Saturday, December 17, 2005

Government moots ID card links for new UK voter database. Government moots ID card links for new UK voter database. Honey, I broke the democratic process... The Government is moving ahead with plans to establish a centralised national register of voters, together with central checking and verification of the data held on electoral registers. The system, to be implemented in the form of CORE (Co-ordinated Online Record of Elector) schemes, is intended to be brought in via the Electoral Administration Bill currently before Parliament, and is subject to a consultation process ending on 7th March. [The Register - Internet and Law: Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs] 1:22:03 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

CDT Urges Congress to Revisit PATRIOT Following Spying Revelations. CDT Urges Congress to Revisit PATRIOT Following Spying Revelations. In light of recent revelations that the National Security Agency and Department of Defense are actively spying on American citizens within the United States, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is calling on Congress to revisit the sweeping surveillance provisions of the PATRIOT Act. "The Administration's disregard for the law is all the more reason to hold up reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act," CDT President Jerry Berman said. "If the Administration is citing the Iraq resolution as justification for secret surveillances, Congress needs to look closely at all the provisions of the PATRIOT Act and determine what else may have been authorized without public debate. " [Center for Democracy and Technology] 1:18:46 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

A Lump of Coal for Consumers: Analog Hole Bill Introduced. A Lump of Coal for Consumers: Analog Hole Bill Introduced. While the Senate was standing up for civil liberties, the House was handing out a Christmas gift to Hollywood. For digital consumers and innovators, however, it looks to be a nasty stocking-filler. Representatives Sensenbrenner and Conyers have introduced H.R. 4569, the "Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005," a.k.a. the return of the MPAA's "Plugging the Analog Hole" scheme, which is itself just a variant on the dreaded "Hollings Bill" introduced back in 2002. The new bill is a rehash of the one we first mentioned on Halloween. It would impose strict legal controls on any video analog to digital (A/D) convertors "manufacture[d], imported or otherwise traffic[ed]" in the United States. Digitizers and digital media devices that won't jump through the specified outrageous regulatory hoops - automatically deleting protected analog content after ninety minutes; outputting only "down-rezzed" images, and satisfying "robustness criteria" that weld the hood shut against user modification and open source developers - are expected to simply turn off and refuse to convert watermark-protected analog video. And how is this analog video protected? Using an old broadcast-flag like technology called CGMS-A and a new watermarking system called VEIL. Mandating the VEIL watermark on all video A/D devices is particularly remarkable, as VEIL has had no independent testing as a copy protection technology. In fact, VEIL's main use until now has been in a series of Warner-licensed Bat-Toys! Yet, if H.R. 4569 becomes law, technology companies would be bound by law to support this Bat-Toy technology in their products. Anyone who creates a new device that cannot pass on the VEIL watermark, or somehow overrides it, is breaking the law. If he does it for "purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain", he's a bona-fide criminal. And if VEIL is so widely broken as to be deemed unusable (couldn't happen to a Bat-Toy technology, could it?), the U.S. government, in the form of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), will be expected to devise and enforce a new solution. So the Bat-Toy is only the nose under the technology mandates tent - if VEIL doesn't work out, government bureaucrats get to replace it with whatever strikes them as a good idea at the time. The Analog Hole law is just the first of the MPAA/RIAA's Horror Triple Feature to be introduced into Congress. The others are the Broadcast Flag and technology mandate for digital radio. Perhaps they think that Congress will "compromise" by passing one of the three. Or perhaps they're hoping for a troika of victories in 2006 in their endless campaign against their own customers. Whatever the MPAA's plan, however, your representatives need to understand that their constituents are not eager for a world of more DRM, more tech mandates, and less innovation. Write to them now. [EFF: Deep Links] 12:31:28 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying - Washington Post President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night. The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night. The aim of the program was to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said. But the program's ramifications also prompted concerns from some quarters, including Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, and the presiding judge of the surveillance court, which oversees lawful domestic spying, according to the Times. The Times said it held off on publishing its story about the NSA program for a year after administration officials said its disclosure would harm national security. The White House made no comment last night. A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages. Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects of the program would not discuss any classified details but made it clear there were serious questions about the legality of the NSA actions. The sources, who demanded anonymity, said there were conditions under which it would be possible to gather and retain information on Americans if the surveillance were part of an investigation into foreign intelligence. But those cases are supposed to be minimized. The sources said the actual work of the NSA is so closely held that it is difficult to determine whether it is acting within the law. [...] Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks. For more than four years, the NSA tasked other military intelligence agencies to assist its broad-based surveillance effort directed at people inside the country suspected of having terrorist connections, even before Bush signed the 2002 order that authorized the NSA program, according to an informed U.S. official. The effort, which began within days after the attacks, has consisted partly of monitoring domestic telephone conversations, e-mail and even fax communications of individuals identified by the NSA as having some connection to al Qaeda events or figures, or to potential terrorism-related activities in the United States, the official said. It has also involved teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel stationed in major U.S. cities conducting the type of surveillance typically performed by the FBI: monitoring the movements and activities -- through high-tech equipment -- of individuals and vehicles, the official said. The involvement of military personnel in such tasks was provoked by grave anxiety among senior intelligence officials after the 2001 suicide attacks that additional terrorist cells were present within U.S. borders and could only be discovered with the military's help, said the official, who had direct knowledge of the events. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity. The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was "engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction," according to the law. "This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration's surveillance and detention policies. "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans." 12:21:08 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

The Volokh Conspiracy - - Domestic Surveillance By the NSA?: Domestic Surveillance By the NSA?:  James Risen and Eric Lichtblau break a tremendously important story in tomorrow's New York Times about a secret program that has permitted the NSA to spy without a warrant inside the United States. [...] I hope we'll be hearing more about this in coming weeks, as this is big news. While the statutory privacy laws have an exception for this type of monitoring, see 18 U.S.C. 2511(f), and the constitutional limits on e-mail surveillance are uncertain even in traditional criminal cases, the constitutionality of warrantless interception of telephone calls in situations like this is really murky stuff. To get up to speed on some of the issues, check out Judge Sand's opinion in United States v. bin Laden, 126 F.Supp.2d 264 (S.D.N.Y. 2000). (.pdf) 12:17:36 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Secondary Screening: Spying on American Soil The 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. 12:13:19 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Secondary Screening: Feinstein: Simply Unacceptable California Senator Dianne Fienstein (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. [...] 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. 12:09:18 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts - New York Times  WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. 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. "This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches." Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight. According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said. The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States. Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues. The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted. 11:59:37 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Behind Power, One Principle as Bush Pushes Prerogatives - New York Times WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - A single, fiercely debated legal principle lies behind nearly every major initiative in the Bush administration's war on terror, scholars say: the sweeping assertion of the powers of the presidency. From the government's detention of Americans as "enemy combatants" to the just-disclosed eavesdropping in the United States without court warrants, the administration has relied on an unusually expansive interpretation of the president's authority. That stance has given the administration leeway for decisive action, but it has come under severe criticism from some scholars and the courts. With the strong support of Vice President Dick Cheney, legal theorists in the White House and Justice Department have argued that previous presidents unjustifiably gave up some of the legitimate power of their office. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made it especially critical that the full power of the executive be restored and exercised, they said. [...] But some legal experts outside the administration, including some who served previously in the intelligence agencies, said the administration had pushed the presidential-powers argument beyond what was legally justified or prudent. They say the N.S.A. domestic eavesdropping illustrates the flaws in Mr. Bush's assertion of his powers. "Obviously we have to do things differently because of the terrorist threat," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former general counsel of both N.S.A. and the Central Intelligence Agency, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. "But to do it without the participation of the Congress and the courts is unwise in the extreme." Even if the administration believes the president has the authority to direct warrantless eavesdropping, she said, ordering it without seeking Congressional approval was politically wrongheaded. "We're just relearning the lessons of Vietnam and Watergate," said Ms. Parker, now dean of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. Jeffrey H. Smith, who served as C.I.A. general counsel in 1995 and 1996, said he was dismayed by the N.S.A. program, which he said was the latest instance of legal overreach by the administration. "Clearly the president felt after 9/11 that he needed more powers than his predecessors had exercised," Mr. Smith said. "He chose to assert as much power as he thought he needed. Now the question is whether that was wise and consistent with our values." William C. Banks, a widely respected authority on national security law at Syracuse University, said the N.S.A. revelation came as a shock, even given the administration's past assertions of presidential powers. "I was frankly astonished by the story," he said. "My head is spinning." 11:45:17 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Chinese Pressing to Keep Village Silent on Clash - New York Times SHANGHAI, Dec. 16 - Ten days ago, the sleepy fishing village of Dongzhou was the scene of a deadly face-off, with protesters hurling homemade bombs and the police gunning them down in the streets. Now, a stilted calm prevails, a cover-up so carefully planned that the small town looks like a relic from the Cultural Revolution, as if the government had decided to re-educate the entire population. Banners hang everywhere, with slogans in big red characters proclaiming things like, "Stability is paramount" and "Don't trust instigators." Many facts remain unclear about the police crackdown on a Dongzhou demonstration on Dec. 6, which residents say ended in the deaths of 20 or more people, but one thing is certain: The government is doing everything possible to prevent witnesses' accounts of what happened from emerging. Residents of Dongzhou, a small town now cordoned off by heavy police roadblocks and patrols, said in scores of interviews on the telephone and with visitors that they had endured beatings, bribes and threats at the hands of security forces in the week and a half after their protest against the construction of a power plant was violently put down. Others said that the corpses of the dead had been withheld, apparently because they were so riddled with bullets that they would contradict the government's version of events. And residents have been warned that if they must explain the deaths of loved ones - many of whom were shot dead during a tense standoff with the police in which fireworks, blasting caps and crude gasoline bombs were thrown by the villagers - they should simply say their relatives were blown up by their own explosives. 11:36:30 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Taking Liberties With the Nation's Security ( Opinion By Rudolph W. Giuliani )- New York Times Yesterday the Senate failed to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, as a Democratic-led filibuster prevented a vote. This action - which leaves the act, key elements of which are due to expire on Dec. 31, in limbo - represents a grave potential threat to the nation's security. I support the extension of the Patriot Act for one simple reason: Americans must use every legal and constitutional tool in their arsenal to fight terrorism and protect their lives and liberties. Editor: An opinion piece from somone on the other side. 11:32:33 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Bush Acknowledges Approving Eavesdropping - New York Times President Bush said Saturday he has no intention of stopping his personal authorizations of a post-Sept. 11 secret eavesdropping program in the U.S., lashing out at those involved in revealing it while defending it as crucial to preventing future attacks. ''This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security,'' he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room. ''This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States,'' Bush said. Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency without obtaining warrants from a court violates civil liberties. Bush said the program was narrowly designed and used ''consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution.'' He said it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have ''a clear link'' to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations. The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said. Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities. The president also said the intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated. Appearing angry at points during his eight-minute address, Bush said he had reauthorized the program more than 30 times since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and plans to continue doing so. ''I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups,'' he said. 11:19:10 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

NSA uses ECHELON against US citizens. NSA uses ECHELON against US citizens. And the Pat Act is off for now Washington Roundup Who would have believed that twitchy paranoiacs are actually onto something? Incredibly, they are: the New York Times has revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on American citizens. [The Register - Internet and Law: Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs] 11:15:29 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Senate PATRIOT Vote Falls Short, Debate Continues. Senate PATRIOT Vote Falls Short, Debate Continues. Senate leaders fell considerably short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate by opponents of a proposal to renew the PATRIOT Act without added civil liberties protections. CDT had opposed the renewal measure, in the form of a conference report that left out protections previously approved unanimously by the Senate. It's unclear what will happen next. Despite dire claims by the Administration, the provisions that sunset at the end of this month would remain in effect for all pending intelligence investigations and even for future investigations of yet undiscovered terrorist activity that began before December 31. [Center for Democracy and Technology] 11:12:43 AM  PermaLink   / trackback []