Privacy Digest

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 »

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 »

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 »

GSM Security Researcher Targeted in Airport Shakedown - Via Threat Level:

Editor: Interesting graphic removed. Go to original site for that [...]

A security researcher on his way this week to speak at a conference about mobile phone security was stopped by British authorities at Heathrow Airport and questioned before being relieved of his Nokia phone, SIM card and USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral).

The researcher was on his way to Dubai to deliver a talk at the Hack-in-the-Box security conference about cracking GSM encryption to intercept mobile phone calls and text messages and track the location of users using less than $1,000 in equipment.  read more »

More Questions Swirl Around Mukasey's Emotional Plea for Warrantless Wiretapping - Via EFF: Deep Links:

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that lawmakers are still looking for answers about Attorney General Michael Mukasey's strange tale of an unmonitored terrorist phone call. Mukasey gave the account at a speech in San Francisco last month as part of an emotional plea to legalize warrantless wiretapping. But House Judiciary Committee members say this is the first they have heard of such a call.  read more »

Feds Use Phone Bills to Get Journo's Sources on NSA Spy Program - Via Threat Level:

Federal investigators are using phone records to figure out which federal officials talked with New York Times reporters about the government's secret wiretapping of Americans without court orders.

 In the leak investigation, Justice Department officials are using phone records in an Arlington, Va. federal grand jury proceeding to ferret out James Risen's sources, according to the New York Times.

One presumes the government is using subpoenas or National Security Letters to get Risen or his suspected sources' phone records, then hauling former government officials in front of the grand jury.  read more »

FCC: Verizon did not breach privacy laws - Via Associated Press Business News - MSN Money :

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal regulators determined Friday that Verizon Communications Inc. did not violate consumer privacy laws when it tried to keep customers who wanted cancel Verizon and switch to cable providers for voice services.

The Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau reached its determination in response to a complaint filed by Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and privately owned Bright House Networks.  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 »

FCC to look into firms' use of customer data - Via Privacy : Tech news from CNET :

Staff at the Federal Communications Commission are expected to recommend that it review rules on how phone and cable companies can use customer information as they try to take business from each other, an FCC official said Friday.

The FCC enforcement bureau will recommend that the commission reject a complaint by cable operators charging that Verizon Communications violated the agency's customer privacy rules by using customer information to prevent them from switching their phone service to cable, an agency official said on condition of anonymity.

Beyond that, the enforcement bureau is expected to recommend that the FCC address more broadly the issue of "customer retention activities" by both phone companies and cable operators to make sure the rules apply equally to both, the official said.  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 »

Quantico Circus - Via ACLU Blog - Government Spying:

Today the Washington Post took us further into the Quantico Circuits and the problems inherent within. The circuits link together the FBI and phone companies and are used during wiretap investigations. Last month, a whistleblower named Babak Pasdar came forward to disclose the existence of the Quantico circuit. They can tell FBI investigators the length of the call, the callers’ identities and the location of the callers — a nice reminder that when you’re using your phone you’re a walking homing beacon.

The catch is that wiretapping orders require a warrant (or not — looking at you, President Bush) but to get the info the Quantico circuit provides, all you need is a National Security Letter, or NSL.  read more »