[A-List] Fwd: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Obama Demands Access to Internet Records ...

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

One way of accepting this expected information is to consider how it
will be used.  How was the internet snooping. usuallly wildly
successful. used?  (Toyota overtaking world sales of U.S. auto sales)
Well, to snoop on businesses and, anticipating a move that would
counter U.S. interests, block it before it could go through would be
one.   (La fin de L'Etat de droit, Global War on Liberty)Or, a
powerful book on the secret plans to take over the world, the
unequivical facts in it, the publishing would be stopped, the contract
shredded and any copies including the original manuscript would be
burned...as the access to all internet would help immediately locate
and do these things pronto.  The assumption is that the previous gives
two things that were done with the limited access allowed before.
With the unlimited access, what would be different?   No change at all
really.

One senses that the unlimited access is a destroying of all rights to
privacy under Constitutional Law, or under E.U. Law.  The U.S. is very
sensitive to destroying it's own laws so it demands complete agreement
to that change from Europe by having Europe destroy their laws, in
writing.  Stamped in Gold.   There is the Achilles Heel.  The United
States needs the West to agree it's actions are correct.  So does
Isreal!  All that is needed is to disagree in any and all non-violent
forms availble or imaginable.  Suzanne


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bill Totten <shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp>
Date: Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 2:32 AM
Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Obama Demands Access to Internet Records ...
To: Suzanne  de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>


... in Secret, and Without Court Review

antifascist-calling.blogspot.com (August 12 2010)


The Obama administration is seeking authority from Congress that would
compel internet service providers (ISPs) to turn over records of an
individual's internet activity for use in secretive FBI probes.

In another instance where Americans are urged to trust their political
minders, The Washington Post reported last month {1} that "the
administration wants to add just four words - 'electronic communication
transactional records' - to a list of items that the law says the FBI may
demand without a judge's approval".

Under cover of coughing-up information deemed relevant to espionage or
terrorism investigations, proposed changes to the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) would greatly expand the volume of
private records that can be seized through National Security Letters
(NSLs).

Constitution-shredding lettres de cachet, NSLs are administrative
subpoenas that can be executed by agencies such as the FBI, CIA or Defense
Department, solely on the say so of supervisory agents.

The noxious warrants are not subject to court review, nor can a recipient
even disclose they have received one. Because of their secretive nature,
they are extremely difficult to challenge.

Issued by unaccountable Executive Branch agents hiding behind a façade of
top secret classifications and much-ballyhooed "sources and methods", NSLs
clearly violate our constitutional rights.

The fourth amendment unambiguously states: "The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue,
but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
things to be seized".

However, in "new normal" America constitutional guarantees and civil
rights are mere technicalities, cynical propaganda exercises jettisoned
under the flimsiest of pretexts: the endless "War on Terror" where the
corporate state's praetorian guards work the "dark side".

Once served, firms such as telecommunication providers, banks, credit card
companies, airlines, health insurers, video rental services, even
booksellers and libraries, are compelled to turn over what the secret
state deem relevant records on targets of FBI fishing expeditions.

If burdensome NSL restrictions are breeched for any reason, that person
can be fined or even jailed if gag orders built into the draconian USA
Patriot Act are violated.

However, even the Patriot Act's abysmally lowered threshold for seizing
private records specify that NSLs cannot be issued "solely on the basis of
activities protected by the first amendment of the Constitution of the
United States".

Despite these loose standards, congressional investigators, journalists
and civil liberties watchdogs found that the FBI violated the rules of the
road, such as they are, thousands of times. Between 2003 and 2006, the
Bureau issued 192,499 NSLs, according to current estimates, the FBI
continues to hand out tens of thousands more each year.

According to a May 2009 Justice Department letter {2} sent to the House
and Senate Judiciary Committees, "in 2007, the FBI made 16,804 NSL
requests" and followed-up the next year by issuing some "24,744 NSL
requests ... to 7,225 United States persons".

The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a
2007 report {3} which concluded that the Bureau had systematically abused
the process and exceeded their authority. A follow-up report {4} published
by the OIG in January found that serious civil liberties breeches continue
under President Obama.

This is hardly surprising given the track record of the Obama
administration.

"Reform", Obama-Style

The latest White House proposal would hand the secret state unprecedented
access to the personal communications of every American.

What Bushist war criminals did secretly, Obama intends to do openly and
with the blessings of a supine Congress. As constitutional scholar Glenn
Greenwald points out {5}, "not only has Obama ... blocked any reforms, he
has taken multiple steps to further expand unaccountable and unchecked
surveillance power".

Nowhere is this more apparent than by administration moves to "reform"
ECPA.

While the Justice Department claims their newly sought authority does not
include "'content' of email or other Internet communications", this is so
much eyewash to deceive the public.

In fact, the addition of so-called transactional records to the volume of
files that the state can arbitrarily seize, would hand the government
access to a limitless cache of email addresses, dates and times they were
sent and received, and a literal snap-shot on demand of what any user
looks at or searches when they log onto the internet.

As I have pointed out before, most recently last month when I described
the National Security Agency's Perfect Citizen program {6}, the roll-out
of privacy-killing deep-packet inspection software developed by NSA
already has the ability to read and catalogue the content of email
messages flowing across private telecommunications networks.

Former Bushist Homeland Security official, Stewart A Baker, applauded the
proposal and told the Post, "it'll be faster and easier to get the data".
Baker touts the rule change as a splendid way for ISPs to hand over "a lot
more information to the FBI in response to an NSL".

While the Post claims "many internet service providers" have "resisted the
government's demands to turn over electronic records", this is a rank
mendacity.

A "senior administration official", speaking anonymously of course, told
the Post that "most" ISPs already "turn over such data". Of course they
do, and at a premium price!

Internet security analyst Christopher Soghoian has documented that just
one firm, Sprint Nextel, routinely turned over their customer's
geolocation data to law enforcement agencies and even built them a secure
web portal to do so, eight million times in a single year!

Soghoian wrote last year {7} that "government agents routinely obtain
customer records from these firms, detailing the telephone numbers dialed,
text messages, emails and instant messages sent, web pages browsed, the
queries submitted to search engines, and of course, huge amounts of
geolocation data, detailing exactly where an individual was located at a
particular date and time".

As a public service, the secrecy-shredding web site Cryptome {8} has
published dozens of so-called compliance guides for law enforcement issued
by a plethora of telecoms and ISPs. Readers are urged to peruse Yahoo's
manual {9} for a taste of what these grifters hand over.

While the administration argues that "electronic communication
transactional records" are the "same as" phone records that the Bureau can
obtain with an NSL, seizing such records reveal far more about a person's
life, and political views, than a list of disaggregated phone numbers.
This is precisely why the FBI wants unlimited access to this data. Along
with racial and religious profiling, the Bureau would be handed the means
to build a political profile on anyone they deem an "extremist".

That "senior administration official" cited by the Post claims that access
to a citizen's web history "allows us to intercede in plots earlier than
we would if our hands were tied and we were unable to get this data in a
way that was quick and efficient".

Perhaps our "change" administration has forgotten a simple historical
fact: police states are efficient. The value of privacy in a republic,
including whom one communicates with or where one's interests lie, form
the core values of a democratic order; principles sorely lacking in our
"new normal" Orwellian order!

In a small but significant victory, the ACLU announced {10} this week that
"the FBI has partially lifted a gag it imposed on American Civil Liberties
Union client Nicholas Merrill in 2004 that prevented him from disclosing
to anyone that he received a national security letter (NSL) demanding
private customer records".

In a statement to reporters, Merrill said: "Internet users do not give up
their privacy rights when they log on, and the FBI should not have the
power to secretly demand that ISPs turn over constitutionally protected
information about their users without a court order. I hope my successful
challenge to the FBI's NSL gag power will empower others who may have
received NSLs to speak out."

Despite this narrow ruling, the FBI intends to soldier on and the Obama
administration is hell-bent on giving the Bureau even more power to
operate in the dark.

Commenting on the Merrill case, The Washington Post reported {11} FBI
spokesperson Mike Kortan claimed that NSL "secrecy is often essential to
the successful conduct of counterterrorism and counterintelligence
investigations" and that public disclosure "may pose serious risks to the
investigation itself and to other national security interests".

Those "other" interests, apparently, do not extend to the right to express
one's views freely, particularly when they collide with the criminal
policies of the secret state.

Links:

{1}
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072806141.html

{2}
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/05/doj-report-to-congress-on-fisa-and-nsls.pdf

{3} http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0703b/final.pdf

{4} http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s1001r.pdf

{5}
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/09/glenn-greenwald/the-digital-surveillance-state-vast-secret-and-dangerous/

{6}
http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/07/are-you-perfect-citizen-nsa-will-deploy.html

{7}
http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2009/12/8-million-reasons-for-real-surveillance.html

{8} http://cryptome.org/

{9} http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/yahoo-spy.pdf

{10}
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/national-security-letter-recipient-can-speak-out-first-time-fbi-demanded-customer-

{11}
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/09/AR2010080906252.html

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/08/obama-demands-access-to-internet.html


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