Archive for the 'Domestic Spying' Category

A Rockefeller/Hoyer FISA Immunity Deal Imminent?

Published by
Gene Shinai
May 1, 2008 in Domestic Spying, Newz, Telecoms and The Congress. 0 Comments

From FireDogLake:

 According to the ACLU, there is rumor of a backroom deal being brokered by Jay Rockefeller on FISA that will include retroactive immunity. I’ve heard from several sources that Steny Hoyer is doing the dirty work on the House side, and some say it will be attached to the new supplemental.

There doesn’t seem to be any greater priority for this administration than to get Dick Cheney and the other criminals in the Bush administration retroactive immunity for themselves and their teleco cohorts on their way out the door. Much fear mongering, ads and robocalls in the districts of freshmen House Democrats, and lookie here — Trent Lottcrawls out from under his slimy rock:

AT&T is among charter clients of Breaux Lott Leadership Group, a firm established by former Senate heavyweights John Breaux (D-La.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Their sons are also involved in the family business.

The telecom giant has given BLLG the mission to back the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

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White House wants to require international visitors to give fingerprints when leaving US

Published by
Gene Shinai
April 22, 2008 in Domestic Spying, Newz and The Executive Branch. 0 Comments

ILEEN SULLIVAN AP News

 The Bush administration would require commercial airlines and cruise-line operators to collect information such as fingerprints from international travelers and send the information to the Homeland Security Department soon after the travelers leave the country, according to a proposed rule. 

 

The proposal, which will be announced Tuesday, will close a security gap identified after the 9/11 attacks and identify which visitors have overstayed their visas.

 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site. 

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Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S.

Published by
Gene Shinai
April 12, 2008 in Domestic Spying, Newz and The Executive Branch. 0 Comments

By Spencer S. HsuWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, April 12, 2008

 The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

 

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

 

“There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,” Chertoff wrote to Reps.Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

“I think we’ve fully addressed anybody’s concerns,” Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. “I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it.”

 

His statements marked a fresh determination to operate the department’s new National Applications Office as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The administration in May 2007 gave DHS authority to coordinate requests for satellite imagery, radar, electronic-signal information, chemical detection and other monitoring capabilities that have been used for decades within U.S. borders for mapping and disaster response.

 

But Congress delayed launch of the new office last October. Critics cited its potential to expand the role of military assets in domestic law enforcement, to turn new or as-yet-undeveloped technologies against Americans without adequate public debate, and to divert the existing civilian and scientific focus of some satellite work to security uses.

 

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Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, NRA hired ‘black ops’ company that targeted environmental groups

Published by
Gene Shinai
April 12, 2008 in Agriculture, Business/Finance, Domestic Spying, Halliburton, In Defense of Democracy, Law and Justice, Newz and The Environment. 0 Comments

From Rawstory: John ByrnePublished: Friday April 11, 2008 

 Dumpster-diving firm collected Social Security numbers of activists

 

A private security firm managed by former Secret Service officers spied on myriad environmental organizations throughout the 1990s and the year 2000, thieving documents, trying to plant undercover operations and collecting phone records of members, according to a new report.

 

Documents obtained by James Ridgeway, a Mother Jones correspondent formerly with the Village Voice, reveals the contractor collected confidential internal records — donor lists, financial statements — even Social Security numbers, for public relations outfits and “corporations involved in environmental controversies.”

 

Beckett Brown International also offered “intelligence” services to the Carlyle Group, the controversial DC-based investment company; “protective services” for the National Rifle Association; “crisis management” for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; “information collection” for Wal-Mart.

 

“Also listed as clients in BBI records,” Ridgeway reveals: “Halliburton and Monsanto.”

 

Like other firms specializing in snooping, Beckett Brown turned to garbage swiping as a key tactic. BBI officials and contractors routinely conducted what the firm referred to as “D-line” operations, in which its operatives would seek access to the trash of a target, with the hope of finding useful documents. One midnight raid targeted Greenpeace. One BBI document lists the addresses of several other environmental groups as “possible sites” for operations: the National Environmental Trust, the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Media Services, the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an organization run by Lois Gibbs, famous for exposing the toxic dangers of New York’s Love Canal. For its rubbish-rifling operations, BBI employed a police officer in the District of Columbia and a former member of the Maryland state police.

 

Taco Bell genetic corn fiasco 

 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site. 

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GOP still throwing all-out hissy over illegal wiretaps

Published by
elophan
April 8, 2008 in Domestic Spying, In Defense of Democracy, Newz, Telecoms and The Congress. 0 Comments

By J. Taylor Rushing, The Hill

Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt to revive a controversial wiretapping law for 30 days on Monday night, leading to a mini-squabble on the chamber floor over the Bush administration’s program.

The legislation updating the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has been expired since Feb. 15, when a six-month interim law elapsed.

The House has already passed its version of FISA, but the two chambers have been unable to reconcile their differences over whether to grant telecommunications companies retroactive legal immunity from invasion-of-privacy lawsuits. The House-backed legislation does not include such immunity; a Senate bill that passed by a 68-29 vote on Feb. 12 does.

“It just appears to me, as has happened for more than seven years with this administration, that it’s the president’s way or no way — and I’d think he would come to the realization here that it’s not going to be the president’s way,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. “Just ignoring us is no way to resolve the issue because it’s pretty clear that the House is not blinking.” More…

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Administration Claimed Immunity to 4th Amendment

Published by
Gene Shinai
April 3, 2008 in Domestic Spying, Human Rights, Newz, Politics, The Executive Branch and The Internet. 0 Comments

From Slashdot.org:

 The EFF has uncovered a troubling footnote in a newly declassified Bush Administration memo, which asserts that ‘our Office recently [in 2001] concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.’ This could mean that the Administration believes the NSA’s warrantlesswiretapping and data mining programs are not governed by the Constitution, which would cast Administration claims that the programs did not violate the Fourth Amendment in a whole new light — after all, you can’t violate a law that doesn’t apply. The claimed immunity would also cover other DoD agencies, such as CIFA, which carry out offline surveillance of political groups within the United States.

 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site. 

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2001 Memo ‘justified’ warrantless wiretaps

Published by
elophan
April 2, 2008 in Domestic Spying, In Defense of Democracy, Newz and The Executive Branch. 0 Comments

By PAMELA HESS and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn’t apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

That view was expressed in a secret Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.

The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.

The 37-page memo is classified and has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations,” the footnote states, referring to a document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.”

Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.

That program intercepted phone calls and e-mails on U.S. soil, bypassing the normal legal requirement that such eavesdropping be authorized by a secret federal court. The program began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and continued until Jan. 17, 2007, when the White House resumed seeking surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The October memo was written just days before Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, briefed four House and Senate leaders on the NSA’s secret wiretapping program for the first time.

The government itself related the October memo to the TSP program when it included it on a list of documents that were responsive to the ACLU’s request for records from the program. It refused to hand them over. More…

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Spy-in-the-sky drone sets sights on Miami

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 27, 2008 in Domestic Spying, Immigration, Law and Justice, Newz and State/Local Government. 0 Comments

By Tom Brown

 MIAMI (Reuters) - Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.

 

A small pilotless drone manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and “staring” using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to make its debut soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.

If use of the drone wins Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14-pound (6.3 kg) drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting.

“Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes,” said police department spokesman Juan Villalba.

“We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission,” he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with “barricaded subjects.”

Miami-Dade police are not alone, however.

 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

 

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Obama Campaign demands probe into State Dept. Passport Records Breach

Published by
Gene Shinai
March 20, 2008 in Domestic Spying, Law and Justice, Media, Newz, Politics and The Executive Branch. 0 Comments

From Rawstory:

NBC News reports this evening that two contract employees of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs have been fired, and a third has been disciplined after it was discovered that they accessed Sen. Barack Obama’s passport records without a specific need to do so.”A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of a high-profile individual,” a department official told NBC News. “When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified.”Sean McCormack, spokesman for the State Department, confirmed to theAssociatd Press three acts of “imprudent curiosity” by the employees in question, occuring on January 9, February 21, and March 14 of this year.Reports the Boston Globe, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton has released the following statement:

“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”

Story Continues @ Sourced Site.

Also check out this HORN Exclusive‡ by our own Mark Levine.

‡Posted on DKos

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House passes ‘no immunity’ FISA update

Published by
elophan
March 14, 2008 in Domestic Spying, In Defense of Democracy, Newz, Telecoms and The Congress. 0 Comments

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The House of Representatives voted Friday to back the Democratic-sponsored revisions to federal surveillance laws.

The vote was 213 to 197 in favor of a revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill that was backed by the Democratic leadership.

One member voted present.

The vote came after a unique secret session Thursday night in the House. It was the first time the House has met in secret since 1983 .

The Democratic plan would allow telecommunications companies to be sued for their role in the administration’s much-disputed warrantless surveillance program — something that President Bush and GOP allies have railed against.

Bush has spent weeks pressuring the House to grant retroactive legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in the program, initiated after the September 11 attacks.

Bush argues that legal protection is needed for companies to continue cooperating with the government and has vowed to veto the House Democratic proposal, which would allow the lawsuits to move forward in federal courts.

The Senate already has voted to protect the phone companies from lawsuits filed by privacy advocates, who argue that the surveillance program was illegal.

The Democratic plan, however, will allow the companies to argue their cases and present classified evidence to a judge during a closed proceeding without the plaintiffs present. More…

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