Reframing the possibility of Trump snooping on citizens

Could Trump, in his second term, spy on American journalists as has  happened in other countries? Ronan Farrow investigates. Let's start with the name that Farrow doesn't mention, though — Joe Biden, whose administration bought the Paragon software from Israel, though Biden's ICE is mentioned with his name halfway through. It's also dated because Farrow talks about AG Matt Gaetz.

It also ignores the confirmed reports that Snoopmaster Joe bought Israel's Pegasus snooping software for Columbia's national police. There, too, left-of-center politicos believe it was really bought for snooping on general citizens, not just drug traffickers.

Well, boo hoo for Sen. Betty Crocker on CIA snooping

Sen. Dianne Feinstein/Mother Jones file photo

I love how, now that it's her and other Congresscritters that have their balls in a vice and tits in a wringer, depending on sex, on federal agencies snooping on them, that Dianne Feinstein, as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is in high dudgeon. (As for the nickname? Long-standing joke of mine, based on older photos of her.)

Perhaps the CIA is doing stuff that's illegal. Perhaps not. 

On the actual Patriot Act, at least, I highly suspect that, in their rush to be "patriotic" 12-plus years ago, Members of Congress failed to exempt themselves from its provisions, although I'm not at high enough of a pay grade to wade through the whole damned thing right now to prove or disprove that.  Ditto on whether the CIA did anything criminal in the current snooping.

Second, Congresscritters, if you're dumb enough to presume that the CIA, on CIA computers, wouldn't snoop your computer usage? I have beachfront property in Langley, Va., to sell you.

Third, note to David Corn. We're not British, with a "traditional" unwritten constitution evolving over centuries. Given that courts in general and the Supreme Court in particular, as far as matters of precedent, which DO govern constitutional interpretation here in the USofA, whether or not there's a constitutional issue is arguable at best.

Fourth, I also "love" how Betty Crocker is also so worried about leaking. Hey, that's the national sport inside the Beltway, and you know it, because you've done your own fair share.

Fifth, given that Betty Crocker and other Congresscritters, any time some portion of our snooping has come under question from civil libertarians, have simply expanded the law, this is even "richer":

Feinstein said that the CIA appeared to have violated the Fourth Amendment barring unreasonable searches and seizures—and perhaps other federal laws and a presidential executive order prohibiting the CIA from domestic searches and surveillance.

Sorry, Betty, but that falls under the Patriot Act, too, I'm sure. The CIA is simply making sure you're safe.

Speaking of "expanding the law," remember that Dear Leader himself voted to do that in 2008, when he was still Senator Dear Leader. That would be our President Dear Leader, who's not helping Sen. Betty Crocker much.

Look, if you actually cared about anything beyond Congressional prerogatives, you'd have spoken out about illegal snooping, and spirit-of-illegal snooping, long ago. Ditto on the issue of torture, or, as you probably call it, "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are in the report the CIA won't green-light that lies behind all this.

So, don't worry, folks; Congress will soon exempt itself from all this that it hasn't already, and the outrage will die back down.

Hell, Corn, who knows all this himself, halfway admits it:

Overall, the system of congressional oversight has hardly (as far as the public can tell) been stellar.

As far as I'm concerned, if the NSA, at least, and possibly the CIA, are spying on the rest of us, they can spy on you too, Betty Crocker. 

If you really gave a damn, Sen. Betty Crocker, you'd care about the latest in Edward Snowden's ongoing revelations. But, since you called his leaking "an act of treason," we know you don't. So, yes, per him as well as per me, you're a big effing hypocrite. You're a hypocrite about the snooping and leaking both.

Dammit, California Democrats, get somebody to primary her. If not, Greens, get a credible challenger. Sadly, she was last re-elected in 2012, so, unless she dies off, we're stuck with four-plus years of her to remain.

And, as far as Corn? He's not hugely overrated, but I've found him moderately overrated for years as an investigative reporter on issues like these. (I Tweeted Corn to ask if he, too, has asked Snowden for comment.)

#Snowden, snooping and Dear Leader

Note: This post will be regularly updated as we get more information about NSA whistleblower (or whatever) Edward Snowden, the accuracy of his statements, reporting on them by media and opinionators, especially Glenn Greenwald, and more.

First issue: Per a Facebook friend, he says that some of the things Edward Snowden has claimed, in his leaking so far, that some big communications/data companies have done simply isn't true. This guy is a strong civil libertarian himself, and has an IT background, so I'm not dismissing him.

That said, per this Slate story, if the National Security Agency really trusted Snowden with this  much information access, we really shouldn't trust it, for other reasons. So, let's turn that rhetorical statement on its head. Per my Facebook friend, maybe Snowden, a high-school dropout, didn't have that much access.

And, per this post about what Snowden is doing in his refuge in the supposedly freedom-loving Hong Kong, one must wonder if he's altogether "there" mentally. More on that below.

But, but, Glenn Greenwald said!

Look, I like a lot of Greenwald's writing, but he can occasionally "bite" on stuff. And, on the First Amendment, I'm not sure that he would even accept Justice Holmes' dictum about yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater.

At the same time, Dear Leader's gummint will not reveal any details of Prism to prove Snowden mistaken, wrong, or lying, if he is. So, it's up to people who care about this issue, but don't want to be played by the government, or an egotistical idealist, or all sorts of other things.

That said, per Emily Bazelon at Slate, such secretiveness, combined with our Constitututional Lawyer in Chief's previous legalese that "we're not listening to your phone conversations," means that Dear Leader still shouldn't be trusted, even if Snowden is lying or exaggerating.

Anyway, Snowden may wind up as the perfect "foil" for Dear Leader tut-tutting his opposition. Maybe he's a deliberate CIA plant, Per my FB friend, I'm almost as ready to believe that, upon further reading, as his claims in their entirety.

Update, June 10:

First, per this "10 things to know list" about Snowden, compiled by Tiger Beat on the Potomac, Snowden may have lied about his Army service. If he lied about receiving awards, I'll give 50-50 odds he's also lying about paratrooper training, and breaking both legs in so doing. And, in turn, that means he may have had a non-honorable discharge. Now, that doesn't mean that it was "dishonorable." If he's telling the truth about his legs, it could have been medical. But, even in the Reserves, I believe, there's yet other non-honorable, non-dishonorable discharges.

Based on that, even if he started at the NSA as "just" a security guard, I'll venture he lied about his military service on applications there and elsewhere.

Jeff Toobin has an interesting rhetorical question: Why the hell did he go to the NSA in the first place? Given that Politico says, in the link above, that he donated money to Ron Paul in 2012, voted for some third party presidential candidate in 2008, and that he appears to have some level of activity on Reddit, did he see himself as a "mole" from the start? More circumstantial proof of that here.

And, The Nation (with multiple links) has now joined the list of progressive sites saying Glenn got some stuff wrong. In my opinion, assuming what I've read in stories like this, what I've heard from IT friends on Facebook and more, Glenn did get wrong at least the server issue. Especially given that Snowden may may have mild credibility issues, and that the MSM is going to work to magnify them, I think it behooves Glenn and the story line to address this in a follow-up.

The infamous "PowerPoint Slide 5."
Via the NSA and my taxpayer dollars.

The "servers" issue, per a copy of the one PowerPoint slide Snowden gave to Greenwald, at left, is a big one. As I said on a friend's Facebook page, in a comment to him posting the link from The Nation:

I run a weekly newspaper, and keep eye on another. Here at the larger paper, we have a server for our office. We regularly use two FTP servers w/corporate, one for downloading ads designed at HQ, the other for uploading pages we build. It's not that hard to understand that there's different types of servers.

It's very plausible that companies in question with Prism have set up a separate server to address NSA requests for information.

Nobody's perfect. And even if one is a First Amendment absolutist, let's get all the facts squared down. Glenn can still address this server issue, while also discussing other details in the future.

And, if Glenn is that tech-clueless, then, since Snowden's the leaker and claims to be so IT-smart,  then he either needs to provide the approp riate corroboration, if this is what Glenn claims it is, or else, via the New York Times (if Glenn sticks by his story) make clear what this is NOT as well as with this is.

Besides, assuming there is no "back door," but that there may be, per Al Gore, a lockboxed server denoted to government data requests, there's still plenty of follow-up questions and details to ask about:

Details such as:
1. What does Booz Allen do in its contracting?
2. How much information can it access?
3. How vulnerable is it to Chinese hacking?
4. Who else besides Booz Allen has contracts specifically related to this, and how do questions 1-3 apply to them?

For right now, though, Greenwald is focusing on attacking Perlstein (Nation) and other critics of the "servers" issue. We'll see how he responds to Charles Pierce's take, since Pierce is bulldog enough himself. Oh, and Glenn, just because tech companies cooperated with the NSA, that doesn't mean they cooperated in the way you and Snowden claim they did. Red herring. Finally, your appearance on Chris Hayes' show does NOT address the "server" issue. In the text transcript, the word only appears twice, and in both cases, you do NOT distinguish between different types of servers.

Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? Not at all. Via a connection, as well as bits of blog interaction with him on my "More Glenn Greenwald is not a liberal" post, which followed my original "Why Glenn Greenwald is no liberal" post, I'm not at all surprised.

Glenn will not just double down on his stance while digging in his heels, he'll triple down and more.

Update, June 17: Snowden had an online Q&A with Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian, along with selected outsider questions. Neither GG or SA straight-out asked Snowden exactly what he meant by "servers."

This all said, I'll spin these issues off into a separate post soon enough.

Barton Gellman (l) and Glenn Greenwald (r). Politico pictures

At the same time, per the picture shown at left from this Tiger Beat story, I wouldn't trust Barton Gellman very far. Why not?

The Navy ship cap he's wearing? If you're any sort of whistleblower against the government, would you trust someone who looks like he's on "their team"? Not I. So, in his contretemps with Greenwald, I wouldn't trust his version of the story, either.

That said, this too reflects less-than-well on Snowden. Why would somebody who allegedly mistrusts the "mainstream media" that much approach somebody like Gellmann? Seeing that he contributed to Ron Paul, and voted third-party in 2008, pretty well scratches my earlier idea that he was a CIA plant. Instead, he just looks like ... well, like an idealistic, sometimes clueless, high-school dropout.

Finally, it looks like Al Franken has officially become a sellout. Getting a big "tout" on fake-liberalland Democratic Underground would be a "tell," but all we have to do is look at the quote DU lifted from a video interviev via another blog:

To summarize, he points out that as a member of the Judiciary Committee - he has availed himself of the briefings about NSA and nothing that was made public lately surprised him. He said, "There's certain things that its appropriate for me to know that its not appropriate for the 'bad guys' to know...So anything the American people know, the 'bad guys' know...I can assure you that this isn't about spying on the American people. This is about having the data available so that if there are suspicions about foreign persons or persons that have connections with terrorist organizations that we can connect the dots."

I tried to comment there, but DU, like Kos many a year ago, has suspended/blocked my account, I guess for some truly liberal nefarity (I can invent words, I'm an editor) that I wrote in the past.

And, per polls showing that a majority of Americans now favor such snooping, the IOKIYAO factor appears to be part of it. Thank doorknob I didn't vote for him, either time. And right-or-wrong Democrats who spew vitriol at me will only drive me further away, not convert me.

Update, June 13: Snowden's now changing his story (yes you are) on why he went to China. Dude, as successful as China is with hacking, it probably doesn't need you to "expose criminality." Besides, if it does really think you have things to share, you can be a hostage against your own possible extradition.

Now Snowden is starting to sound more like Julian Assange. Tinges of idealism — and tinges of a big, fat ego, too.

Another way he's sounding like Assange? This, in GG's follow-up story:

"He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them."

Like the NSA couldn't use a keystroke recognition software program or something?  I mean, if Snowden really thinks a red hood is going to stop the National Security Agency, he's got problems indeed. Let me go back to my one original idea. Maybe he is a CIA plant, designed to attack the credibility of the likes of Glenn Greenwald.

And, that's not at all unrealistic. A New York Times Opinionator column reminds us that this exact idea was discussed by a consortium of national security contractor companies, including HBGary Richard, just a couple of years ago, after a 2010 hack by LulzSec, and Greenwald's coverage of that:

Team Themis (a group that included HBGary and the private intelligence and security firms Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and Endgame Systems) was effectively brought in to find a way to undermine the credibility of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald (who recently broke the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of the N.S.A.’s Prism program),  because of Greenwald’s support for WikiLeaks. Specifically, the plan called for actions to “sabotage or discredit the opposing organization” including a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error. As for Greenwald, it was argued that he would cave “if pushed” because he would “choose professional preservation over cause.” 

Of course, Greenwald didn't "cave."

That said, suppose the contractors said to themselves, "We're on the right general trail, but some of the details are wrong," and they then talked about a new idea, of feeding false documents, expecting Greenwald to double down, and then attacking his credibility.

Far-fetched? Not at all. Snowden has more to release. Suppose there are more things that are incorrect in them?

Update, June 19: Meanwhile, just because Greenwald may be digging himself a Snowden-specific hole, there's simply no call for alleged civil libertarians to go far beyond Perlstein and say "nothing to see," but David Simon decided to do just that. Even worse, since then, he's doubled down on the stupid with an abundance of self-righteousness that probably could put even Greenwald to shame. Implying that nobody's been more out in front than you in fighting against all the problems of the War on Drugs is bad enough. Using a blog post title like "The 'Nigger Wake-Up Call'" is worse. Claiming that that title wasn't gratuitous is the trifecta.

Hell, with "friends" like you, the NSA or Booz Allen Hamilton had no need to give Snowden bogus information, or let him think things that aren't true, if that is the case, per my earlier hypothesis.

Will Obama snoop on our #DNA next?

"He knows where you've been driving,
he knows where you've been staying."

First, Team Obama still doesn't want to reveal if or when it's spying on John or Jane Doe, without a warrant, with a GPS tracking unit.

From the ACLU:

Two key memos outlining the Justice Department’s views about when Americans can be surreptitiously tracked with GPS technology are being kept secret by the department despite a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU to force their release. The FBI’s general counsel discussed the existence of the two memos publicly last year, yet the Justice Department is refusing to release them without huge redactions. ...

The Justice Department’s unfortunate decision leaves Americans with no clear understanding of when we will be subjected to tracking—possibly for months at a time—or whether the government will first get a warrant. This is yet another example of secret surveillance policies—like the Justice Department’s secret opinions about the Patriot Act’s Section 215—that simply should not exist in a democratic society.

Pretty straightforward about what Dear Leader is doing (to the degree we know what he's doing) isn't it?

It may also be a bit related why he's never nominated a director for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms his entire administration. Far be it from me to give gun nuts more ammo, so to speak, but Dear Leader's doing so himself.

But, that's nothing.

Hey, Gadfly, is that you I see?

Now, we've got a new "holy crap" moment.

It's pretty damned easy to identify real people from their DNA. Even if supposedly is somewhat "anonymized."

The genetic data of more than 1,000 people from around the world seemed stripped of anything that might identify them individually. All that was posted online were those data, the ages of the individuals, and the region where each of them lived. But when a researcher randomly selected the DNA sequences of five people in the database, he not only figured out who they were, but he also identified their entire families, though the relatives had no part in the study. His foray into genomic sleuthing ended up breaching the privacy of nearly 50 people.

Holy crap, indeed! Go read the whole story.

Among other things, a certain Dr. Botkin is incredibly naive:

"Dr. Jeffrey R. Botkin, associate vice president for research integrity at the University of Utah, which collected the genetic information of some research participants whose identity was breached, cautioned about overreacting. ... He added that “it is hard to imagine what would motivate anyone to undertake this sort of privacy attack in the real world.”

Really? The (he shall not be named) Presidential Administration who thinks extrajudicial killing of Americans with drones and extrajudicial spying on Americans with GPS systems, and a massive "war on leakers," wouldn't have ideas for what to do with this?

Let's say, on the "leakers" angle, Department of Justice subpoenas every piece of paper in a reporter's possession. And tests it for any bits of DNA it can find.

It identifies people, and starts going from there.

We've seen how draconian Team Obama was with Aaron Swartz. So, if you think this is hyperbolically unrealistic, think again.

And, would I ever want my DNA tested for anything? Not anymore.

Big Brother may be spying on your bus ride

Photo via Wired.

Is Wired promoting a conspiracy theory mindset, or should there be a legitimate concern? Related to that, is it being too alarmist (as in stereotypical media) about how it raises such concern?

Given that at least some of the money is from DHS, first, that's one reason to be legitimately concerned. Second, having the surveillance hyper-visible is often something deliberate, whether just to get people more mannerly, or to deliberately remind them of Big Brother, or to even encourage snooping.

Third, remember the school district that was remotely viewing students via laptop cams? True, that was not the "public square" and this is; nonetheless, it does raise some parallels.

As for the ideas raised under my "second" point, I raised the issue of the Overton window when a friend posted this on Facebook, before I shared it. And I was accused of pop-sociology bullshit.

Sorry, but I disagree. In matters of propaganda and similar, the government has, in WWI, WWII, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror shows a repeated desire to shift the window on what it wants the public to consider as legitimate surveillance, whether the legitimacy factor is one of legality or one of ethics. In the War on Terror, let's not forget waterboarding, warrantless wiretaps, drone warfare with kill lists and more. And, again, let's not forget that on all but the first, Obama has pushed that window further than Bush.

And, per "public square" arguments that say the government has a right to do this, whether Big Brother is the government (in this case) or Big Business, "legal" does not equal "ethical."  Per Wired, the fact that in one case, a local government had constitutional worries show that this isn't being overhyped.

US more of a police state, thanks in part to Obama; #VoteGreen

I guess, courtesy in part of then-Senator Barack Obama's HUGE flip-flop in summer 2008, we've officially come more of a police state here in the US. The US Supreme Court has upheld telecom immunity in telco companies (except, honorably, Qwest) warrantless wiretapping/snooping on American citizens.

This is yet another reason I tell people to vote Green, that is, Jill Stein for President.

I already, before the end of 2007, had “seen through” Obama to some degree, but his 2008 flip-flop on telco immunity was something concrete and empirical I could have in Obamiacs’ faces. And now, sadly, this is something else empirical to wave in their faces.

At the same time, as I tell libertarians, Paultards (who won’t listen) and the Glenn Greenwalds and Conor Friedersdorfs of the world, I want economic freedom, too, freedom from big biz controlling the future of the country. And, Gary Johnson or whomever of a libertarian bent isn’t going to give me that.

Meanwhile, indirectly related to Obama, here’s yet another reason, again, not to vote for either Tweedledee or Tweedledum ... current incarnation, or future representatives of either Republicans or Democrats — the fallout from "outsourcing" military functions.

That’s right, if you work for any contractor, toughshit if you get hurt in a war zone. Tough shit.

Now for the people who make $100K for Blackwater become Xe and now renamed Academi (Erik Prince, Wikipedia and everybody else know who you still are) I don’t feel sorry. But a truck driver for Halliburton making half that? Or less? Absolutely, this is wrong.

Why Obama the Snoop should scare the hell out of you

Glenn Greenwald nails all the low points of how Obama is out-Bushing Bush on spying on America.

And yet, too many Democratic voters won't, or refuse to, wake up.

Meanwhile, to what end? Greenwald shows the government is drowning in its own data mining.

The real end? The contractors, such as DynCorp, SAIC and many others, becoming ever more another branch of government.

And, after that, then, the money that lobbyists for these companies give to political candidates.

Looking forward AND backward and assaulting civil liberties

Yessir, when it comes to snooping on you and I the general American public, Team Obama, led by Der Schnoopenfueher himself, wants to have it both ways.

It wants to look forward in being worse than BushCo in warrantless e-mail snooping, while, despite Der Schnoopenfueher's claims to not want to look backwards, it's looking backward indeed in prosecuting a government leaker. The Times story doesn't name who it is, but via a Glenn Greenwald link, you can learn it's one Thomas Drake.

Oh, articles apparently based on the leaking won several national journalism awards. That's how bad the leaked crap was, AND how necessary it was to be leaked. It was apparently about the NSA's fucked-up, and hugely costly, Trailblazer program.

Hell, the NYT is even officially swatting Obama on the hand on the snooping issue — from ANOTHER court case.

Fuck you, Obama.

Be doubly scared of NSA

Oh, and thanks again, Obama and other Democratic FISA 45 percenters

If James Bamford, the man who has written the books three books on the secret dealings of the National Security Agency, was caught off guard by last week’s news of spying on Americans overseas by the NSA, you should be scared indeed:

Wired’s Noah Shachtman: It sounds like there were lots of people in the NSA that were spying on Americans.

Bamford: Well, I assume that they were. I mean, I don't think I managed to find the only two in the whole U.S. government that were doing it. No, I think I found two that were outraged enough to speak publicly about it. And I did actually interview other people, too — but they wouldn't go on the record or anything.

Shorter takes from Bamford:
• NSA director Michael Hayden has no backbone against Cheney et al;
• Hayden has compartmentalized the NSA to an extreme;
• TSP is just an umbrella name for a whole range of spy programs.

Here’s more about Operation Highlander, the illegal NSA spying on Americans run out of Fort Gordon, Ga.

Kafkaesque SCOTUS to ACLU: Eff off on telco spying suit

The Supreme Court, without comment, has denied the American Civil Liberties Union legal standing to sue telecommunications companies for illegal snooping on American citizens. The reason, previously cited by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, says the ACLU cannot prove its communications have been monitored.

In terms of SCOTUS alignment, this isn’t a liberal vs. conservative split.

What is does show is the timidity of courts at multiple levels, and judges and justices with both conservative and liberal leanings, in following the letter of the law rather than seeking out its spirit.

Warrantless telecom snooping goes beyond terror

Verizon turned over customer records in kidnapping and sex crime cases, too. Plus, it turned over not just records of suspect callers but also of the persons they contacted.

Five bucks says the Democratic Senate FISA renewal bill gives retroactive telecom prosecution immunity in exchange for some vague promise not to do it again.

The bottom line is: no telecom immunity and no basket warrants. We’ll see what actually happens.

Remember, NSA illegal snooping started from a Bill Clinton background

If it’s correct that the National Security Agency started warrantless telecom snooping on Americans less than a month after Bush took office, remember this one thing:

Those were still Bill Clinton appointees at the top of the NSA at that time.

True, the Bush Administration may have been seen by the NSA as offering a greener light than the Clinton Administration, but it seems to me like this was primarily NSA initiative involved. And that’s NSA initiative by people appointed by Bill Clinton. Remember, FISA requests and other things were ramped up greatly in the last two years of Big Bill’s administration, basically from the time he fired cruise missiles at a Sudanese milk factory on.

True, the attack on the USS Cole may have ramped up urgency even more, but a Bill Clinton NSA coming up with the original warrantless snooping makes it no more legitimate than a George W. Bush NSA initiative.

And that, my friends, is why Congressional Democrats probably won’t push too, too hard for NSA documents from this period as a trade off for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal.

Telecom immunity — next issue for Dems to cave on?

Since telecom immunity from lawsuits over warrantless wiretaps wasn’t made part of the ridiculous Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act expansion, it’s now coming up on its own. Glenn Greenwald expects Democrats to roll over, given the number of Democratic as well as Republican lobbyists involved in the immunity effort.

I’d have to agree with Glenn. Unfortunately, too many progressive bloggers, even in the face of this, still aren’t ready to ask when to stop supporting Democrats as a party and look at the Greens, or local social democratic candidates, or whatever options they have.

Will Congress cave on telecom immunity, too, during the next FISA renewal?

Bush and intelligence meister Mike McConnell want telecom privacy lawsuit immunity as part of longer-term FISA renewal. And, judging by one Senate Democrat’s comment, it’s not a question of whether or not Congress will cave, just how much:

Democrats say McConnell's first draft of the immunity proposal is far too murky. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an intelligence committee member, fears the language would go far beyond protecting private companies and their employees, also giving cover to any government officials who may have broken the law.
“I and others are going to make sure that anything that is done is done in a narrow, targeted way,” Wyden said.

Hey, Ron, how about not doing this at all? Why would you knowingly reward lawbreaking?

FISA court ruling behind Bush attempt to expand wiretaps

According to Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, that’s why Bush is asking for expanded powers:

(House Minority Leader John) Boehner’s description of the scope of the ruling appears to focus on one key feature of the surveillance program—the large-scale tapping without warrants of telecommunications "switches" located in the United States; they are used to rout international calls even when both parties are overseas. But there are indications the ruling has in some instances interfered with the National Security Agency's ability to intercept phone calls where one of the parties is in the United States, as well.

Under President Bush's original executive order creating the surveillance program after the September 11 attacks, the NSA eavesdropped on such calls (including those with at least one party inside the country) without seeking specific warrants from the FISA court. …

At some point after the new program began, one of the FISA judges—who, by rotation, was assigned to review the program for periodic updates — concluded that some aspects of the warrantless eavesdropping program exceeded the NSA's authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. … The judge refused to reauthorize the complete program in the way it had been previously approved by at least one earlier FISA judge, the lawyer said, adding that the secret decision was a "big deal" for the administration.

Congressional aides said that Democratic and Republican leaders of the intelligence committees met until late Tuesday night trying to reach an agreement on a short-term measure that would grant some of the enhanced authority — including the ability to tap telecommunications switches without warrants — that the administration is seeking.

The even bigger problem, though, is that Bush wants Attorney General Alberto (V-05) Gonzales to have an oversight role. But, given his partisan hackery, there’s no guarantee he won’t try to use data mining from this program for political purposes. Given his perjury before Congress, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t lie about having done that.

It’s good that Congress is resisting the expansion of NSA power on this ground. But, with this administration in place, I still say it should be resisting any expansion of NSA power, period.

Again, whatever restrictions BushCo is worried about didn’t seem to unduly restrict the Clinton Administration, and Congress needs to remember that.

Yet more on the ruling is in the L.A. Times and Washington Post.

The Times provides more detail on the court ruling:

(Some) officials said the ruling's reach was broader, affecting cases “where one end is foreign and you don't know where the other is” — meaning warrants would be required even when it was unclear whether communications were crossing the United States or involved a person in the United States.

One official said the issue centered on a ruling in which a FISA court judge rejected a government application for a “basket warrant” — a term that refers to court approval for surveillance activity encompassing multiple targets, rather than warrants issued on a case-by-case basis for surveillance of specific terrorism suspects.

The precise effect of the ruling is unclear, but a second official said that it “reduced the amount of intelligence we were collecting” on overseas terrorism suspects.

According to the Post, it sounds like Democrats are already ready to give away the store, with the exception of the Gonzo oversight issue:

Congressional Democrats outlined a temporary plan yesterday that would expand the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance of overseas communications in search of terrorists.

The proposal, according to House and Senate Democrats, would permit a secret court to issue broad orders approving eavesdropping of communications involving suspects overseas and other people, who may be in the United States. To issue an order, the court would not need to identify a particular target overseas, but it would have to determine that those being targeted are “likely,” in fact, overseas.

If a foreign target’s communications to a person inside the United States reaches a “significant” number, then an court order based on probable cause would be required. It is unclear how “significant” would be defined.

It is truly both scary and fubar that Congressional Democrats would approve a FISA expansion with a blank check line item like failure to define “significant.”

At least a few Democrats still have their wits about them. From the Post story:

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said that the proposal, while better than the administration's, “does not have adequate safeguards to protect Americans’ privacy.”

It’s clear, and the Post makes it clear, this could significantly expand e-mail and phone snooping on American citizens and companies.

I also can’t believe that the Democrats don’t recognize that, through executive order or signing statement, Bush will try to make permanent any new provisions enacted in a temporary bill. I don’t care if the bill has a six-month “sunset” provision; I expect Bush would try to ignore that in any way possible.

Dems to cave on expanded warrantless international call snooping?

That’s what The New York Timessays. But, giving this administration carte blanche to do ANYTHING without a warrant is stupid and even negligent, especially when BushCo says this is just Request Round 1:

The White House has told Democratic lawmakers that it will accept a narrow bill now but will come back later for broader changes, including legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the wiretapping program.

Congress needs to listen to voices like this, instead:

“Congress needs to take its time before it implements another piece of antiterrorism legislation it will regret, like the Patriot Act,” American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero told the Times. “The Bush administration clearly has abused the FISA powers it already has and clearly wants to go back to the good old days of warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying. Congress must stop this bill in its tracks.”

Here’s one crux of disagreement right now, according to Raw Story:

A key point of disagreement between Congress and the administration involves how to audit the wiretapping of calls between two people outside the United States that are routed through US telecommunications switches.

Again, it’s simply unbelievable Congress would sign off on any of this.

My favorite columnist, officially spied upon

Ted Rall says it is so.

THIS, my dear Bush-lickers, is why I oppose warrantless domestic wiretapping. If I had a bigger name and circulation, it could have been me, not Ted Rall:

The Republican Party held its 2004 convention at Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan, a few miles north of Ground Zero. The 9/11 attacks had occurred less than three years earlier. If you'd been running the New York Police Department, what would have been your top concern? Terrorism. Mine too. Obviously.

The NYPD, however, wasn't worried about Al Qaeda. For them, the real threat to law and order were anti-Bush protesters. Of course, it's a given that demonstrations occur at every party convention. After 9/11, however, First Amendment-protected activism was anathema to our government. Officials sought to suppress all dissent, no matter how peaceful or innocuous. So they spied on celebs scheduled to participate in anti-RNC protests, including the rappers Jay-Z and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, and on R&B singer Alicia Keys.

And Ted Rall.

According to The New York Times, “hundreds of pages of documents relating to [the NYPD’s] security preparations” released in response to a federal judge’s order show that “undercover officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, and infiltrated chat rooms. Although they identified a few people who talked about disrupting the convention, they also monitored many more people who showed no intention of breaking the law.” The Times identifies me as one of the three “highlights from the police intelligence digests”:

"A November 13, 2003 digest noting the Web site of the editorial cartoonist and activist Ted Rall. 'Activists are talking, some with barely hidden glee, about the possibility of violence', an officer wrote, describing the postings on Mr. Rall’s site.” ...
More baffling, the security “experts” totally missed the point. I didn't call for violence; I suggested avoiding the possibility of mayhem at a time that politics had turned poisonous, by moving the Republican National Convention to another, less liberal city. (The NYPD dossier repeatedly attributes quotes to me that are actually me quoting others, a glaring error that the Times repeats, presumably because the paper doesn't have access to Google.)

My original October 28, 2003 column couldn't have been more clearly opposed to violence. “As a Manhattanite,” I wrote, “I hope that the Republicans will seriously consider moving their convention somewhere else...The risk of convention-related terrorist attacks should be reason enough to not hold it in a city that paid the highest price on 9/11. A revival of 1968, with cops fouling their batons with the blood of young people, wouldn't do anyone — left or right — any good.”

Government agencies began spying on me shortly after 9/11. I have repeatedly suffered service interruptions — loud static, whispered voices, even outages — at the hands of a government whose laughably inept phone-tapping skills match its inability to respond to a hurricane or tornado. Finally, a security official at Verizon confirmed that my telephone had been tapped. “That’s already more than I should have told you,” he explained, requesting anonymity. “Under the Patriot Act we're not allowed to inform our customers about intercepts.”

Eventually I was seeing my local Verizon repair guy, who was repeatedly being summoned to my home to restore service, more often than my best friend. So I was naturally suspicious when I caught an unfamiliar man, no uniform or badge, fiddling with the posts in my building’s phone box. “Who are you and what are you doing?” I demanded. The dude knocked me down and bolted out a door into an alley. Giving chase, I watched him drive off an unmarked white van with U.S. government plates.

Why, why, does this not at all shock me?

And, what I said by way of intro? I wrote against the war staring in the summer of 2002, in print, in my small suburban Dallas newspaper chain of weeklies columns. I wrote against a “Patriot Act” three weeks after 9/11. Were I in New York, with a bigger media footprint, like Rall’s, I don’t doubt the government would have spied on me, too.

WHY the Gonzo-Card rush to Ashcroft’s hospital?

On a political chat site, an acquaintance raised this issue about why Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card felt they HAD to rush to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed and force him to sign another extension for their domestic warrentless wiretapping, when such extensions ran just 45 days at a time anyway.

My answer?

Could this be because political ops were involved?

Here’s what I told her:

I haven’t seen THAT broached yet on Talking Points Memo. It’s a VERY good question, though.

A possibility that pops into my head, given what all else were finding out about Gonzo and Rove and the “vote fraud” scam-crap, and how the Watergate similarities are ratcheting up ...

This is 2004, mind you. Presidential election year, etc.

What if some of this wiretapping is, as with the Nixon years (and some degree the Johnson years) ...

Political operations?

Think about it.

George W. Bush: I am the hereditary king

Our clueless and dictatorial (bad combination) CEO president claimed that people who supported U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling that National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional “simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.”


Wrong. Rather, HE simply doesn’t understand the constitutional world in which we live. He and his neocon buddies have been so fond of parroting the phrase “rule of law” in conjunction with the invasion of Iraq and other matters of foreign affairs.

Well, Judge Taylor’s ruling said, “THIS is the rule of law in the United States of America.”

And, as far as “the world in which we live,” how many times must we repeat Ben Frankin’s injunction to value liberty more than liberty-lessening “security” before the portion of Red Staters less than total knuckleheads actually starts getting it?

George W. Bush is NOT the hereditary king. Out of some mix of self-righteousness, Messianic delusision, cluelessness and assumption of the mantle of a family legacy, he has clearly shown himself to be the court jester, but that’s another thing entirely.