the ruling should serve as a wake-up call to those who thought that the days of executive overreach were behind us."

And Charlie Savage and Jim Risen have a new NYT article which, in the course of discussing whether the Obama DOJ will appeal this decision, examine the likely motives and goals of the Obama administration here, none of which reflect well on them at all."

:::ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:::

Obama administration: Toss wiretap lawsuit

CLG>>By DEVLIN BARRETT (AP) – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder says a lawsuit in San Francisco over warrantless wiretapping threatens to expose ongoing intelligence work and must be thrown out.

In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate.

Holder's effort to stop the lawsuit marks the first time the administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege under a new policy it launched last month designed to make such a legal argument more difficult.

Under the state secrets privilege, the government can have a lawsuit dismissed if hearing the case would jeopardize national security.

The Bush administration invoked the privilege numerous times in lawsuits over various post-9/11 programs, but the Obama administration recently announced that only a limited number of senior Justice Department officials would be able to make such decisions. It also agreed to provide confidential information to the courts in such cases.

Under the new approach, an agency trying to keep such information secret would have to convince the attorney general and a panel of Justice Department lawyers that its release would compromise national security.

Holder said that in the current case, that review process convinced him "there is no way for this case to move forward without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence activities that we rely upon to protect the safety of the American people."

The lawsuit was filed by a group of individuals who claimed the government illegally monitored their communications. To proceed with the case, Holder said, would expose intelligence sources and methods.

Holder said U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, was given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court can "conduct its own independent assessment of our claim."

The attorney general said the judge would decide whether the administration had made a valid claim and "we will respect the outcome of that process."

That is a departure from the Bush administration, which resisted providing specifics to judges handling such cases about what the national security concerns were.
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco that is pursuing a similar lawsuit against the government, called Holder's decision "incredibly disappointing."

"The Obama administration has essentially adopted the position of the Bush administration in these cases, even though candidate Obama was incredibly critical of both the warrantless wiretapping program and the Bush administration's abuse of the state secrets privilege," said Bankston.

EFF Wins Release of Telecom Lobbying Records

Government Must Provide More Information on Campaign to Give Telecoms Retroactive Immunity

San Francisco - A judge ordered the government Thursday to release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the records be provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by October 9, 2009.

The decision is part of EFF's long-running battle to gather information about telecommunications lobbying conducted as Congress considered granting immunity to companies that participated in illegal government electronic surveillance. Telecom immunity was eventually passed as part of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008, but a bill that would repeal the immunity -- called the JUSTICE Act -- was introduced in the Senate last week.

"Today's ruling is a major victory for government transparency," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "As the court recognized, it was unlawful for the government to deny Americans access to this information in the midst of the debate over telecom immunity last year. We're pleased these records will now be available to the public as Congress considers the JUSTICE Act."

EFF has been seeking information about the telecom lobbying campaign under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) since 2007, as news reports detailed an extensive and expensive lobbying campaign seeking immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in unlawful surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. Officials at the Bush Administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were vocal supporters of the immunity proposals, working closely with telecoms. Using the FOIA, EFF asked the DOJ and the ODNI for any communications between the agencies, members of Congress, and telecom companies related to lobbying for telecom immunity.

The DOJ and ODNI argued that the records requested by EFF were protected by FOIA exemptions covering agency deliberations and other privileged communications. But in today's order, the judge ruled that as the communications were with Congress and lobbyists, the exemptions did not apply. The judge also found that the identities of telecom representatives who lobbied for immunity could not be kept from the public on privacy grounds.

"Today's ruling shows that aggressive use of the Freedom of Information Act is necessary to challenge government secrecy," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "We cannot allow the government to drag its feet in making relevant information available to the American public."

EFF also represents the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit brought by AT&T customers accusing the telecom of violating their rights by illegally assisting in widespread domestic surveillance. In June of 2009, a federal judge dismissed Hepting and dozens of other lawsuits against telecoms, ruling that the companies had immunity from liability under the FAA. EFF is appealing the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, primarily arguing that the FAA's immunity provision is unconstitutional in granting the president broad discretion to block the courts from considering the core constitutional privacy claims of millions of Americans.

For the full order:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/foia_C0705278/OrderGrantSJ-Sep09.pdf

For more on the litigation:
http://www.eff.org/issues/foia/cases/C-07-05278

For more on the JUSTICE Act:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/eff-supports-justice

Did Bush Continue to Secretly Operate Total Information Awareness?

Jason Leopold of Truthout

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) told Rumsfeld during a public hearing in 2003 that the Total Information Awareness program "not only raises serious privacy concerns [but] might also be illegal and possibly unconstitutional."

"Suspicionless Surveillance" was developed by the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness department, led by Adm. John Poindexter, the former national security adviser, who secretly sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair and was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress and destroying evidence. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.

Report Critical of NSA Program

The unclassified report prepared by inspectors general of five federal agencies said George W. Bush justified his warrantless wiretapping by relying on Justice Department attorney John Yoo's theories of unlimited presidential wartime powers, and started the spying operation even before Yoo issued a formal opinion, a government investigation discovered.

Essentially, President Bush took it upon himself to ignore the clear requirement of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that all domestic intelligence-related electronic spying must have a warrant from a secret federal court, not just presidential approval. Illegal wiretapping is a felony under federal law. ::MORE HERE::

Bill Introduced to Reform Patriot Act c/o ACLU

Legislation Would Also Narrow Overly Broad Surveillance Laws

WASHINGTON - September 17 - Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) today introduced legislation that would narrow several provisions of the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws, including the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA). Three sections of the Patriot Act - the John Doe roving wiretap provision, Section 215 or the "library records" provision and the "lone wolf" provision - are up for renewal this year and will expire on December 31 if Congress does not take action. The American Civil Liberties Union has endorsed the new bill, the JUSTICE Act, and calls on Congress to move quickly to pass it.

"Over the past eight years, Congress and the executive branch have allowed for more and more surveillance while doing little to protect Americans' privacy rights," said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The JUSTICE Act is a much needed remedy for the overbroad and out of control surveillance in our country. Given that three of the Patriot Act's provisions expire at the end of the year, it's vital that Congress pass the JUSTICE Act as quickly as it can so that proper action can be taken to protect Americans' privacy rights."

The JUSTICE Act would make vital changes to the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act by inserting privacy and civil liberties safeguards into each law. The JUSTICE Act would amend the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act by establishing a standard of individualized suspicion, mandating meaningful judicial review and requiring thorough reporting on the FBI's use of NSLs to Congress. The NSL provision of the Patriot Act greatly expanded the FBI's ability to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit bureaus without prior judicial approval and to impose gag orders on record demand recipients. The ACLU has successfully challenged the constitutionality of the amended NSL statute's gag provisions in a lawsuit called Doe v. Holder. A lower court ruled in 2007 that NSL gag provisions were unconstitutional and in December 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in part, agreeing that the NSL statute's gag provision violated the First Amendment.

The JUSTICE Act would restrict the sweeping wiretapping powers given to the government in the FISA Amendments Act passed last year, preventing agencies from conducting bulk collection of Americans' communications. The Act would also repeal a highly controversial provision in the FAA that granted immunity to telephone companies that aided the Bush administration in its illegal and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program.

"This bill will give our surveillance laws the overhaul they so desperately need, restraining the government from unconstitutionally collecting vast amounts of data about innocent Americans," said Michelle Richardson, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Ensuring public reporting is a crucial part of keeping our government's surveillance powers in check. Holding law enforcement accountable for how it uses these tools will not only help to preserve Americans' privacy, it will ultimately keep us safer. Congress must make passing the JUSTICE Act a priority."

To learn more about the ACLU's work on the Patriot Act, go to: www.reformthepatriotact.org

The ACLU conserves America's original civic values working in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in the United States by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

White House Backs Controversial Domestic Surveillance Provisions

VOA News

The Obama administration is urging lawmakers to extend three provisions of the controversial domestic surveillance law known as the USA Patriot Act.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a letter Tuesday asking Congress to renew provisions of the law that allow authorities to conduct roving electronic eavesdropping, or wiretaps, access business records and track so-called "lone wolf" suspects with no known links to foreign powers or terrorist groups.

The roving wiretaps would let agents track the communications of suspects who change their cell phones or other devices.

The provisions are due to expire on December 31.

Some lawmakers and civil libertarians have criticized the provisions, saying they infringe on Americans' right to privacy. The Justice Department says the administration is willing to consider stronger privacy protections as long as they do not "undermine the effectiveness" of the provisions.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from the northeastern state of Vermont, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, says it is important for the administration and Congress to work to protect both national security and civil liberties.

Civil Liberty brush off, results in 4 to the Floor campaign

“The court’s decision effectively means that Americans’ privacy rights will be left to the mercy of the political branches. This is deeply troubling, because the courts have a crucial role to play in ensuring that individual rights are not needlessly infringed upon by statutes enacted in the name of national security."- Jameel Jaffer

Dismissal Of ACLU, NYCLU Challenge To Unconstitutional Spying Law Jeopardizes Americans' Privacy

August 20, 2009 -- A federal court today dismissed an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional government spying law. The ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed the landmark lawsuit in July 2008 to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the executive branch virtually unchecked power to sweep up Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls.

The ACLU and NYCLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work – which relies on confidential communications – is greatly compromised by the FAA. ::: MORE HERE:::

It is SO on.

BTC - Yeah, well apparently The Feds don't get it. I encourage every activist who enjoys the right to peacibly assemble and petition their government for injury to their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to join this activist task force. I jumped on as soon as I could. Do.

E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress

c/o NYTimes

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.

FCC Assumes NSA Position Over WiFi

c/o Wired Magazine's THREAT LEVEL

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.

That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

George Washington University professor Orin Kerr, a constitutional law expert, also questions the legalilty of the policy.

“The Supreme Court has said that the government can’t make warrantless entries into homes for administrative inspections,” Kerr said via e-mail, refering to a 1967 Supreme Court ruling that housing inspectors needed warrants to force their way into private residences. The FCC’s online FAQ doesn’t explain how the agency gets around that ruling, Kerr adds.

The rules came to attention this month when an FCC agent investigating a pirate radio station in Boulder, Colorado, left a copy of a 2005 FCC inspection policy on the door of a residence hosting the unlicensed 100-watt transmitter. “Whether you operate an amateur station or any other radio device, your authorization from the Commission comes with the obligation to allow inspection,” the statement says.

The notice spooked those running “Boulder Free Radio,” who thought it was just tough talk intended to scare them into shutting down, according to one of the station’s leaders, who spoke to Wired.com on condition of anonymity. “This is an intimidation thing,” he said. “Most people aren’t that dedicated to the cause. I’m not going to let them into my house.”

But refusing the FCC admittance can carry a harsh financial penalty. In a 2007 case, a Corpus Christi, Texas, man got a visit from the FCC’s direction-finders after rebroadcasting an AM radio station through a CB radio in his home. An FCC agent tracked the signal to his house and asked to see the equipment; Donald Winton refused to let him in, but did turn off the radio. Winton was later fined $7,000 for refusing entry to the officer. The fine was reduced to $225 after he proved he had little income.

Administrative search powers are not rare, at least as directed against businesses — fire-safety, food and workplace-safety regulators generally don’t need warrants to enter a business. And despite the broad power, the FCC agents aren’t cops, says Fiske. “The only right they have is to inspect the equipment,” Fiske says. “If they want to seize, they have to work with the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

But if inspectors should notice evidence of unrelated criminal behavior — say, a marijuana plant or stolen property — a Supreme Court decision suggests the search can be used against the resident. In the 1987 case New York v. Burger, two police officers performed a warrantless, administrative search of one Joseph Burger’s automobile junkyard. When he couldn’t produce the proper paperwork, the officers searched the grounds and found stolen vehicles, which they used to prosecute him. The Supreme Court held the search to be legal.

In the meantime, pirate radio stations are adapting to the FCC’s warrantless search power by dividing up a station’s operations. For instance, Boulder Free Radio consists of an online radio station operated by DJs from a remote studio. Miles away, a small computer streams the online station and feeds it to the transmitter. Once the FCC comes and leaves a notice on the door, the transmitter is moved to another location before the agent returns.

FISA: the Expanded Version Obama 3.0

Tonight, Olbermann continued his exploratory conviction against the "bipartisan" stronghold over the U.S. government's assumed right to our privacy.

The argument surround's Jewel vs. NSA , filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The fate of the imperiled court case below.

Please support the Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal defense fund here to help defend our right to retaliate against government mandated stalking.

April 6th, 2009
c/o EFF.org

Obama Adminsitration Embraces Bush Position on Warrentless Wiretapping

San Francisco - The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday.

In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging the agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The Obama Justice Department claims in its motion that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged "state secrets." These are essentially the same arguments made by the Bush administration three years ago in Hepting v. AT&T, EFF's lawsuit against one of the telecom giants complicit in the NSA spying.

"President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a 'secret' that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."

For the full motion to dismiss:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/jewel/jewelmtdobama.pdf

For more on Jewel v. NSA:
http://www.eff.org/cases/jewel

NSA + FISA = New Cybersecurity Powers

RawStory Reports

The spy shop that brought you the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program wants to expand its power under President Barack Obama, the nation's top intelligence chief told Congress Wednesday, in a little-noticed intelligence grab.

While acknowledging that many distrust the agency for its role in eavesdropping, Obama Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair said he believed the agency should expand into a permanent role in handling government cybersecurity efforts. [MORE]