Okay, We're Feeling a Little Jilted

Obama is running to the center on this. There's no cover on the side of Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd--there are too many McCains, Grahams, Liebermans, McConnells and Bonds out there who will hammer him for being weak on defense:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.

In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a "vital national security matter" -- and alienating his base.

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Now, the reality of this is, there will be raw feelings and all that, but there will be a sense of being stabbed in the back that comes from this, too.

Does that mean you go and vote for McCain? No, because McCain couldn't tell you from one day to the next where he stands. But I guarantee you one thing--if there's a Democrat in the White House on January 21, 2009, this legislation will come up again. This is not the end of it, not by a longshot.

No Republican is ever going to sit idly by and let a Democratic President have this kind of power. We will see every possible limitation on Presidential power reintroduced into our lexicon should that happen.

Obama is betting there will be a terrorist attack on the United States, apparently, and that's sad. So what if there is? No amount of warrantless wiretapping would stop it. No amount of invading the privacy of Americans would make a difference. This legislation doesn't protect anyone--it just robs them of their privacy so that politicians can appear to be doing what amounts to busywork in the face of a crisis. We have to find a way to not lose our minds if a terrorist hits our country. We must survive it, close ranks, and do what is necessary to protect Americans any way we can, even though we know there's virtually nothing we can do to stop the next attack. We must never allow a terrorist to think they can stampede us into abandoning our principles for the false promise of a little security.

--WS

Looking Beyond the FISA Bill

You didn't really expect them to do the right thing, did you?

That's okay. I was naive once. We've all been a little naive. The issue with telecom immunity boils down to this--there was no way that the telecom companies that illegally assisted the government with an illegal warrantless wiretapping program that did nothing to protect the American people were ever going to face true legal jeopardy. There was no way they were going to pay the penalties. No way were the decision makers going to face the music. There was no chance of a perp walk similar to the one we saw yesterday with the people at Bear Stearns. There was no way their cadre of lobbyists was going to allow legislation to come out of the Congress that would eviscerate these companies and cost them billions in liabilities.

With Fred Fielding in the White House and Michael Mukasey at the Justice Department? Forget it. Only a naive, pie-in-the-sky worshipping bobble-eyed hippie would have hoped it would all turn out right. Have we been able to set aside the freakout and accept such a bummer outcome all along? Did we know it was all going to turn to shit?

We may never know the full extent of what happened--nor should we care to. Someone waved papers at someone else across a table and someone had more intestinal fortitude than someone else. Someone got beat, and beat badly. That's all there is to it.

You can go read Jessalyn Radack and you can go read Glenn Greenwald and I will tell you--everything they're saying is correct.

But there is one thing no one knows--and that is, how bad was the thing that was used to threaten the Democratic Party to roll over on this issue? How bad was the thing they were threatening to use against anyone who opposed them? Was it the fact that there are archives on every Democratic politician kept sealed away--archives of their personal conversations, archives of their monetary dealings, details of their sex lives?

Here's one thing I do know--nothing is outside the realm of possibility. Nothing is too crazy, too paranoid or too outlandish to rule out. Did someone threaten to destroy the careers of a few prominent Democrats? Did a few lobbyists band together and threaten to have someone's dog shot and killed on a suburban street? Did someone produce photos of a lawmaker pressed naked against the headboard of a cheap hotel bed?

Something had to have been done to produce this result. Something awful.

You are never going to beat these people with outrage. You are never going to beat them with righteous indignation. You are never going to beat these people by citing the US Constitution as proof they do not respect the rule of law.

Because that's a fool's paradise in America, circa 2008.

No, you're only going to beat these people by quietly and purposefully organizing strong opposition to their efforts by backing candidates for office that have a chance of defeating them in primary races or in general election races. We need better Democrats now, not necessarily more Democrats, just better ones. We need to get rid of the Steny Hoyers, Jay Rockefellers, and the concern trolls like Harold Ford Jr. and James Carville. Their time is over. Not one thin dime, to any of them. They are craven fools who have sold us out.

The only way to beat them is to assume that, for the next ten years, you're not going to win anything. Assume that it will take that long, or longer, to find grassroots candidates who believe in what is right and are willing to fight against the people who are selling us out. Assume that there's a good possibility you'll never get there. Assume you'll get half way there and your candidate will sell you out.

That's how it works in the grown up world. You take what you can get. You fight to get whatever you can. But if you toughen up and learn to expect disappointment and frustration, those times when you do win and when you do make a massive impact will be all the more fulfilling. If you're up against tight-fisted, mean and nasty people who will say or do anything to hold on to what little they have then you've got to get just as mean and just as nasty and be willing to go where they won't--like, door to door in the rain signing up voters or being the only person you know who cares.

It is time to grow up--we're not going to get what's right. We're not going to get what's fair. We're going to get a cold, hard, bitter tasting pill to swallow. The question is--do you give up? Do you fight harder? Do you take this as a legitimate grudge against the people who sold you out and use it against them when they are weak and vulnerable and damn them to hell with it? When you're both exhausted and on the ground, and when your opponent reaches out to you for mercy, do you slap their hand away and stomp them into the ground and remember back to this moment and savor the victory?

The next fight is forming. They're not sitting there feeling sorry for you. They're celebrating. They popped corks last night and drank themselves silly because they won and we lost.

Are you going to take that?

Open Source Intelligence Collection

Newsweek becomes the unwitting accomplice to an idea being floated by the Defense establishment that, hopefully, will be shut down quickly and quietly:

Congressional experts fear that Defense intelligence agencies are not making wide enough—and smart enough—use of the vast pool of "open source" information now available in cyberspace. The House Armed Services Committee, in a report approved last week on the House floor, worried that clumsy attempts by Pentagon agents to download useful intelligence from the Web could compromise U.S. spy operations by putting potential enemies on notice that U.S. intelligence is interested in them.

Last week the Federation of American Scientists made public a U.S. Army field manual, stamped FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY, outlining procedures for open-source intelligence collection by Army units. The manual says Army agents "must use Government computers to access the Internet" unless they have special authorization to do otherwise. One U.S. official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that, in an effort to track people behind Web sites giving detailed instructions on how to build sophisticated IEDs, counterterrorism experts two years ago asked Pentagon brass for permission to log on to the Web sites using fake identities. The official said the plan was abandoned when lawyers and policymakers insisted that the counterterrorism officials log on using computers with telltale ".gov" or ".mil" domains—a ruling that would have tipped off potential bad guys.

A Capitol Hill official who also asked for anonymity said that congressional overseers were concerned that using U.S. IP addresses to search the Net could "complicate [the] ability to go deep into Web sites to extract information." One way for the Pentagon to get around such restrictions would be to hire private contractors, but this raises questions about protecting the rights of Americans. A Pentagon spokesman told NEWSWEEK: "We've seen an increased appreciation within the Department of Defense regarding the value of open-source intelligence."

That's not what they want "masked" or hidden IP addresses for. But it was a good try.

Foreign intelligence services are already savvy to the fact that the US government conducts open source research. It's in many ways an open and free process that allows governments to put certain technologies on the table and to allow certain pieces of information to be made available, freely and without confusion.

For example, the Serbian government really does want the United States to know exactly where the Chinese embassy really is located in Belgrade. They really want the US military to be able to locate, find, and map exactly where it is. They don't want any confusion about that.

What the defense establishment wants is an excuse to hand hundreds of people free, unfettered access to any and all Internet sites so that they can harass, intimidate, and collect information from blogs, web sites, message forums and the like. This is because the DoD has had to shut down CIFA. Every time a major web site discovers that a government employee is "looking" at their content, it sends a collective shiver down the spines of free speech and civil liberties advocates. Since the DoD can no longer rely on CIFA, it makes sense to create a framework that would allow analysts to have anonymous access to the Internet in order to mirror or mimic what CIFA was (allegedly) doing.

This also gets around having to get FISA warrants or comply with USSID 18, of course. Because if a military intelligence analyst is collecting information anonymously, why would anyone have to worry about FISA in the first place? Who would know?

The defense establishment is simply tired of being caught doing this, so they are pushing to get the extra technology and funding to make their efforts more anonymous.

Apparently, they just want to be free to "stick it to the moonbats."

--WS

Who the Hell Thought This Was a Good Idea?

One company in Northern Virginia controls the database for all phone numbers in North America. And, no, that's not a great idea.

Sterling-based NeuStar is the carriers' digital directory for all phone calls in North America. More than 800 telephone companies have numbers in the database. NeuStar assigns blocks of available telephone numbers to carriers. It also manages the directory for common short codes: five- or six-digit codes that people punch into their cellphones to take part in sweepstakes or to vote for game-show contestants, for instance. And about one out of every four Internet transactions is routed using a NeuStar database, as NeuStar handles traffic for domains that include .biz, .us, .org and .info.

NeuStar's databases are so powerful that the FBI a few years ago sought direct, unfettered access to one containing 310 million phone numbers in the United States and Canada. The telephone companies that pay NeuStar to run the database denied the FBI's request, but they did allow NeuStar to create a site where authorized law enforcement officials with court orders can obtain carrier information on telephone numbers.

NeuStar is part of an evolving telecom industry that is creating caches of information attractive to the government without clear guidelines governing who may have access and under what circumstances. Its registries fall under international, U.S. government and trade association rules, including those set by the Federal Communications Commission.

The company is dependent on and crucial to telecom companies and state, local and federal governments, part of the government-industrial complex that drives the region's economy. Indeed, said Jeffrey E. Ganek, NeuStar chairman and chief executive, "this is a business that could only have grown up in Washington."

[snip]

NeuStar also helps optimize Web traffic for clients such as Amazon so that when a customer types in Amazon.com, NeuStar directs the request to one of Amazon's thousands of servers around the world. It provides the same kind of service for Oracle, Emirates Airlines and Forbes.

"We're at all the key Internet nodes in the world," Ganek said. "Depending on the time of the day and the point of origination, we send the traffic to Seattle, for instance, or to a data center in Miami or another data center in Singapore. If there's a fiber cable cut in the Pacific, we see it before [the carriers] do and turn the traffic in the other direction so it goes counterclockwise around the globe."

First of all, BULLSHIT. The FBI asked and they "turned them down?" How did that work? During 2005 and 2006, the FBI was going crazy with "National Security Letters" and they weren't taking "no" for an answer from anyone.

Second of all, they're not just operating here in North America:

Revenue last year was $429.2 million, and profit was $92.3 million, up from $73.9 million the previous year. Company officials expect revenue to exceed $500 million this year. Soon, they said, NeuStar expects to be providing digital directory service for about 85 percent of all wireless devices in the world.

How is that a good idea, either? How savvy are the foreign companies to the fact that US law enforcement can look at any and all numbers?

Third, they didn't "deny" the government. They winked and said, "here you go!"

In 2005, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration wanted a direct link to the database in NeuStar's Sterling headquarters, according to a January 2005 letter from the Justice Department criminal division to a consortium of carriers that have given NeuStar the contract to run the database. The department wanted to use the data to identify which carrier to subpoena for records concerning telephone numbers in an investigation, the letter said.

"What they were asking for in a nutshell was a copy of the database," said Mike Warren, NeuStar vice president of fiduciary services. "They wanted us to send them an update of the database once a day."

Instead, NeuStar set up LEAP, or Local Number Portability Enhanced Analytical Platform, a Web site to help local, state and federal law enforcement in investigations that rely on phone call surveillance. The database gives basic information such as carrier but not more technical details such as whether a phone number is for a wireless phone or a landline. Earlier this year, NeuStar added historical carrier information to that service.

Whether a phone number is for a wireless phone or a landline can be gotten from the companies that already allow warrantless wiretaps. Or a simple telephone lookup. Or just "pinging" the phone with a single dialing from a piece of software designed to determine where the number traces to. That's a very cozy arrangement, designed to skirt the law. Telecom Immunity makes skirting these laws even easier.

In effect, they make a big deal of telling the Feds that they can't have their product, but they give them the whole thing simply by witholding the one thing the Feds can figure out themselves.

Remind me again how we lost our privacy rights? Did I vote for this shit? Because if I did, I really screwed up.

Explosive New Charges of Covering Up Eavesdropping

The other word for it is "stonewalling" and that's exactly what they're doing. They're stonewalling any attempt to investigate their lawbreaking. I will guarantee you one thing--the convenient excuse of an out-of-date E-mail system that has no audit or back-up tapes is the only think keeping these people out of a Federal prison.

The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents.

The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation (alerted to the issue in part by a NEWSWEEK story last fall) is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House.

At the time, the White House was proposing a surveillance bill—strongly backed by the telecoms—that included a sweeping provision that would grant them retroactive immunity from any lawsuits accusing the companies of wrongdoing related to the surveillance program.

It won't happen now. This article should be the skewer through the heart of any effort to bring telecom immunity before the Congress.

The recent responses in the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit provide no new information about the administration's controversial post-9/11 electronic surveillance program itself, but they do shed some light on the degree of anxiety within the telecom industry over the litigation generated by the carriers' participation in the secret spying. One court declaration, for example, confirms the existence of notes showing that a telecom representative called an Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) lawyer last fall to talk about "various options" to block the lawsuits, including "such options as court orders and legislation." Another declaration refers to a letter and "four fax cover sheets" exchanged between the telecoms and ODNI over the surveillance matter. Yet another discloses e-mails in which lawyers for the telecoms and the Justice Department "seek or discuss recommendations on legislative strategy."

The declarations were filed in court by government lawyers only after U.S. Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco, who is overseeing the case, ordered them to fully process the Electronic Frontier Foundation's FOIA request for documents showing lobbying contacts by the telecoms. The government initially resisted even responding to the FOIA request, but White found that disclosure was in the public interest because it "may enable the public to participate meaningfully in the debate over" the pending surveillance legislation.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has already been hemmed in on this issue:

Four former senior intelligence officials wrote a strong letter yesterday to Director of National Intelligence McConnell, calling the Administration's hard line on telecom immunity an impediment to negotiations on the pending FISA legislation.

The letter, signed by former Senior Director for Combating Terrorism at the National Security Council Rand Beers, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council Richard A. Clarke, former Deputy National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick and former assistant general counsel at the CIA Suzanne Spaulding, acknowledges that the "sunset of the Protect America Act (PAA) does not put America at greater risk."

These intelligence professionals note that "[t]elecommunications companies will continue to cooperate with lawful government requests, particularly since FISA orders legally compel cooperation with the government," and find it unclear that "the immunity debate will affect our surveillance capabilities," as McConnell had asserted. Contrary to the Bush Administration's dire claims, the letter notes that the "intelligence community currently has the tools it needs to acquire surveillance of new targets and methods of communication."

NO IMMUNITY. That should be the rallying cry of everyone who gives a shit. It cannot and should not happen, ever. These lawsuits must go forward and we must know what was done in our name to spy on Americans. The only way to go forward is to reveal what was done, come clean about it, let the trials happen, let the guilty be tried as well, and trust in the rule of law.

And, as if this needs to be said, we should never tolerate fearmongering, crying wolf, or plain basic lying designed to incite fear of terrorist attack. We need our intelligence agencies to operate as transparently as possible and without politicizing their mission:

Q: Even if it's perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.

A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of '78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.

I think the intention of the FISA law was to keep the Executive Branch from abusing its powers, and not to give cover to the Republican Party thirty years after the fact, but I'm funny that way. I pay attention. Telling the American people that they're going to die--your Republican Party in action.

Another Reason To Watch the Watchers...

Some ace reporting from Ryan Singel--reminding us exactly why we need oversight of ANY agency investigating US persons:

For the second time in five months, a jury has deadlocked over charges against an inept group of Miami cultists, a massive setback for the Justice Department who accuses the group of plotting to topple the Sears Tower in Chicago.

The Justice Department built the case using paid informants and numerous wiretaps, but the six men on trial (one was acquitted) say they only pretended to want to wage jihad in order to swindle $50,000 from a government informant. The supposed ring-leader of the so-called Liberty City 7 Narseal Batiste was known for roaming Miami streets in his bathrobe to find recruits.

When the indictments were announced in 2006, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole described the arrests as "yet another important victory in the war on terrorism" and a "grim reminder of the persistent threat environment that exists here at home and underscores the need for continued vigilance and cooperation."

THREAT LEVEL is reminded of a snippet from FBI wiretapping documents that trumpeted the surveillance of the group, saying the wiretaps led to other leads and more than 50 intelligence reports.

We provided continuing support for a FBI Miami counterterrorism case which during this time period [October 2005 through September 2006] has intercepted in excess of 1800 telephone calls. Intercepted communications and call data records provided by the system that HAT [High-Capacity Access Team] installed, operates and maintains allowed for the identification of a previously unknown terror organization and individuals operating in the United States. This information has supplied the probable cause for additional case and FISA initiations at other FBI divisions. The derived intelligence has been disseminated to the intelligence community, via approximately 50 IIRS [Intelligence Information Reports], as well to allies of the United States.

One can only imagine the contents of the 50 intelligence reports about a group whose idea of secrecy was to station a guy in a military uniform with a mask on outside their warehouse when having 'meetings.'

You know, if we had a functioning system of overseeing what the FBI is doing and what our intelligence agencies as a whole are doing when they look at US persons, someone would have been able to step in and put a quick end to this ridiculous incident. The FISA provisions worked the way the wingnuts claim that they don't--no one was "denied" anything in this case. They SHOULD have been able to cut this off and have the local police deal with these idiots. If anything, this case proves there should be stringent oversight of the value of the intelligence, not just the process of giving permission to eavesdrop. These were clearly not "international terrorists." These were "wannabe badasses" who could have been arrested and charged locally for being stupid with firearms.

Oversight means more than just blessing off on whatever a G-man or a DIA analyst wants to do for months on end--oversight should function as a gatekeeper of sorts, ensuring that we are directing our resources at real threats and real targets, and not wasting our time on shambling, bath-robe wearing idiots. These particular idiots were more of a danger to themselves than they were to the public. You could, literally, make the case that they should have been committed to a mental health facility and treated, instead of being brought up on shaky Federal charges. Sure would have been a better use of resources and money.

This used to be a pretty badass country. If someone like this popped up on the radar back in the day, they were rounded up and dealt with accordingly, you know, with real courts and judges and the rule of law and Habeas Corpus and all that. Quaint, yes. But effective.

I mean, how many Michigan militia are running around right now?

FISA: Nothing New Presented by Terrified Republicans

I mean, if you can't scare Steny Hoyer, who can you scare? McJoan at DKOS explains:

FISA Fight: Secret session secrets
by mcjoan
Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 10:39:38 PM PDT
Well, ok, not really "secrets" since there's no way we could know what was discussed because it was, um, secret, but Steny Hoyer did have this to say upon the session's end:

"I did not hear any new information tonight that dissuades me from my very strong belief that the FISA bill House Democrats have produced – and which the House will vote on tomorrow – is a reasonable, thoughtful, appropriate piece of legislation that will ensure that the intelligence community has all the tools it needs to protect our nation, while also respecting the Constitutional protections that Americans rightfully feel are so important. Tomorrow, I will urge members on both sides of the aisle to vote for this legislation."

Because there was no new information to be had. The House leadership called the Republicans' bluff--they probably called for the damned thing thinking the Dems would reject it, and then they would have some great tool to use against them in the debate. I can just hear them now: "Not all the secret information was heard, it's irresponsible of them to go forward with this vote."

Well, leadership let the Republicans have their little session, even though they admitted on the House floor in the debate leading to the session that they had no new info. They were left standing there holding the bag, just creating one more obstruction. Funny way for them to behave, considering how dangerous they say it is for the nation to go one more day without resolution of the FISA issue.

When given a chance to close the doors and bring out anything--ANYTHING--to justify what's being done in our name, the Republicans roll over and emit a wet fart so devastating to their own plans, somewhere--SOMEWHERE--there's at least one of them with the decency to maybe realize that their world is turning into a nightmare.

I, for one, would welcome more of the honest ones to abandon the Republican Party and join the Democratic Party. It's cool over here. Plus, you get to acknowledge reality and stuff.

Speaker Pelosi also takes the President to the woodshed--



Now, when are they going to realize this: when you talk this way, Madame Speaker, it makes me happy and it makes me approve of the job you're doing. It makes me....all giddy and stuff.

Couldn't Have Come at a Worse Time

I think you would have to be feeble of mind, delusional, or simply unable to pay attention to trust this government to do anything anymore. How long do we have left? Ten months?

Updated: The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.

Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.

[snip]

Mueller offered no additional details. Several other Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with this year's findings have said privately the upcoming report will show the letters were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous three years.

In contrast to the outrage by Congress and civil liberties groups after last year's report was issued, Mueller's disclosure drew no initial criticism from senators at Wednesday's hearing.

Speaking before the FBI chief, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., urged Mueller to be more vigilant in correcting what he called "widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters."

"Everybody wants to stop terrorists. But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected," Leahy said. "There has to be a better chain of command for this. You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he'd like to obtain Americans' records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to."

I think that you can clearly see that a report that identifies the widespread abuse of National Security Letters--which are nothing more than incidents where the FBI is given access to information collected without oversight--comes at a really bad time for anyone trying to argue that we should just trust the government not to abuse its power.

Here, in full, is an example of what a National Security Letter can do--and it is particularly important to note that granting immunity to telecom companies means we'll never get to the discovery phase in about 40 pending lawsuits. A discovery phase where we might find out what the hell they were looking for.

From the Washington Post:

My National Security Letter Gag Order
Friday, March 23, 2007; Page A17

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

FISA and the FBI

Here's a comment that I posted elsewhere--

At the breakfast yesterday, [Kenneth] Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

Privacy advocates have raised concerns that the Senate bill contains a provision that would allow the attorney general to erect a new barrier to future privacy cases brought under the nation's foreign intelligence surveillance law.

Contrary to current practice, the Senate bill would halt such lawsuits if the attorney general certifies that the assistance provided by the telecom carrier is lawful. The only check on that certification would be a court review as to whether the attorney general "abused" his discretion, which experts said yesterday is the lowest possible standard of judicial review.

"This provision is yet another example of the executive branch 'just trust us' mentality when it comes to intelligence matters," said Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

You know, when I see something like this reproduced and commented upon here--as if it were actually true--it makes me realize that we're fighting a losing battle with people who will say anything to stay in power.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, to smack this shit down once again:

The only reason why Congress began considering amendments to FISA in the first place was because a FISA court earlier this year ruled that a warrant was required for foreign-to-foreign calls incidentally routed through the U.S. via fiber optics. Everyone -- from Russ Feingold to the ACLU -- agreed that FISA never intended to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign calls that have nothing to do with U.S. citizens, and thus, none of the bills being considered -- including the bill passed by the House -- requires warrants for such foreign-to-foreign calls. Here is Rep. Rush Holt, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the key architects of the House bill, explaining what the House bill actually does:

Ensure that the government must have an individualized, particularized court-approved warrant based on probable cause in order to read or listen to the communications of an American citizen. . . .
The RESTORE Act now makes clear that it is the courts -- and not an executive branch political appointee -- who decide whether or not the communications of an American can be seized and searched, and that such seizures and searches must be done pursuant to a court order.

Under the House bill, individualized warrants are required if the U.S. Government wants to eavesdrop on the communications of Americans. Warrants are not required -- as [Time Columnist Joe] Klein falsely claimed -- for "every foreign-terrorist target's calls."

While the government (in order to prevent abuse) must demonstrate to the FISA court that it is applying its surveillance standards faithfully, the warrant requirement is confined to the class Rep. Holt described. Klein's shrill condemnation of the House FISA bill rests on a complete falsehood (that's not surprising; the last time Klein wrote about FISA, he said that "no actual eavesdropping on conversations should be permitted without a FISA court ruling" and then proceeded to defend a FISA bill which, unbeknownst to him, allowed exactly that).

So, once again, we have to stomp our feet and patiently explain why you can't believe anything a member of the Bush Administration or the Republican Party has to say--they are lying and they know it. This is the smokescreen that they are trying to use to cover up systematic abuse.

Here is an excerpt from a filing dated MAY 17 2002
from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and it details abuse of intercept BEFORE 9/11:

In November of 2000, the Court held a special meeting to consider the troubling number of inaccurate FBI affidavits in so many FISA applications. After receiving a more detailed explanation from the Department of Justice about what went wrong, but not why, the Court decided not to accept inaccurate affidavits from FBI agents whether or not intentionally false. One FBI agent was barred from appearing before the Court as a FISA affiant. The Court decided to await the results of the investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility before taking further action.

In March of 2001, the government reported similar misstatements in another series of FISA applications in which there was supposedly a "wall" between separate intelligence and criminal squads in FBI field offices to screen FISA intercepts, when in fact all of the FBI agents were on the same squad and all of the screening was done by the one supervisor overseeing both investigations.

To come to grips with this problem, in April of 2001, the FBI promulgated detailed procedures governing the submission of requests to conduct FISA surveillances and searches, and to review draft affidavits in FISA applications, to ensure their accuracy. These procedures are currently in use and require careful review of draft affidavits by the FBI agents in the field offices who are conducting the FISA case investigations, as well as the supervising agents at FBI headquarters who appear before the Court and swear to the affidavits.

In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors. These incidents have been under investigation by the FBI's and the Justice Department's Offices of Professional Responsibility for more than one year to determine how the violations occurred in the field offices, and how the misinformation found its way into the FISA applications and remained uncorrected for more than one year despite procedures to verify the accuracy of FISA pleadings. As of this date, no report has been published, and how these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the Court.

Instead of correcting the problem, which actually dated back to the Clinton Administration, the problem got worse:

At the end of 2006, the FBI's Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Strikingly, the report said that the FBI's software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.

Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 "sessions," all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance.

That's a lot of terrorism. You'd think there were bombs going off on Main Street in Podunk, Idaho on a daily basis.

The only explanation is that the FBI is running wild, collection all manner of information on US persons, and handing that information over to the Bush administration. Is the FBI complicit in the wholesale spying of the Bush administration on the Democratic Party? On anyone opposed to the policies of the Bush Administration?

There aren't even 27.7 million illegal aliens in this country. How could there be 27.7 million terrorists?

If they grant immunity to the telecom companies, we will never find out why they had to listen in on 27.7 million conversations in 2006. We will never get to the bottom of this.

FISA - The Next Few Days Are Critical

We all know Senator Chris Dodd is under siege--but there are 14 Senators who oppose Telecom Immunity.

Glenn Greenwald has been out front on this issue, so he has our support. I want to highlight, in its entirety, a letter from a commenter named pow wow:

[And, yes, commenters DO make a difference!]

from a letter to Glenn Greenwald by pow wow:

FISA & What's At Stake
As I understand it, John Edwards came out publicly to oppose either warrantless surveillance, or immunity, or both, last fall sometime [his current stump speech includes a line about ending "illegal" spying on Americans]. I don't remember the details, and it's hard to tell how much the campaign has been following the intricate ins and outs of the FISA debate.

So to try to help counteract the latest White House PR push for immunity for their well-heeled secret corporate surveillance partners, here're a few reminders and links about the core provisions of the amendments to FISA (beyond the brazen immunity provisions) that will be on the floor of the Senate this Thursday, in spite of Chris Dodd's hold on the Intelligence Committee bill, courtesy of "Majority Leader" Harry Reid:

These two bills (the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committee FISA bills) are about (in addition to immunity in the Intelligence bill's Title II) "Link Analysis" and the "largest database ever assembled in the world" - as indirectly confirmed by the House Judiciary Committee's report on its FISA bill "RESTORE," which cited the following two news articles as describing activity that the RESTORE Act (and thus obviously the two Senate bills) would permit:

...The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

[snip]

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

[snip]

For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events. - Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY, May 11, 2006

Http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

...Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher for AT&T, said the telecommunications companies could have easily provided the F.B.I. with the type of network analysis data it was seeking because they themselves had developed it over many years, often using sophisticated software like a program called Analyst's Notebook.
"This sort of analysis of calling patterns and who the communities of interests are is the sort of things telephone companies are doing anyway because it's central to their businesses for marketing or optimizing the network or detecting fraud," said Professor Blaze, who has worked with the F.B.I. on technology issues.

Such "analysis is extremely powerful and very revealing because you get these linkages between people that wouldn't be otherwise clear, sometimes even more important than the content itself" of phone calls and e-mail messages, he said. "But it's also very invasive. There's always going to be a certain amount of noise," with data collected on people who have no real links to suspicious activity, he said.

[snip]

But critics assert that the further the links are taken, the less valuable the information proves to be. - Eric Lichtblau, the New York Times, September 9, 2007

Http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Both articles were cited in Footnote #27 of the House Judiciary Committee report on RESTORE, released October 12, 2007:

Http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/110_hr3773rpt_judiciary.pdf

This is not about the 'foreign to foreign on a U.S. wire' problem that has been used as justification for these revisions/eviscerations of FISA - that issue is separately addressed and resolved in these bills. This is a brand new world of spying being authorized by Congress against innocent Americans (under Title I of the Senate bills) without any meaningful Judicial Branch check. New corporate and government spying authority which is being accompanied by a simultaneous effort to hold immune from lawsuits the cooperating corporations, that would block off Judicial Branch review to prevent the Supreme Court from having an opportunity to rule that these spying authorities openly violate the Fourth Amendment.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/071025/report.pdf

This is collusion between the Executive and Legislative Branches of government to end-run the Constitution, and to try to avoid any check from the Judicial Branch which would stop and reverse this deliberate invasion of our privacy and knowing violation of our Constitution. If Members of Congress could be impeached, on this issue the American people would easily convict those complicit in this collusion, and would throw them out of office with the contempt they have so thoroughly earned.

Both Chris Dodd's Congressional Record floor comments in December and Russ Feingold's website contain excellent summaries, arguments, and details about this issue - they have all the information Edwards would need to get up to speed on this matter.

The course our nation is on will not self-correct if left to its own devices.

------------------------
Excellent stuff!

Here, courtesy of Christy Hardin Smith, is the contact list for this issue: [hey! Where's Claire? Claire! Claire???]

Senate phone numbers are here; and Sen. Harry Reid's phone number is: (202) 224-3542. And Sen. Mitch McConnell's phone number is: (202) 224-2541 -- tell him national security and the rule of law should never be used as a political football, and that taking political marching orders from Rove is so 2002.

We should focus first on the 14 Senators who promised to help Sens. Dodd and Feingold. Here are their fax and phone numbers:

Feingold (202) 224-2725 (202) 224-5323
Dodd (202) 224-1083 (202) 224-2823
Obama (202) 228-4260 (202) 224-2854
Sanders (202) 228-0776 (202) 224-5141
Menendez (202) 228-2197 (202) 224-4744
Biden (202) 224-0139 (202) 224-5042
Brown (202) 228-6321 (202) 224-2315
Harkin (202) 224-9369 (202) 224-3254
Cardin (202) 224-1651 (202) 224-4524
Clinton (202) 228-0282 (202) 224-4451
Akaka (202) 224-2126 (202) 224-6361
Webb (202) 228-6363 (202) 224-4024
Kennedy (202) 224-2417 (202) 224-4543
Boxer (415) 956-6701 (202) 224-3553

We Need Primary Challengers!!!

The spineless fucks in the Senate have done it again. Now they are letting AT&T and Verizon off the hook for trashing the Fourth Amendment and spying on us, by giving that feeble-minded lame duck moron who has occupied the oval via subterfuge and judicial coup what he wanted.

Again.

Democrats…listen the fuck up…we did not give you the majority so you could fellate the fuckwit.

We gave you the majority because we want that feckless bastard brought to heel. It is bad enough that you cowardly whelps won’t impeach the war criminal, and instead give me pathetic, mealy-mouthed platitudes like “history will impeach this administration” and a Democratic Senator who grabs her skirts and jumps up on the table shrieking “Eeek! A terrorist! Here! Take my constituents civil liberties! They will thank me for it!”

Fucking pathetic. They haven’t done a damned thing right and I am in no mood to brook their foolishness.

And while we are certainly not going to send the knuckle-draggin’ mouth-breathin’ SCAMD morons back to the majority, we will sure as hell replace your lame asses. You aren’t representing us. You are pandering to the loser thugs in the Republican party.

You are the god-damned majority party. Stop rolling over and offering your asses to the jackals and perverts.

Telecomm immunity was the last straw.

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage.

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision. [emphasis added]

Every spineless Democrat in D.C. needs to face the wrath of an angry electorate – and a strong primary challenger – their pathetic records of appeasement and acquiescence need to be held up for public scrutiny, scorn and ridicule.

As for me, I am going to print up some stickers to slap on fundraising mailings to send back to the weenies, sans contribution, in their postage-paid envelopes.

If a Democrat voted to rebuke “MoveOn” for repeating what soldiers in the Perfumed Prince’s command called him, they will get their mailer back with a sticker that says

“I am a MoveOn member, and your willingness to throw over the First Amendment deems you unworthy of my support. Instead I have made a donation of $______ to MoveOn, and encouraged them to support a primary challenger to fill your seat with the fanny of a REAL DEMOCRAT.”

If they are on board with this apostasy, the sticker they get back will read:

“I am a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and your willingness to throw over the Fourth Amendment deems you unworthy of my support. Instead, I have donated $_____ to the ACLU and will be working locally to find a strong primary challenger to fill your seat with the fanny of a REAL DEMOCRAT.”

The spineless, simpering Democrats that represent me (Claire, Cleaver) need to get through their thick heads that I am no battered wife who will keep coming back for more…I am the bitch who will torch the bed...with your political career in it. Capiche?