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April 12, 2006 | Narus Not in the Know
Elise Ackerman at the San Jose Mercury News has some great follow-up reporting today on ex-AT&T employee-cum-whistleblower Mark Klein's public statement last week, which included allegations that a secret NSA spying room wired into to AT&T's internet switching station in San Francisco was home to a piece of data-mining equipment known as a Narus STA 6400.
The engineers at Narus weren't intending to create Big Brother's dream machine when they began writing software a decade ago to help phone companies send out more detailed bills.But as the Mountain View company's code became more and more sophisticated, customers began to discover new uses for software that was originally designed to monitor and analyze network traffic.
Now Narus finds itself at the center of a legal fight over domestic spying.
[...]
Narus executives confirm AT&T is a customer but say they do not know how the telecommunications giant uses its software. ``Once our customers buy our product, it's relatively opaque to us,'' said Steve Bannerman, vice president of marketing.
Narus CEO Greg Oslan said the company's software is designed to allow carriers to monitor all Internet traffic, including Web searches, e-mail content and attachments, and Internet phone calls.
Full story here.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 12:39 PM | TrackBack
April 10, 2006 | Spy Machine Capabilities?A blogger named bewert over at Daily Kos follows up on allegations made by ex-AT&T employee Mark Klein that AT&T installed equipment at an AT&T Internet switching facility that feeds the NSA a copy of every Internet packet that flowing from or to AT&T customers or across AT&T's expansive Internet backbone network. I covered Klein's public statement for Wired News on Friday and his full statement can also be found here.
bewert looked into the machine alleging Narus STA 6400, did a little math and parsing of some public statements to find that the machine was capable of monitoring 39,000 DSL lines at any one time.
Prior to 9/11 Narus worked on building carrier-grade tools to analyze IP network traffic for billing purposes, to prevent what they term "revenue leakage". Post-9/11 they have continued down that path while adding more semantic monitoring abilities for surveillance purposes. They even brought in former Deputy Director of the NSA William P. Crowell as an addition to their Board of Directors. [...]Remember that semantics is not just the data, but rather the meaning of the data. It looks at the data in a more comprehensive way than looking for keywords. Each NarusInsight machine does this at 2500 million bits per second, in real-time.[...]
These capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e. VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules. When Narus partners' powerful analytic tools are combined with the surgical targeting and real-time collection capabilities of Directed Analysis and Lawful Intercept modules, analysts or law enforcement agents are provided capabilities that have been unavailable thus far.[...]
Posted by Ryan Singel at 10:17 AM | TrackBack
April 07, 2006 | Ex-AT&T Employee on NSA Wiretap RoomAn ex-At&T employee has made public a summary of his statement he provided in support of a lawsuit against AT&T, alleging that the telecom giant has built out secret wiretap rooms that funnel internet and phone call data to the National Security Agency.
AT&T provided NSA eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician workforce was not allowed in the room."
Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the WorldNet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein said wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T's was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets," according to Klein's statement.
Full story here. Justin Scheck of The Recorder had the story first, and has some great info on the story and Klein's lawyer, Miles Ehrlich, a former U.S. attorney, over at the CalLaw's blog, Legal Pad.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 11:52 AM | TrackBack
January 16, 2006 | Hitchens And Bamford Sue Bush Administration! No Really!It was going to be the journalistic equivalent of Cagney and Lacey, but better. Well, better, but with fewer lesbians.
James Bamford, the studious and diligent one who has written books on the NSA, who has a soft spot for conspiracy theoeires was cast as the soul-searching, muckraking honest journalist who just might find out things he doesn't want to know are true..
Christopher Hitchens, the wild one prone to lighting up in elevators and putting whiskey in his oatmeal, would play the bitter, lost journalist who thinks all his colleagues are sellouts and pansies, but he has a soft side and spell checks his byline.
Together the duo would fight injustice, drink and smoke and make fun of editors, and have secret Meet-Ups, IM Department of Agriculture whistleblowers and wage the war on terror and anti-terror (the plan was to alternate weeks) with word processors! Word processors with byline spell checkers, of course.
And their first case?
Here's the shocker -- they don't write anything in the pilot episode. Instead, Bamford hears immediate clicks on the phone when he calls Mossad sources. For his part Hitchens hears clinks in his the highball glass when he calls on his sources.
Both suspect the government is wiretapping them.
So they sign up to have the ACLU sue the government, claiming the government probably eavesdropped on their phone calls (Hitchens vaguely recalls a late night international booty call from some months back, while Bamford claims not to have known that the NSA could intercept his calls to his sources in Israel., No really, he has at least one source there. No really some of his best friends are high level Israeli spooks.).
Too bad reality just scooped me.
No really, it did.
I swear on Echelon, reality bit me.
My blockbuster is in the New York Times. The news section of the NYT.
"There's almost a feeling of déjà vu with this program," said James Bamford, an author and journalist who is one of five individual plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit who say they suspect that the program may have been used to monitor their international communications."It's a return to the bad old days of the N.S.A.," said Mr. Bamford, who has written two widely cited books on the intelligence agency.
Although the program's public disclosure last month has generated speculation that it may have been used to monitor journalists or politicians, no evidence has emerged to support that idea. Bush administration officials point to a secret audit by the Justice Department last year that reviewed a sampling of security agency interceptions involving Americans and that they said found no documented abuses.
[...]
Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; ...
Remember this isn't old-school Trotskyite Hitchens; this is the post-9/11 Hitchens.
I guess we should have seen the re-reversal coming after he threw this bomb after the government decided to start confiscating his lighter when he gets on planes ((no I don't know how he lit the fuse after they took away his lighter) and yes, yes, I and You know that wasn't the administration pushing the lighter ban and we know that Michael Moore and Byron Dorgan are to blame but Hitchens doesn't know that and like Blutarsky, he's on a roll so don't interrupt him.)
I guess that while Hitchens made good friends with the Neo-Cons (who are Trotskyites of a sort), they weren't kind enough to give him a get-out-of-surveillance free card.
Now those neo-cons are going to hear from his ACLU lawyer.
All I can say to that is God help the Kurds if they ever even think one mean thing about Hitchens.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 10:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 19, 2005 | Something's Happening HereAnd the technology they are using isn't quite clear.
I'm becoming more and more convinced (like Noah) by little notes being hit by President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Deputy Director for National Intelligence General Michael Hayden that the extra-legal NSA wiretaps ordered by the president are using some new technology.
Or more likely, extending some NSA technological method that is clearly legal outside the United States to bear on certain international calls originating in the United States.
At today's press conference with Gonzales, Hayden hinted that the end-run around the FISA court was done for reasons beyond just avoiding annoying paperwork:
FISA involves the process -- FISA involves marshaling arguments; FISA involves looping paperwork around, even in the case of emergency authorizations from the Attorney General. And beyond that, it's a little -- it's difficult for me to get into further discussions as to why this is more optimized under this process without, frankly, revealing too much about what it is we do and why and how we do it.
When asked why the president didn't ask for Congressional authority for this wiretapping, Gonzales said:
We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that was not likely to be -- that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program.
Terrorists and dictators already know their communications can and will be tapped. But what technology don't they know about that the NSA is using here?
Hayden also hinted today that the wiretaps involved suspicions below the level of probable cause.
And here the key is not so much persistence as it is agility. It's a quicker trigger. It's a subtly softer trigger. And the intrusion into privacy -- the intrusion into privacy is significantly less. It's only international calls. The period of time in which we do this is, in most cases, far less than that which would be gained by getting a court order.
And is the period of time shorter in most cases, because the net starts very wide and then is narrowed as the eavesdropping continues?
And what does that "softer trigger" mean? That the program relies on some standard much lower than probable cause as applied to an individual? Maybe something like probable cause to believe someone from the state of Virginia is calling a terrorist?
So does the executive order turn the NSA's ears, data-mining supercomputers and real time transcription powers on ALL calls leaving the U.S. that are bound for Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and Iraq?
If that's the case, then that's the equivalent of the Catholic Church revealing that for the past three hundred years, the Vatican hasn't believed in the Pope's infallibility.
Rule number one at the NSA is don't spy on Americans.
Rule number two at the NSA is don't talk about the NSA.
This story broke because some at the NSA broke rule number two because they think that rule number one was broken.
The other possibility, suggested to me by someone with experience with wiretapping, is that the NSA may have compromised a hardware manufacturer -- say Motorola or a satellite phone manufacturer, a telecom carrier or a satellite(s).
In any of those scenarios, the NSA would not have to intercept any signals since they would be diverted at the hardware level to the agency. Such power might also give the agency the ability to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks on encrypted communications.
This is a huge story, so little is known at this point and so all we are left with is speculation.
Update: I'm even more convinced that some new technology is being used here, besides traditional wiretaps, based on a just-released July, 2003 letter from Senator Rockefeller to Vice President Cheney outlining his concerns about the eavesdropping.
Rockefeller says he isn't a lawyer or a "technician" and that he can't make a judgement on the program because he can't consult with his staff.
Wiretaps aren't that complicated to understand.
Also, Rockefeller said his briefing reminded him of the Total Information Awareness project (defunded for purposes of data-mining citizens' records, but being developed using black-budget funds for overseas data-mining).
That makes me think the project involved some large scale mostly-suspicionless scanning of outgoing communications. Then, the NSA would focus in on targets, and discard other numbers and email addresses, after some technological sifting.
Josh Marshall has posted two-page hand-written letter.
Technorati Tags: nsa, fisa, wiretaps
Posted by Ryan Singel at 09:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 18, 2005 | Bush Wiretaps Supremely IllegalWho says Bush's end run around surveillance laws are illegal?
The Supreme Court.
Back in 1972, the Supreme Court took on a case (where President Nixon ordered wiretaps on individuals suspected of plotting to bomb a CIA building) and ruled that the President's power under the Constitution to defend the country from attacks does not give the executive the power to unilaterally order wiretaps. (US v. US District Court, 407 U.S. 29)
Official surveillance, whether its purpose be criminal investigation or ongoing intelligence gathering, risks infringement of constitutionally protected privacy of speech. Security surveillances are especially sensitive because of the inherent vagueness of the domestic security concept, the necessarily broad and continuing nature of intelligence gathering, and the temptation to utilize such surveillances to oversee political dissent.We recognize, as we have before, the constitutional basis of the President's domestic security role, but we think it must be exercised in a manner compatible with the Fourth Amendment. In this case we hold that this requires an appropriate prior warrant procedure.
As I wrote yesterday, this is not a story about the necessity or propriety of the wiretaps, it's about the method used to order the wiretap, a method that shows complete disdain for the principle of checks and balances.
What did the Supreme Court say in 1972 about this very question?
It may well be that, in the instant case, the Government's surveillance of Plamondon's conversations was a reasonable one which readily would have gained prior judicial approval. But this Court "has never sustained a search upon the sole ground that officers reasonably expected to find evidence of a particular crime and voluntarily confined their activities to the least intrusive means consistent with that end." Katz, supra, at 356-357.The Fourth Amendment contemplates a prior judicial judgment, not the risk that executive discretion may be reasonably exercised. This judicial role accords with our basic constitutional doctrine that individual freedoms will best be preserved through a separation of powers and division of functions among the different branches and levels of Government.
And what does such unchecked surveillance power mean for those who dissent from the Government?
History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs.The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. […]
The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.
The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech.
But what about President Bush's argument that the secret and warrantless searches were reviewed by top administration officials and a secret court judge?
The independent check upon executive discretion is not satisfied, as the Government argues, by "extremely limited" post-surveillance judicial review. Indeed, post-surveillance review would never reach the surveillances which failed to result in prosecutions.Prior review by a neutral and detached magistrate is the time-tested means of effectuating Fourth Amendment rights.
Supreme Court decisions remain the highest law in this country.
Despite whatever advice President Bush received from his lawyers, it is clear that the NSA wiretaps he ordered were illegal and set a dangerous precedent.
Related posts and stories worth your time:
- The Washington Post's Barton Gellman's roundup of recent revelations of government spying.
- The Washington Post's Dana Milbank on Congress finally realizing they should actually be watchdogs.
- The L.A. Times's David G. Savage and Bob Drogin on the legality of the wiretaps.
Technorati Tags: NSA, SupremeCourt, Wiretaps, Surveillance, executivepower
Posted by Ryan Singel at 01:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 17, 2005 | It's Not The Crime; It's the RationalePresident Bush admitted today that he circumvented United States law and repeatedly ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap suspected Al Qaeda operatives in the United States. His rationale for the order was that the wiretaps needed to be installed instantly, and he said that the New York Times story that revealed his illegal order damaged national security.
The wiretaps themselves should not be in question. No one, besides Ramsey Clark and his ANSWER minions, would argue that phone numbers and email addresses found on the computer of a captured Al Qaeda member should not be wiretapped. Immediately.
In fact, that's what the law allows.
The government has the power to start such wiretaps immediately, so long as they promptly notify a special court judge and send paperwork to that court with 3 days. All they need to prove is probable cause that the person, whether they be a foreigner or an American citizen, is likely a member of a terrorist group or a foreign agent. That court is highly deferential, and just last year, authorized more than 1,700 wiretaps.
That's why this story is not about the wiretaps, so long as one presumes the administration is working in good faith and not using the wiretaps to monitor American citizens exercising their legal rights. Despite this week's story about the Pentagon monitoring anti-war Quakers, I'm still inclined to believe that the targets are legitimate.
The story is about executive privilege and this administration's belief that its anti-terrorism actions cannot not be curtailed by Congress or the Courts.
Bush is at best misleading the country and at worst, lying, when he argued today that this story undermines national security.
Every gunrunner, would-be terrorist, two-dinar dictator and money launderer knows that the NSA has awesome capabilities and that their emails and phones can and will be tapped.
As Julian Sanchez points out today, no terrorist could possibly care how the wiretap was ordered:
So what kind of plausible difference to our national security could it make if terror suspects who know they might be targeted for eavesdropping with a warrant learn they might be targeted without one?
Bush ordered the wiretaps in violation of the wiretap laws, which explicitly say that any wiretapping in the United States must go through the courts, whether those be traditional criminal wiretaps or the ones designed for spies and terrorists.
His rationale is that he has the power to ignore and supersede the law by fiat, since Congress authorized the use of force against those who committed or abetted the September 11 bombings.
Bush says that the policy is reviewed by Justice Department and NSA lawyers and officials. That may be true, but that's not what the law says should happen. Those are just rules his administration made up.
In fact, under this interpretation of his power -- unlimited, unreviewable power in regards to fighting terrorism --, the McCain amendment prohibiting torture has no meaning. Bush would be above that law. In fact, under this conception of the presidency, there's no need to renew the Patriot Act for terrorism investigations, since he can just issue the regulations himself.
But there's a price to be paid for writing your own rules in order to sidestep paperwork after the fact and the slightest of judicial oversight.
The court that authorizes wiretaps told the Administration that information found in these illegal wiretaps can't be used to get new, legal wiretaps.
Traditionally, counter-terrorism operatives who capture the name and phone number of a yet-unknown accomplice can then go back to the court and use that information to build a chain of legal wiretaps.
But with these extra-legal wiretaps, those agents would not be allowed to do so, because the secret FISA court says that illegal evidence can't be used, according to the New York Times. But the administration is willing to cause problems down the investigative path and break the law SIMPLY to prove the point that it is above filling out forms and having to prove to sympathetic judges that they aren't breaking the law.
That arrogant flouting of the law and the basic tenets of our democracy -- not the leaks from concerned government officials -- are what is dangerous in this story.
For more on how the secrecy argument being floated by the President and the right half of the blogosphere is simply, and historically, wrong, check Adam Shostack's post, Government Secrecy and Wiretaps.
Update: Also, seems that Noah and I are having the same thoughts, but on opposite coasts...
Posted by Ryan Singel at 05:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 16, 2005 | Feinstein: Simply UnacceptableCalifornia Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) on the Senate floor today:
I rise today as a 12-year member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a 5-year member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I do so indeed with a very heavy heart. I have had, until now, great confidence in America's intelligence activities. I have assured people time and time again that what happens at home has always been conducted in accordance with the law.
I played a role in the PATRIOT Act. I moved one of the critical amendments having to do with the wall and the FISA court. Today's allegations as written in the New York Times really question whether this is in fact true. I read it with a heavy heart, yet without knowing the full story.
[...]
Section 105 (f) of FISA allows for emergency applications where time is of the essence. But even in these cases, a judge makes the final decision as to whether someone inside the United States of America, a citizen or a non-citizen, is going to have their communications wiretapped or intercepted. The New York Times reports that in 2004, over 1,700 warrants for this kind of wiretapping activity were approved by the FISA Court. The fact of the matter is, FISA can grant emergency approval for wiretaps within hours and even minutes, if necessary.
[...]
I would argue the resolution authorizing use of force [vs. those involved in 9/11 attacks] was not a declaration of war. I read it this morning carefully. It does not authorize the President of the United States to do anything other than use force. It doesn't say he can wiretap people in the United States of America. And apparently, perhaps with some change, but apparently this activity has been going on unbeknownst to most of us in this body and in the other body now since 2002.
The newspaper, the New York Times, states that the President unilaterally decided to ignore this law and ordered subordinates to monitor communications outside of this legal authority.
In the absence of authority under FISA, Americans up till this point have been confident -- and we have assured them -- that such surveillance was prohibited.
This is made explicit in chapter 119 of title 18 of the criminal code which makes it a crime for any person without authorization to intentionally intercept any wire, oral, or electronic communication.
As a member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, I have been repeatedly assured by this administration that their efforts to combat terrorism were being conducted within the law, specifically within the parameters of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which, as I have just read, makes no exception other than 15 days following a declaration of war.
We have changed aspects of that law at the request of the administration in the USA PATRIOT Act to allow for a more aggressive but still lawful defense against terror. So there have been amendments. But if this article is accurate, it calls into question the integrity and credibility of our Nation's commitment to the rule of law.
I refreshed myself this morning on the fourth amendment to the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States.
Here is what it says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Clearly an intercept, a wiretap, is a search. It is a common interpretation. A wiretap is a search. You are looking for something. It is a search. It falls under the fourth amendment.
[...]
There is a procedure, and it is timely.
As a matter of fact, we got into this rather seriously in the Judiciary Committee. At the time we wrote the PATRIOT Act, I offered an amendment to change what is called "the wall" between domestic intelligence-gathering agencies and foreign intelligence-gathering agencies from a “primary purpose” for the collection of foreign intelligence to a “significant purpose.” We had a major discussion in the committee, as is the American way. We were making public policy. We discussed what primary purpose meant. We discussed in legal terms what significant purpose meant.
So this was a conscious loosening of a standard in the FISA law to permit the communication of one element of Government with the other and transfer foreign intelligence information from one element of the Government to the other.
That is the way this is done, by law. We are a government of law. The Congress was never asked to give the President the kind of unilateral authority that appears to have been exercised.
I was heartened when Senator Specter also said that he believed that if the New York Times report is true -- and the fact that they have withheld the story for a year leads me to believe it is true, and I have heard no denunciation of it by the administration -- then it is inappropriate, it is a violation of the law.
How can I go out, how can any Member of this body go out, and say that under the PATRIOT Act we protect the rights of American citizens if, in fact, the President is not going to be bound by the law, which is the FISA court?
And there are no exceptions to the FISA court.
So Senator Specter, this morning, as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced that he would hold hearings on this matter the first thing next year. I truly believe this is the most significant thing I have heard in my 12 years. I am so proud of this Government because we are governed by the rule of law, and so few countries can really claim that. I am so proud that nobody can be picked up in the middle of the night and thrown into jail without due process, and that they have due process. That is what makes us different. That is why our Government is so special, and that is why this Constitution is so special.
That is why the fourth amendment was added to the Bill of Rights -- to state clearly that searches and seizures must be carried out under the parameter of law, not on the direction of a President unilaterally.
So I believe the door has been opened to a very major investigation and set of circumstances. I think people who know me in this body know I am not led toward hyperbole, but I cannot stress what happened when I read this story. And everything I hold dear about this country, everything I pledge my allegiance to in that flag, is this kind of protection as provided by the Constitution of the United States and the laws we labor to discuss, argue, debate, enact, then pressure the other body to pass, and then urge the President to sign. That is our process.
If the President wanted this authority, he should have come to the Intelligence Committee for an amendment to FISA, and he did not.
The fact that this has been going on since 2002 -- it is now the end of 2005. Maybe 8 people in these 2 bodies in some way, shape, or form may have known something about it, but the rest of us on the Intelligence Committees did not.
That is simply unacceptable.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 02:39 PM | TrackBack
December 16, 2005 | Spying on American SoilThe National Security Agency has long prided itself on restricting the use of its awesome snooping powers to foreign agents and foreign countries. Now, according to reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the NSA has turned its ears to listening in on American soil, without having gotten judicial approval first.
Instead, according to NSA expert James Risen and the Washington Post's Dan Eggen, President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 allowing the NSA to track communications originating in the United States on up to 500 people at a time.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
Full story in New York Times by Risen.
This is the second time in a week that the government has been shown to be conducting surveillance on American soil without judicial oversight.
Earlier this week, NBC revealed that a Pentagon spying unit was keeping a secret database that included information on, among other groups, an anti-war Quaker group.
The government has long had the authority to wiretap and track foreign agents and spies, through the ultra-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, which almost never rejects applications and the Patriot Act specifically made these orders easier to get. In 2004 alone, the court authorized 1,754 wiretap orders.
It's also hard to understand how the order was necessary since in a time of war, the FISA court routinely authorizes emergency orders.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a hawkish Democrat, had this to say today:
In the absence of authority under FISA, Americans have, until now, been confident that such surveillance was prohibited. This is made explicit in Chapter 119 of Title 18 of the Criminal Code, which makes it a crime for any person, without authorization, to intentionally intercept any wire, oral or electronic communication.As a member of the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, I have been repeatedly assured by this Administration that their efforts to combat terrorism were being conducted within the law - specifically, within the parameters of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In fact, we have changed that law, at the request of the Administration in the USA-Patriot Act, to allow for a more aggressive, but still lawful, defense against terrorism.
I have never been more disturbed than I am by this story. If true, it calls into question the integrity and credibility of our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.
We have always been a nation governed by laws, and these allegations, if true, fly in the face of this bedrock constitutional principle.
I turn your attention to my first real blog post, which argued, ala the 9/11 Commission, that a powerful civil liberties board was necessary to keep tabs on anti-terrorism projects because Congress has failed to do so.
Such a board somewhat exists in name, but it is underfunded, toothless and staffed by non-experts and at least one member with a conflict-of-interest.
Here's what I wrote then and I stand by those words even more today:
Regardless of one's position on the Patriot Act and the necessity of increased anti-terrorism powers, it is impossible to ignore that many people fear that the government is abusing its newfound powers.That perception is only strengthened by the Bush Administration's unwillingness to share information.
How often and for what reasons has the FBI used the National Security Letters provisions of the Patriot Act? That provision gives the FBI wide authority to issue itself administrative subpoenas in order to compel businesses (including ISPs) to provide evidence and business documents to investigators.
How many times has the FBI used that provision? (editor note: The Washington Post reports in 2005 that the FBI has used NSLs some 30,000 times.) We don't know, since the FBI has decided that even aggregate statistics about the use of NSLs are classified. The ACLU, which is suing the FBI over the use of NSLs, has heavily redacted FBI documents that indicate the NSLs are widely used. Now just because they are widely used, that does not mean the FBI is abusing that power.
But how are we to know, given the Attorney General has decided to share as little information as possible? We know how often the government uses regular wiretaps, but that is only because a 25 year old law forces the FBI to report to Congress about how it is using that power every year.
Yet, Congress has been unwilling to require similar public reports about other powers and programs. Their oversight of anti-terrorism programs and powers has been abysmal and the executive branch has continually stonewalled and resisted their meager efforts.
This is exactly why an independent, powerful and balanced civil liberties board is necessary.
There is no real debate that the government should be fighting militant Islamic extremism (which is how I think the government defines the war on terrorism, explicitly excluding domestic right-wing anti-abortion, anti-federal government militants).
If that movement is left unchecked and allowed to grow, millions around the world could lose their lives and liberty to religious extremists who hate modernity.
Our civil liberties, not our economic system, are what should define us as a nation -- the right to petition for the redress of grievances, the right to travel without undue restriction, the right to worship any or no god, the right to be safe in our homes and papers from unjustified government searches, our right to walk the streets without the fear of a cop demanding identification and our right to speak freely in opposition to government.
So to the extent the government needs expanded powers to fight terrorists, so too do we need expanded powers to protect our civil liberties.
For more on this story from a smart lawyer (and a spirited debate in the comments), check Orin Kerr's post.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 11:19 AM | TrackBack
December 11, 2005 | Hacks And Bloggers's Epics on Gilmore EpicKevin Drum at the Washington Monthly picked up on the Gilmore Epic, and has prompted me to post this post-mortem media round-up on Gilmore's hearing on Thursday.
My take, published on Thursday in Wired News:
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Thursday on tech entrepreneur and internet freedom fighter John Gilmore's challenge to a secret government order forcing airline passengers to show identification or submit to a pat-down search.The hearing pitted a matter-of-fact government attorney against Gilmore's impassioned, podium-banging lawyer, James Harrison, in a closely watched legal battle over government secrecy and antiterrorism measures that has federal officials defending a rule whose existence they will not admit in open court.
Gilmore contends that the policy violates his right to travel and that the additional search of those who don't show ID is a form of punishment.
"When a cop asks you for your ID on the street, you are free to walk away. There is no penalty," Gilmore said outside the courthouse. "If you refuse to show ID at an airport, you can't fly."
In court, Justice Department attorney Joshua Waldman countered that the identification requirement, if it existed, was a minimal intrusion and enhanced airline security.
"The requirement promotes the right to travel by protecting everyone's safety," Waldman said.
The arguments Thursday focused on three issues: whether the identification or search requirement violates the Fourth Amendment, whether the government has to show the public and the courts the text of rules that affect the public, and which court has jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to such rules.
[...]
Appellate Judge Steven Trott repeatedly questioned Harrison about whether asking for identification really implicated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, calling it Harrison's "weakest argument."
But Trott also questioned the government's case, asking Waldman why the United States was "playing cat and mouse" with the courts by alternatively referring to the identification-or-search requirement as a policy, a rule and a law-enforcement technique.
The presiding judge, Richard A. Paez, probed Waldman about the government's defense of a rule it refuses, in Waldman's words, "to confirm or deny the existence of."
"Doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd?" Paez asked.
Judge Thomas G. Nelson also questioned the government's secrecy.
"How do we know this is an order?" Nelson asked.
Paul Elias, an Associated Press reporter who forgot his driver's license at home and talked his way into the courthouse with a business card and an ATM card with his picture on it, led with this:
A wealthy Libertarian who is fighting a requirement that airline passengers show identification before traveling asked a federal appeals court Thursday to broaden the scope of his battle to cover other forms of commercial transportation.
and noted:
Gilmore arrived in court Thursday wearing Birkenstock sandals and a small pin on his lapel that read "Suspected Terrorist."That same pin prompted a British Airways pilot to kick Gilmore off a London-bound flight in 2003.
Oakland Tribune's premier hack (that's not pejorative) Sean Holstege filed this:
Millionaire John Gilmore didn't show photo identification to walk into a federal courthouse Thursday, where his attorney tried to persuade a panel of appellate judges that nobody should need ID to board an airplane.Sacramento attorney James Harrison made special arrangements to get his client past the checkpoint, where every other member of the public was asked to show ID. But no such arrangements were possible when Gilmore tried to board a Southwest Airlines flight at Oakland International Airport on July 4, 2002.
News.com's Declan McCullagh piped in with his usual fine prose style.
A federal appeals court wrestled Thursday with what seems to be a straightforward question: Can Americans be required to show ID on a commercial airline flight?John Gilmore, an early employee of Sun Microsystems and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the answer should be "no." The libertarian millionaire sued the Bush administration, which claims that the ID requirement is necessary for security but has refused to identify any actual regulation requiring it
My friend Justin Scheck of The Recorder, a West Coast law paper, filed this feature, with some fine coloring:
Bespectacled, bearded and Birkenstocked (with Dr. Seuss socks), John Gilmore cut an appropriately iconoclastic profile Thursday as the centerpiece of a notebook-wielding gaggle in front of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.Gilmore, a tech-boom multimillionaire who can't fly on airplanes due to his refusal to show identification at airports, is a star -- and major funder -- of the electronic privacy movement.
He's been at the center of an increasingly strange piece of litigation for the past three years since he sued the government, claiming that the requirement to show ID before boarding a plane is unconstitutional.
Complicating matters -- and nourishing conspiracy theories -- is the government's ongoing refusal to disclose what, if any, such requirement is on the books.
(Note to Harrison, telling a legal reporter that the judges you just tried to persuade were "a terrible panel" might not be a great idea.)
Tim Cavanaugh of Reason filed this factually-challenged bit for Reason's blog.
Most of today's arguments turned on various points tangential to the central argument. In particular, there's a jurisdictional question about whether the Ninth Circuit should be hearing the case. Both sides argued that the case should be remanded to a "lower court" (presumably the Northern District of California, which dismissed the case last year), though Department of Justice lawyer Joshua Waldman held out the option of the Ninth Circuit's deciding the case on the merits. The interesting part is that the jurisdiction brouhaha arises from the question of who is actually ordering the ID check. The Transportation Security Administration claims it gave an order to demand IDs to the airlines on the authority of Congress, but Congress has not actually issued any law requiring ID checks. Gilmore's lawyer, James P. Harrison, argues that requirement hasn't been made public and is effectively a secret law. Waldman counters that there are many cases where we accept a "legal fiction" that something is in the U.S. Code, that ID requirements are prominently posted at airports, on the TSA website, etc., and that everybody in the courtroom (except Gilmore, who was signed in by his lawyer) had to show ID to enter the building.[long section on the shortcomings of Gilmore's lawyer removed for space considerations]
On the courthouse steps after the hearing, one of the pro-Gilmore cranks (whose number I would estimate at about a score) spelled out the distinction Gilmore's attorney did not: That the Hiibel decision made a distinction between having to identify yourself verbally and having to produce a piece of identification, which constitutes a search. (I don't vouch for the details of any of this stuff, just that he seemed to have an argument.)
(Just so you know the jurisdiction fight has nothing to do about who is ordering the ID check, it's about a law that allows challenges to administrative orders to only go to an appeals court. Gilmore wants the case sent back down to a district court for a full trial, but contrary to Cavanaugh's assertion, the government does not want that at all. They want the Ninth to dismiss the case, but if the Ninth does think Gilmore has a case, they want the Ninth to decide it. They don't want a full trial -- they think the law explicitly says that can't happen. Waldman's point about the "legal fiction" was an ironic point since courts assume that every one should know a rule if it is in the federal code, even though its ridiculous to assume most citizens read the federal code. The irony here is that everyone knows you have to show i.d. at the airport, even though its not in the federal code, so Gilmore can't say he didn't know about the rule. And finally, the pro-Gilmore 'crank' Cavanaugh mentions is none other than Edward Hasbrouck, who knows more about the minutiae of airline travel laws and airline databases than just about anyone on this big, big planet.)
Here's an excerpt from Hasbrouck's wordy, but perceptive and accurate, take on Gilmore's hearing:
The good news, as I read the tea leaves of the argument, is that it appears that John Gilmore and the cause he has taken up will eventually get their day in court, and may get it somewhat sooner rather than later: the 3 judges seemed inclined, if they rule that the case should first have been filed with them instead of with the district court, to order it transferred to their jurisdiction, rather than ordering it dismissed and making Mr. Gilmore start over from scratch in the circuit court.[...]
I don't know if Mr. Gilmore was verbally asked, or stated, his name -- so far as I can tell, the record is silent on that point. But by presenting himself for transportation, and presenting those tickets as entitling him to passage, he was implicitly making a legally binding self-declaration as to his name and identity.
This case is not, therefore, about anonymous travel, an interesting but irrelevant side issue that was raised in this morning's argument. It's not about whether Mr. Gilmore could be asked for ID (he was, in effect, when he was asked to present a name-identified non-transferable ticket) or whether Mr. Gilmore could be sanctioned for failing to identify himself (he did identify himself).
The issue in this case is specifically about the legality of the search embodied in the demand for tangible evidence of identity, and the lack of due process embodied in the secrecy of the "rule" requiring production of ID credentials (whose existence, even today, government counsel would "neither confirm nor deny") and the lack of any publicly-disclosed criteria as to what evidence of identity is sufficient, or how its sufficiency is to be determined.
By the by, this decision is looking to be very interesting.
The panel seems not very happy with the secret nature of the rule, but simultaneously doesn't seem persuaded by the argument that the rule is unconstitutional.
But their animosity for the former may move them for a more full constitutional challenge. I highly suspect the panel will take on this case and ask for more briefings or send it in front of the full panel of the Ninth. This stuff is way too interesting for these judges to give it back to a district court.
The other interesting angle is that if Gilmore gets the court to decide that the search part of the identification -or-search policy is an unconstitutional administrative punishment, then he also brings down the no-fly and selectee lists as unconstitutional administrative punishments..
Posted by Ryan Singel at 11:00 PM | TrackBack
December 08, 2005 | The Epic of Gilmore
Longtime Internet civil liberties activist and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder, John Gilmore, will have his day in court Thursday to argue against the constitutionality of a secret rule compelling airline passengers to show identification before boarding an airplane.
From my Wired News story from Wednesday:
Although John Gilmore lives just five blocks from San Francisco's Department of Motor Vehicles, his driver's license is expired. On purpose.The outspoken, techno-hippie, wealthy civil libertarian doesn't want to give his Social Security number to the DMV.
Neither will he show his driver's license at airports, or submit to routine security searches. This refusal to obey the rules led him to file suit against the Bush administration (Gilmore v. Gonzales) after being rebuffed at two different airports on July 4, 2002, when he tried to fly without showing identification. One airline offered to let Gilmore fly without showing ID, but only if he underwent more intensive security screening, which he declined.
On Thursday, Gilmore and his lawyers will get 20 minutes in front of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to make their argument against identification requirements and government secrecy, in a case that time and shifting public opinion has transformed from a quirky millionaire's indignant protest into a closely watched test of the limitations of executive branch power.
"The nexus of the case has always been the right to travel," Gilmore said. "Can the government prevent Americans from moving around in their own country by slapping any silly rules on them -- you have to show ID, you have to submit to searches, you have to wear a yarmulke?"
Gilmore has sunk thousands of dollars into fighting identification requirements, but he also personally committed to not traveling in the United States if he has to show identification.
So Gilmore has not taken a train, an intercity bus or a domestic flight since July 4, 2002. He still flies internationally.
Gilmore describes himself as being under "regional arrest," and said he would love to drive and fly again.
"I'm a millionaire," Gilmore said. "I can do whatever the fuck I want, right? Why should I run around without an ID? Because no one else was paying attention to that and letting our liberties slip down the drain. I figured it was worth some amount of money and some amount of personal sacrifice to keep a free society."
Regardless of your take on the necessity or usefulness of showing identification, the questions Gilmore's case is raising about government secrecy are intriguing.
Here's what Abraham Sofaer of the Hoover Institution has to say on his nascent SofaerBlog.
I hope Sofaer will excuse me for quoting him at length:
Those of you who follow privacy issues obsessively will probably have seen John Gilmore’s website, a standard boilerplate PANIC NOW privacy advocate website. What interests me is DOJ’s argument here claiming that 49 U.S.C. 114(s)(1)(C), which prohibits disclosing information “developed or obtained in carrying out security” together with 49 CFR 1520.9(a)(1), enable TSA to enact a secret rule requiring ID to be shown when boarding an aircraft simply by issuing such a rule and then declaring that rule’s existence to be sensitive information.The judge denied the DOJ motion to file its brief in camera and ex parte (ed. note. in camera means in the judges chambers and ex parte means without Gilmore's la, and so DOJ filed a brief in the case that assumed that ID requirements do exist, rather than provide documentation on whether that is the case. Here is a choice quote from that brief: “First, there is an administrative record, namely, the TSA security directive alleged by plaintiff.” (emphasis mine) Lawyers can say things like that with a straight face. The brief argues in part that the ID requirement is a law enforcement technique, not a law in itself, and therefore it does not need to be published in a codified form.
The interesting part of the whole thing to me is how insistent TSA is about not releasing official text of the ID-or-search rule. It’s not clear how such a rule could be a secret in any meaningful sense of the word. The argument put forward by DOJ is that it is analogous to catching drug traffickers, where the investigator properly does not wish to reveal his criteria for where to focus investigative attention. Since the ID requirement is (alleged and assumed to be) uniform, I can’t see how that applies. It seems to me that TSA wants blanket authority to make secret and globally-applicable regulations, with review to be done only by appellate courts, and only under seal.
On December 8th we will find out whether congress has given them that authority.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 12:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 28, 2005 | Irish GrayAn Irish-born pilot who was labeled a security threat by the Transportation Security Administration when he attempted to learn to fly a larger plane is hoping to settle the matter out of court, according to Eric Gershon of the Cape Cod Times.
Cape Air pilot Robert Gray, 35, sued the feds in July after they denied his flight school application and alleges he was subsequently was placed on the "no-fly" list as punishment. If true, he would be the first person, outside of a few (but not all) high level Al Qaeda and some Guantanamo detainee, known to actually be on the list.
Many, including Senator Edward Kennedy and Sister Glenn Anne McPhee, have matched against the list due to name similarities.
If Gray is on the list, he would be the only person likely to have standing to challenge the legality of the no-fly list. The challenge would be interesting since the no-fly list is an odd bird. Bruce Schneier calls it a list of people too dangerous to fly, but not dangerous enough to arrest. I'm more interested in the challenge since the list is an extra-legal administrative punishment that sits in a very gray legal area. And until now no one seemed to have a way to challenge.
The government has long argued that the no-fly list and Secure Flight do not implicate the right to travel (generally understood as deriving in part from the First Amendment) since there are other ways people can travel. The suit by several Alaskans who can only get to the Alaskan capital and their jobs by plane would have mooted that argument, but that lawsuit is currently on hold.
As for one of the weirdnesses of a no-fly list, consider that Gray is Irish. If Gray is on the no-fly list, how would he get back to Ireland if he wanted to?
Link: Eric Gershon's Cape Cod Times story
Posted by Ryan Singel at 09:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 14, 2005 | ChoicePoint Intelligence Agency?The FBI and the Defense Department have long subscribed to private commercial data broker ChoicePoint, for use in investigations.
But since 2002, the agencies have also been relying on ChoicePoint's data to fuel data mining operations in one of the least understood post 9/11 operations, known as the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, according to Shane Harris of the National Journal.
The article, which relies on heavily redacted documents acquired through an open government request, raises questions about whether the Privacy Act -- which largely prevents secret databases on American citizens -- means anything if the government can simply outsource that data collection to a company like ChoicePoint (best known now for selling information on 145,000 citizens to identity theft scammers).
To help the government track suspected terrorists and spies who may be visiting or residing in this country, the FBI and the Defense Department for the past three years have been paying a Georgia-based company for access to its vast databases that contain billions of personal records about nearly every person -- citizens and noncitizens alike -- in the United States.[...]
A set of contract documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and which the government sought to withhold for almost two years, reveals details not previously reported about ChoicePoint's work for the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, called FTTTF or "F tre F." This task force was set up soon after the 9/11 attacks to assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in locating foreign terrorists and their supporters in the United States. Because the task force can't maintain records on U.S. persons without opening an official investigation, it relies on ChoicePoint to augment the intelligence that the government collects through legal channels.
[...]
But the documents indicate that ChoicePoint may have gone beyond simply offering its commercially available products to the government. In 2003, ChoicePoint agreed to provide access to an "exclusive" system used to help identify terrorism suspects. Although much of the description of the system has been redacted from the documents -- on the grounds that it would reveal law enforcement tactics and operations -- the portions that were released indicate that ChoicePoint's work involves continuously tracking a "subject of interest" and notifying the government when new information has surfaced on that person.
After a string of redacted text about this exclusive service, the document states, "When this new information is added and identified as relevant new data for a subject of interest, the FTTTF will receive electronic notification.... Additional information beyond the identity and address data can be provided to the FTTTF with a subpoena." In releasing the contract documents, the government said it could not elaborate on the system, because doing so "could certainly assist ... terrorists in circumventing detection." The government also redacted the dollar amount of the contracts, making it harder to assess costs and scope.
According to an outside expert on ChoicePoint who reviewed the documents for National Journal, the exclusive service looks like something ChoicePoint built specifically for federal agencies, and the arrangement raises questions about whether the company is effectively becoming an arm of the federal government.
"The language [of the contract], and ChoicePoint making their full system available to the government and [performing] custom-tailored searches for the government, show a high degree of cooperation," says Chris Hoofnagle, a researcher with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who has obtained ChoicePoint contracts and corporate documents through other legal filings.
Full ChoicePoint/FBI story here.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 10:03 AM | TrackBack
November 11, 2005 | TSA "Refreshes" Website, Removes Critical ReportThe Transportation Security Administration has removed a link from its website to an internal report highly critical of its newest airline passenger screening proposal, while simultaneously adding rebuttals to it.
The scathing report was written by a group of privacy experts and technologists appointed to the Secure Flight Working Group, which was tasked by the TSA with evaluating the effectiveness and privacy risks of its proposed upgrade to the current passenger watchlist system, now dubbed "Secure Flight."
Frustrated by incomplete briefings, the group recommended that Congress ban live testing of the program until the Department of Homeland Security clarifies how it will work.
When asked about the delinking of the report, TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said by email the delinking was part of a "'scrub' of our website."
"Several items have been refreshed to ensure appropriate information for public consumption is available," Melendez said.
The report was posted in full to the TSA's website in mid-September to the surprise of several group members who did not expect the critical report would be allowed to be made public.
"Based on the limited test results presented to us, we cannot assess whether even the general goal of evaluating passengers for the risk they represent to aviation security is a realistic or feasible one or how TSA proposes to achieve it," the report said. "We do not know how much or what kind of personal information the system will collect or how data from various sources will flow through the system. Until TSA answers these questions, it is impossible to evaluate the potential privacy or security impact of the program..."
The group's membership included security expert Bruce Schneier, noted technologist Ed Felten, corporate privacy lawyer Martin Abrams, and Steve Lilienthal of the conservative Free Congress Foundation.
The TSA has since delinked the report, replacing it with an executive summary of the report (.doc) that simply summarizes the nature of the working group and the Secure Flight program. It contains none of the report's findings.
The revision seems to have been done by a TSA employee named Jose Carrao on October 12.
Oddly, the full report (.pdf) remains on the TSA's servers, though there are no links to it. A saved copy can also be found here.
The TSA also added two rebuttals from aviation groups (Word docs here and here) and one clarification (.pdf) from the Terrorist Screening Center, which is responsible for creating the centralized terrorist watchlist.
One of rebuttals itself has been revised to remove original comments about the size of the TSA watchlists, saying that information "has been determined by TSA/DHS to be Sensitive Security Information (SSI)." SSI is not classified information, but the TSA uses the designation to withhold information from the public, such as airport security plans and the fact it requires airlines to ask for identification from passengers. One federal judge has already ruled that the TSA uses SSI designation frivolously.
The working group's report discusses the watchlist's composition and length, relying on information provided to it by a TSA employee and other information found in a Justice Department report on the watchlist(.pdf).
In part, the working group wrote that "As of spring 2005, there were about 270,000 entries in the TSDB [Terrorist Screening Database], many of them aliases of the same individual. Of these, about 30,000-40,000 were on the No-Fly list, and 30,000-40,000 were on the Selectee list, for a combined total of about 70,000. As the TSDB and TSA lists are further scrubbed, TSA officials predict that the number of No-Flys might be reduced to as few as 20,000. However, the number of Selectees was expected to increase substantially, so that the total of the No-Fly and Selectee lists might be about 160,000 persons."
Melendez did not reply to a follow-up email asking if the report contained sensitive information inappropriate for public consumption.
If the document does contain information that is too sensitive for the public to know about, it is unclear why the TSA simply delinked the document without removing it from their servers, since the report is easily available through search engines.
Melendez also declined to say why the TSA uses the word "refresh" to refer to the removal of information from its website.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 10:25 AM | TrackBack
August 04, 2005 | Quick ScreeningsJust a couple of pointers to things worth your time:
- Daniel Solove and Dan Markel of the young-blood lawyer hangout, PrawfsBlawg, have a little smart back and forth about irrational fears, rational spending and a touch of the avian flu. Start with Solove's questioning of homeland security spending and then check out Dan Markel's response.
Solove's one graf:
Certainly, we should devote resources to fighting terrorism. But programs such as Secure Flight and data mining, which have yet to deliver any benefits, which are costing millions to study and develop, and which pose significant concerns for privacy and civil liberties, strike me as incredibly wasteful. The same is true with the NYC subway searches. It's a waste of money and resources that could be used in addressing the more serious (and often preventable) risks of death in our society . . . like the bird flu.
Markel's one graf:
[T]he threat we face is one that would rip apart the stability that is both a precondition for liberal democracy, and its blessing. Cancer, suicide, and heart disease, for all the heartache and sadness -- and death -- they cause, are not the same threat. In our zeal to be rationalists, we shouldn't forget that.
(Hat tip to Shostack for getting here first) - The New York Times's Stephanie Strom has a good piece exploring the implications of non-profits employing permanent background checks to make sure their volunteers haven't been convicted of sex or drug crimes. (Hat tip to AF)
- And the story that could have be written within hours after New York City announced random searches for subway travelers: The New York Civil Liberties group is going to sue.
- Reuters has the update on the privacy and civil liberties board that was recommended by the 9/11 commission and created by law 6 months ago.
A civil-liberties board ordered by the U.S. Congress last year has never met to discuss its job of protecting rights in the fight against terrorism, and critics say it is a toothless, underfunded shell with inadequate support from President Bush.
Lawmakers including some Republicans, civil-rights advocates, a member of the Sept. 11 Commission and a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have expressed concerns.
Lanny Davis, the only prominent liberal among the five people Bush nominated after a six-month delay, said he had not received a call from anyone related to the board since it was formally announced in June. Davis said he could not comment on specifics because the members had not yet met.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 12:10 PM | TrackBack
June 07, 2005 | Not Called Nuclear Scientists for NothingIt looks like someone decided the best way to silence the song Los Alamos whistleblower Tommy Hook was about play before Congress was to kick out a few of Hook's teeth and break his jaw.
SSN pal Noah Shachtman is all over the story (start here, then go here, get some background on Hook here and then here).
Keep your eye on Noah's Defense Tech for updates on who went nuclear on Hook and why. He's a solid reporter and he did once sneak into Los Alamos without getting caught.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 11:23 AM | TrackBack
April 25, 2005 | UnredactedSenate Democrats are criticizing John Bolton, Bush's nominee for United Nations ambassador, on a number of fronts -- from allegations he tried to get analysts fired for not toeing his line on Cuba to portrayals of him as a man given to abusing subordinates (interns of the world, take heart).
But most intriguingly, Democrats are raising questions about Bolton's requests to the National Security Agency to reveal the names of American in NSA transcripts.
For those unfamiliar, the super-secretive NSA, which dwarfs the CIA, specializes in eavesdropping, but is prohibited by law from targetting Americans.
Anytime they pick-up a conversation that involves a "U.S. Person," they have to redact that part of the transcript and they insert a term such as "named American" or "named American official."
John Bolton, it turns out, asked the NSA to reveal those names ten times since 2001, which Democrats seem to suggest means he was spying on his superiors.
Now, I know from talking with various folks that the NSA takes its no-spying on Americans obligation seriously, so I was fascinated that Bolton asked for the names.
But it turns out it looks like the volume of Bolton's requests weren't out of the ordinary.
In fact, the NSA has revealed names some 3000 times since January 2004.
So are Democrats making a mountain out of a bad moustache?
Possibly, though I assume that if one sees a pattern in the kind of documents Bolton asked about (such as trying to get inside dope on a superior), there could be a case to be made.
Regardless, raising the issue got Los Angeles Times reporter Greg Miller to start asking questions, and here's what he found.
For those of you who don't know much about the NSA, James Bamford's books on the agency are fascinating. Start with Body of Secrets, which dishes dirt and then make your way to his first book on the agency, Puzzle Palace, which focuses much more on the agency's bureaucratic history.
Posted by Ryan Singel at 12:03 PM | TrackBack
April 19, 2005 | 40 YearsSenator Kent Conrad started reminicising at a Congressional hearing in March and let slip that a relative of his had been a CIA station chief some 40 years ago.
He also said his name: Harden Smith.
Though it been biblical time since Smith worked in Libya, his name remains classified as the CIA considers station chiefs to be covert operatives.
John Donnelly of Congressional Quarterly has more on this and the later attempt to expunge the record here.
After the hearing, the Budget Committee got a call from the Pentagon requesting that the panel delete the line from its official transcript, which it did. On the committee’s Web site, most hearings are available on Real Video, but clicking on the link to watch the March 1 hearing brings up “file not found.”Conrad was not the only one who was asked to delete the information. Congressional Quarterly, which posts transcripts of hearings on CQ.com, likewise was asked to remove this one. The request to CQ, like that to the Budget Committee, came not from the CIA but from the Pentagon’s Office of Legislative Affairs. It did not come until a month after the hearing, without explanation of the putative security risk. CQ declined.
There’s nothing wrong with the government asking news organizations to delete information that it deems to be classified, as long as there’s no explicit or implied threat of retaliation against the news outlet, said Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. But in this case, he said, there does not appear to be a security imperative that justifies a deletion.
“This individual is retired,” Aftergood said of Smith. “The fact that in the past he may have served undercover is no longer national security information.”
Posted by Ryan Singel at 10:02 AM |