*** WORTH READING *** more on Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brock Meeks <Brock.Meeks () msnbc com>
Date: December 17, 2005 1:35:16 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

I think my newshound colleagues at the Great Grey Lady have a hell of a
lot of explaining to do.

The NYT piece makes the remarkable admission that they HELD the story AT
THE REQUEST of the White House FOR A YEAR.

If the NYT had this story BEFORE the election and held it on the
administration's request, one has to start asking some pretty damn
serious questions about timing.

Further, there is no mention of the fact that much of this material
appears in a book that James Risen, the lead reporter listed on the
piece, is about to publish.

And why NOW?? Why, after more than a year, do you pull the string and
publish in FRIDAY, typically referred to as "garbage day" here in
Washington, when officials try to slide something potentially
embarrassing into the "garbage" of the weekend news cycle (hoping it'll
receive little play or be overlooked).

Did the NYT do this in a cunning move to torpedo the Patriot Act vote in
the Senate?  I don't think so; the bungling NYT isn't that clever (NYT
staffers that are personal friends, excluded of course, you know who you
are.)

And it should be noted that was, I'm told, a pretty heated debate
internally among the reporters about management's decision to rollover
and play lapdog for the White House.

Disclaimer: in my homeland security reporting I, too, have withheld
certain details of a story when asked to by the Department of Homeland
Security, such as the actual number air marshals the U.S. has flying on
planes.  I know it; I've seen the personnel database listing their
ranks, but I've honored their request to never publish the actual
number.

And I've also held a story.  When I broke a story earlier this year
about the massive crackdown on the border (in March) and about how DHS
was redoubling its efforts in manpower, equipment, etc., I agreed to
hold the story until 24 hours before it was announced.  The meant I had
to hold the story for about four days.

And I horse-traded.  In return for holding the story until just a day
before the crackdown was announced, I secured exclusive, inside access
to some border patrol operations, on land and in the air, that were able
to be filmed by NBC News.

I don't believe that puts me in the same league as the NYT, holding back
this level of a scoop for a year, but I'm certainly willing to debate
those that believe it is.

--Brock

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 11:28 AM
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] more on Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts



Begin forwarded message:

From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart () pobox com>
Date: December 16, 2005 4:41:21 PM EST
To: dave () farber net, Neil Munro <NMunro () nationaljournal com>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

Neil Munro missed the basic trick that the Bush Administration has
done here.

Because of extensive previous abuse, Congress banned the NSA and CIA
from
spying on Americans - they're limited to spying on foreigners,
while the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are the only ones
who can normally spy on Americans and are subject to Constitutional
requirements,
like getting warrants for specific searches.
The Patriot Act and CALEA let the FBI expand their powers significantly,
with tools such as roving wiretaps,
but there's still some semblance of court supervision.

To accommodate problems like foreign spies talking to Americans,
the FISA courts are a court system that operates in secrecy and
can issue warrants based on classified information,
which allow the intelligence agencies to do specific kinds of spying
and wiretapping within the US.  In theory, this provides some kind of
independent Constitutional adult supervision; in practice it's a
rubber stamp,
and the only case in which they're publicly known to have refused a
request
was in the Wen Ho Lee witchhunt after it had become political.

What the Bush Administration has changed is get its lawyers to say that
the post-9/11 resolutions let them avoid even this level of supervision,
letting the NSA wiretap inside the US without any warrants at all,
and as far as I can tell from the NYT article, without notifying the
FISA courts after they've started to keep records and possibly be
ordered
to turn the wiretap back off if the court disagreed with them.
If this were simply a matter of speed, because half a day's delay in
getting a warrant approved would interfere with their work,
they could do that much - this is a major change in character.
It's shameful that the New York Times sat on the story for a year -
and if this were a legitimate activity, the Bush Administration wouldn't
have pressured them into suppressing it that long.

In separate news, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/ ,
NBC reports that the Defense Department is back to spying on Americans,
specifically anti-war groups and campaigns against military recruiting,
especially suspicious groups associating with Quakers.
They got busted for this back during the Vietnam war,
and were supposed to have stopped,
but they're doing it again in ways that appear to be
violating the rules for data collection that were imposed on them
and are clearly inappropriate in a free society.

And the EU just voted to impose extensive data collection and retention
requirements on ISPs and telcos, in ways that negate many previous
European data privacy laws, as yet another reminder that
when civil rights are protected by laws, that's only good until
the laws are changed or the government starts disobeying them.

It's time to get PGP working again  (originally written for
anti-nuclear groups who were being surveilled),
give some more money to the EFF, get back to Quaker Meeting,
and find ways to replace an Administration that thinks the
Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper."

                Bill Stewart.


------------
From: "Munro, Neil" <NMunro () nationaljournal com>
Date: December 16, 2005 1:34:26 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts >:o >:o


Do please read the 42nd paragraph of the NYT story;

".....law enforcement and intelligence officials are still required to
seek a F.I.S.A. warrant every time they want to eavesdrop within the
United States. A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the
Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap
warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target.
Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses."

So, as far as I can see, what's being targeted are international calls
to or from known foreign terrorists (that are not yet covered by US
civil rights laws) that mention, begin or end at U.S. persons.

The CIA/FBI intelligence-take would drop if they had to get a judge's
approval every time an AL-Q guy called up a new number for a brief phone
call in the US. If this was the norm, then traditional eavesdropping on
Atta would have been very unlikely, as he would have been able to use
different street phones every time he called home. If voters want to
accept that trade-off, Congress will give it to them.
[....]



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