Terrorists have officially won.

27BStroke6: "The Senate overwhelming voted Tuesday evening to legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and grant amnesty to the phone companies that helped out with the domestic spying..

The 68 to 29 vote is a major step in radically re-configuring 30 year-old limits on how the nation's spying services operate inside America's borders. The vote also deals a severe blow to civil liberties groups that are suing companies such as AT&T and Verizon for turning over millions of American's phone records to the government, and for helping the government wiretap American's phone and internet communications without a court order."


Sad. Predictable, but sad.

FBI data mines consumer grocery records for 'signs of terrorists'

CQ Politics: "Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area. The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.

A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails. "


As 27BStroke6 points out - "It's not clear how the FBI got the records to sift through in the first place - did grocery stores volunteer the data or get served with national security letters or the dread Section 215 of the Patriot Act."

Not going to say we told you so...

Really.

U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites

Wall Street Journal: "The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S. The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials.

The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study. "


When did the people represented by the government become separated from it? Why have they become the enemy, to be tagged, cataloged, monitored and watched? Why are we wasting resources watching ourselves? Do you, personally, need to be watched? If the answer is 'no', then any time spent watching you is wasted, and time that could be spent watching someone who needs watching. Why would you support a plan to watch yourself, at great cost and exactly zero impact? Lame.

Justice Dept.: FBI Misused Patriot Act

AP: "The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances."


No big surprise here. Law enforcement has a job to do, and will use whatever tools are available to them to do so. The problem is a policy level issue, and is a good example of the need for checks and balances between branches of government -- back to the framer's intent to prevent abuses of individual rights. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

House introduces bill to require ISPs to monitor, archive everything forever

CNet: "All Internet service providers would need to track their customers' online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican 'law and order agenda.'

Employees of any Internet provider who fail to store that information face fines and prison terms of up to one year, the bill says. The U.S. Justice Department could order the companies to store those records forever."

"Because there is no limit on how broad the rules can be, Gonzales would be permitted to force Internet providers to keep logs of Web browsing, instant message exchanges, or e-mail conversations indefinitely."

"That broad wording also would permit the records to be obtained by private litigants in noncriminal cases, such as divorces and employment disputes. That raises additional privacy concerns, civil libertarians say."


It's a given that this is a bad idea for several reasons - from 'this completely guts the notion of personal privacy' to 'the law of unintended consequences'. While surely a boon for storage companies, it pretty much sucks for everyone else.

1. Tremendous privacy implications for individuals, small business, anyone using an ISP for any reason.

2. Giant cyber-criminal target (crack, mine, build profiles for spearphishing, compromise unencrypted passwords, find legal but extortable information, etc)

3. Will trap data of normal people and do exactly zero to trap info on criminals (who are using encryption, other people's connections, blah blah)

4. IP and behavioral data doesn't prove identity or intent. Functionally useless. (see Splunk'd AOL Search Info, wardriving, RIAA/MPAA dragnets, log poisoning and rewriting, etc.)

So how do people (law enforcement, divorce lawyers, lawyers) access the traffic? where is it stored? how is it secured? how does one review the data for accuracy? will slightly different system-times wrongly implicate individuals based on timestamps and IPs ? (See 'DHCP for Dummies). How do we treat wifi hotspots? Open home and business wifi access points? Rogue ISP employees? Worms, botnets and malware infected computers (and whatever they might do)? Compromised law enforcement logins? We could do this all night.

It's retarded, impractical, an abhorrent breach of privacy, and dangerous for everyone.

On the plus side, maybe this will finally negate the 'net neutrality' argument (treating different bits differently) as users start using Tor, anonymizers, tunneling to Russian VPNs, etc. to encrypt all traffic - leaving nothing for ISP logs to grab or interpret. Maybe this is a good thing.

This is the litmus test for "do everyday people value their own privacy - and is the government still of, by, and for the people"...

U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

New York Times: "The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering"

"The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons."

"While the proposed rules have not been finished, justice officials said they were certain to bring a huge new workload for the F.B.I. laboratory that logs, analyzes and stores federal DNA samples. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they anticipated an increase ranging from 250,000 to as many as 1 million samples a year. The laboratory currently receives about 96,000 samples a year, said Robert Fram, chief of the agency’s Scientific Analysis Section."


All your DNA are belong to us. Forever.
And still doesn't address the issue of the millions of chimeric twins out there. One body - multiple versions of DNA.

FBI conducting multi-year internet porn study

ZDNet: "The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed."

"Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible." On Monday, a Justice Department representative would not immediately answer questions about this kind of surveillance technique.

"What they're doing is even worse than Carnivore," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who attended the Stanford event. "What they're doing is intercepting everyone and then choosing their targets."



Only a matter of time before the needle-stack makers legislate full data retention at ISPs.. First for the 'war on terr-r', then 'for the children', and later .. well, it will be too late to matter because they won't care what you think. ISP costs go up due to massive storage requirements, innocent Americans will have ALL internet surfing, communications, etc. stored for later perusal by law enforcement, divorce lawyers, the RIAA/MPAA or anyone else who can hack a massively distributed database.

Meanwhile, terrorists and others are unaffected as the needlestack gets larger. But it's not really about that. It's about control. And in the end, the government has the shiny new law enforcement tool they wanted. We're sure it will be useful, but at what cost to the rest of us? And what happens to checks, balances, the fourth amendment, etc. If anything will spur consumer adoption of encryption and Tor-like objects, this will be it.

Stay tuned.

Gonzales dislikes freedom, America

SF Chronicle: "One of the Bush administration's most far-reaching assertions of government power was revealed quietly last week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that habeas corpus -- the right to go to federal court and challenge one's imprisonment -- is not protected by the Constitution."

"Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares "habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless ... in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' But he insisted that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.''

Specter was incredulous, asking how the Constitution could bar the suspension of a right that didn't exist -- a right, he noted, that was first recognized in medieval England as a shield against the king's power to dispatch troublesome subjects to royal dungeons."


This isn't about technical accuracy; it's about intent. And Gonzales' intent is painfully clear.

MySpace sued for things they don't have control over...

AP: "NEW YORK - Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.

The law firms, Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies.

'In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,' said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer."


While the assaults themselves are a horrific violation of human rights, dignity and law, and we feel for the parents and the teens involved, the blame rests with the individuals who committed the acts, not MySpace.

We'll bypass the usual comment on parental responsibility, etc. They didn't want this for their children (nor did MySpace), and yes, perhaps if the parents had been more aware of what the small humans in their care were doing (in their houses, using their computers and broadband connections, and under their direct legal supervision), this might never have happened... If they'd raised their children to be cautious online, yatta... But the reality is that kids are their own persons, and what they lack in judgment, they make up for in enthusiasm and ingenuity. Just as parents are often blissfully aware of their kids drug habits, drunken binges and sexual proclivities, they have no idea what they're doing on the internet, or in the real world. But they are closer to the source than myspace -- a collection of interlinked web pages that are simply in one place and easy to use.

The parents, in attempting to hold MySpace responsible for what their kids were ultimately subjected to offline by third parties engaged in criminal conduct, would apply a standard of assumed responsibility to an online destination that's not found anywhere in real-space -- including theaters, shopping malls, Walmart, strip malls, backyards, or anywhere that kids can potentially interact with 'others'.

The Internet is not some hidden darkly magical place divorced from the real world -- the same laws (or lack of laws) should apply. The kids were not abused on MySpace. That would be impossible. They were assaulted in the real world at a physical location -- MySpace was only the medium by which they were able to initially communicate. That could have easily been Yahoo IM, a Cingular moble phone or through a mutual friend.

In the real world, you don't sue a mutual friend for an introduction that lead to something bad later on that they had nothing to do with.

While we do sincerely feel for the victims here, the perps are the ones who did the abusing. Lashing out at MySpace is a cynical move. Telling is the tens of millions in compensation being sought. MySpace may not have anything to do with this, but they're the ones with cash...



2/15/07: Update: The judge in the case has tossed out the lawsuit. With this much cash at stake and no real downside, the family will likely appeal...

Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

The Seattle Times: "President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant."


Slippery slope has become an open shaft.

Bush suspends habeas corpus, right to counsel, legalizes torture

CNN: "-- President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a 'vital tool' in the war against terrorism.

Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions."

""The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions,""

..."The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize aggressive interrogation methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts."


...so the rule is that if you want to 'disappear' someone, anyone, unfriendly to the administration, simply call them a terror suspect.

What could possibly go wrong?

Senate Committee approves pervasive NSA surveillance of US Citizens without warrants

Wired News:: "A bill radically redefining and expanding the government's ability to eavesdrop and search the houses of American citizens without court approval passed a key Senate committee Wednesday, and may be voted on by the full Senate as early as next week.

By a 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved S.2453, the 'National Security Surveillance Act,' which was co-written by the committee's chairman Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn) in concert with the White House."


Lovely. Any chance this will be killed?

Bush seeks to eliminate need for pesky 'courts', 'due process' and 'constitution'...

Washington Post: "A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such 'commissions' to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors."


The implications and potential for abuse here are monstrous.

Subverting the courts, the constitution, and allowing government to pick anyone at random (or anyone who disagrees) off the street, sequester them, charge them with secret crimes using secret evidence, secret witnesses, without counsel, appeal, the right to face their accuser, see evidence or defend themselves in any meaningful way... Carried out by military courts on a civilian population.

Without hyperbole, this is the "justice" system of every evil and repressive regime throughout the world and throughout history - and exactly the kind of thing the founders of this country sought to protect the People from when they signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As regular readers know, we're not for or against any particular political party -- but we are 100% behind the principals of freedom, capitalism, individualism, personal accountability and the rights, guarantees and laws that safeguard them.

By the evidence of their actions and abuses, the body of their writings, opinions and policies presented before us, we have to conclude that the current administration and high-level advisors are against freedom, against justice, and against the founding principals of the United States of America.

Quick refresher course for those who have forgotten: these are worth reading or rereading...

The text of the Declaration of Independence
The text of the US Constitution
The text of the Bill of Rights

Are our elected officials, regardless of party, living up to their responsibilities?

Are we?

California DMV preps for National ID card rush...

SF Chronicle: "Starting in 2008, all 22 million licensed California drivers will be required to go in person to a DMV office and prove their identity and address with three different documents before getting a new, federally approved state license."

"The Real ID Act requires every state to issue driver's licenses that comply with a national standard. The goal is to prevent fraud and make sure people applying for licenses are who they say they are and do not pose security risks.

The perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks had valid licenses, which allowed them to board airplanes."


So since the terrorists had real and valid licenses, we should require a different license? dumb. Keeping in mind that knowing someone's name does exactly zero to indicate intent.. It's appropriate that these madates are referred to as 'Acts' given the 'security theater' going on.. Won't stop a terrorist. Won't do squat.

Criteria: have to bring someone's birth certificate and two bills with the same name on them. No verification. Nice. Lovely thing is that anyone can print a birth certificate, and all that's required to set up ultilities (if you don't just steal bills from a mailbox first) is a driver's license. Old ones work just fine. You can buy those on the street (timetable for street vendors to sell federal IDs? 2008.) Whatever. The terrorists had valid licenses. Intent is the issue. Not a name you can bootstrap your way into through other insecure documents.

Senate Prepping Bill to Sue Bush

Associated Press: "A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush's signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.

'We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

Specter's announcement came the same day that an American Bar Association task force concluded that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.

Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency, reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national security and constitutional grounds."


Wow. Who saw that one coming? It's about time Congress started checking and balancing.. Oh wait.. election year. Makes perfect sense now...