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Ominous Signs of a Forthcoming "Compromise" on Telco Immunity - Tell the House To Stand Firm - Via EFF: Deep Links:
This morning, CongressDaily reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller is now privately circulating a new "compromise" proposal on surveillance legislation, only a day after it was reported that the telecoms themselves have begun shopping their own "compromise" proposals around the Hill. You may remember Sen. Rockefeller as the force behind the surveillance bill passed by the Senate in February, which included blanket retroactive immunity for phone companies like AT&T that are alleged to have participated in the National Security Agency's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.
Although the details of the Rockefeller proposal are still unclear, indications are that the so-called "compromise" on telco immunity may well be nearly identical to the original Senate immunity provision, with only a few cosmetic changes. read more »
A New Look at the Hub of AT&T's Spying Program - Via EFF: Deep Links:
Our class action lawsuit against AT&T for collaborating with the National Security Agency in the massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications includes powerful evidence of a secret room in San Francisco.
But the hub of the spying program may be just outside of St. Louis, in a Missouri town called Bridgeton. A special report from local station KMOV puts the pieces together in a comprehensive and disturbing story about this dragnet surveillance, with the help of AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein. Watch the video on the KMOV site for a fresh look at a key piece of this spying puzzle.
(Read Original Article - Via EFF: Deep Links.)
Backroom FISA Deal in the Making? - Via ACLU Blog - Government Spying:
There was chatter on the blogs last week that FISA compromise was in the works, but it wasn't until late Friday night that our lobbyists confirmed that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is working on a compromise bill with Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) — yes, the same senator known for taking thousands of dollars of campaign contributions from the telecom companies he's angling to protect with immunity. Hoyer and Rockefeller may try to lock in a deal within the next few days. read more »
ACLU Commends Senator Feingold for Hearing on Secret Law - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
Washington, DC – The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded a Senate subcommittee for holding a hearing on the Bush administration’s use of secrecy to institute government policy. During the hearing, entitled "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government," the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and its chairman, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI), heard testimony from legal experts and open government advocates. The hearing focused on the administration’s broad interpretation of the law as it relates to government secrecy and counterterrorism policies – including a legal opinion written by former Justice Department Official John Yoo on the use of torture in interrogations. That memo was made public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by the ACLU.
"Government transparency is the cornerstone of democracy," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "This administration has been rewriting the Constitution memo by memo. From what we’ve seen of the self-serving opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, we can only believe that those that remain secret must equally distort the law in favor of President Bush’s agenda. An agenda built on secrecy and overclassification is antithetical to our country’s ideals." read more »
Court-Approved Wiretapping Rose 14% in '07 - Via Threat Level:
Last year might have been a rough year for U.S. home prices, but growth in government wiretaps remained healthy, with the eavesdropping sector posting a 14% increase in court orders compared to 2006. In 2007, judges approved 4,578 state and federal wiretaps, as compared to 4,015 in 2006, according to two new reports on criminal and intelligence wiretaps.
Editor: Interesting graphic removed. Go to original site for that [...]
State police applied for 27% more wiretaps in 2007 than in 2006, with 94% of them targeting cell phones, according to figures released by the U.S. Courts' administrator. In 2007, state judges approved 1,751 criminal wiretap applications, without turning any of them down, according to the report (.pdf). That's a near-three fold increase in state wiretaps since 1997. Federal criminal wiretaps remained fairly constant -- hovering around 500 -- though exact numbers aren't known since the Justice Department has begun withholding information from the administrators of the U.S. court regarding sensitive investigations. read more »
ACLU Urges House to Remain Firm as FISA Stalemate Continues - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
Washington, DC – In response to reports that Republicans in the House of Representatives have filed a discharge petition in order to force a vote on a Senate-passed update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the American Civil Liberties Union released the following statement.
The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office: read more »
NSA-Spied-On Lawyers Get Day in Court and New Yorker Profile - Via Threat Level:
First the Feds investigate a Saudi charity in Oregon, wiretap the director and two of the group's lawyers, try to designate it a terrorist group and accidentally give the group proof of the wiretapping. Then years later when Al Haramain's American lawyers sue, claiming they were wiretapped without warrants, the feds seek to bury the case with a nearly all powerful litigation tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege, raising profound questions about whether the president is accountable to the law.
In short, if lawyers with documents proving that government secretly wiretapped their conversations with a client can't get their day in court, is it even accurate to think that any law applies to the president during terror-time? read more »
Annals of Surveillance: State Secrets - Via Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker:
One Friday afternoon in August, 2004, a Washington, D.C., attorney named Lynne Bernabei received a package from the Department of the Treasury. The government was investigating one of her clients, the American branch of a Saudi charity called the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, which had been active in fifty countries. Al Haramain had come under scrutiny, as had many other Islamic charities, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and Treasury Department investigators believed that Al Haramain’s American branch, which was based in Oregon, had connections to Al Qaeda. In response to a request from Bernabei for evidence against her client, the government had turned over two sets of documents, primarily media reports that referred to other branches of Al Haramain. None of the materials demonstrated a direct connection between the Oregon branch and Al Qaeda. read more »
Europeans: U.S. is Spying on You, Too! - Via ACLU Blog - Privacy & Technology:
Last week, Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project, wrote a letter to the Article 29 Working Party of the European Commission. Article 29 specifically addresses personal data protection issues, and how data is used in our current information society. read more »
FISA News Roundup - Via EFF: Deep Links:
FISA has been missing from the front pages of the nation's newspapers for a while, but behind the scenes and on the editorial pages, the story is still very much alive. The Hill recently reported that Congressional Republicans are changing focus away from FISA and towards economic issues:
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected to announce Thursday that the House GOP floor emphasis will transition away from passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and earmark reform to “stop the tax hike.”
Supporters of immunity for telecoms may have simply realized that there are more pressing issues for the country to address than protecting the President’s warrantless wiretapping program from judicial scrutiny. Or was all the chest pounding of weeks past, the dire claims of impending disaster, just empty manipulative rhetoric? Either way, it appears that the old fail-safe tactics of scaring the public into supporting expanded executive powers are no longer as reliable as they once were—although it won’t surprise us if the rhetoric ramps up again in late July or early August, a year after the Protect America Act passed.
Glenn Greenwald says it was ever thus: read more »
State Secrets Claim Should Not Bury Important Surveillance Lawsuit - Via EFF: Breaking News:
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal judge Monday to allow an important government surveillance lawsuit to have its day in court, despite the government's attempt to bury the case using the state secrets privilege.
The case is Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush, which alleges that federal agents illegally wiretapped calls between the charity and its lawyers. The government has asked U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to dismiss the case, contending that the litigation jeopardizes state secrets. But in an amicus brief filed Monday, EFF argues that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was written to allow cases like this one to proceed with appropriate security precautions. read more »
Wiretapping Powers Debate Still Unsettled - Via Threat Level:
In a interconnected, packet-based global telecommunications world, just how far should the nation's spooks be allowed to live inside the nation's communication tubes in order to root out communications of spies and terrorists and how much should they be supervised by courts?
Those were the questions tackled by a keynote panel at the RSA 2008 conference Wednesday that moderated by New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau, who shared the Pulitizer Prize for disclosing the existence of part of the government's warrantless wiretapping program in 2005.
Predicatably, the panel was just as dividede as Congress, which is still deadlocked over immunity for the telecoms that helped wiretap Americans without warrants, read more »
EFF Wins Another Speedy Release of Telecom Lobbying Records - Via EFF: Breaking News:
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won another battle against the government Friday over the release of information about a campaign to change federal surveillance law.
A federal judge ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to provide to EFF by April 21, 2008, records about telecom industry lobbying of their offices.
Congress is currently considering granting immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in unlawful electronic surveillance on millions of ordinary Americans as part of changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Officials at the DOJ and ODNI have been vocal supporters of the immunity proposal. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), EFF asked the DOJ and ODNI for any documents reflecting telecom carriers' efforts to avoid legal responsibility for their role in the government's surveillance operations, but the agencies failed to comply with EFF's requests. read more »
Do We Need a New National Security Court? [WCL American U.] - Via JURIST - Video Monitor:
Terrorists and Detainees: Do We Need a New National Security Court?, Washington College of Law, American University, February 1, 2008 [keynote address by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema]. MP3, 26 mins. Listen to recorded audio. Additional details here.
Bush statement on FISA amendment bill [White House] - Via JURIST - Video Monitor:
Statement on FISA amendments legislation, President George W. Bush, February 13, 2008 [urging the House of Representatives to immediately pass the version of the FISA Amendments Act pas
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