Watchdog Report Says N.S.A. Program Is Illegal and Should End
- By CHARLIE SAVAGE - JAN. 23, 2014 - The New York Times
WASHINGTON — An independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.
The findings are laid out in a 238-page report, scheduled for release by Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, that represent the first major public statement by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which Congress made an independent agency in 2007 and only recently became fully operational.
The report is likely to inject a significant new voice into the debate over surveillance, underscoring that the issue was not settled by a high-profile speech President Obama gave last week. Mr. Obama consulted with the board, along with a separate review group that last month delivered its own report about surveillance policies. But while he said in his speech that he was tightening access to the data and declared his intention to find a way to end government collection of the bulk records, he said the program’s capabilities should be preserved.
The Obama administration has portrayed the bulk collection program as useful and lawful while at the same time acknowledging concerns about privacy and potential abuse. But in its report, the board lays out what may be the most detailed critique of the government’s once-secret legal theory behind the program: that a law known as Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the F.B.I. to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation, can be legitimately interpreted as authorizing the N.S.A. to collect all calling records in the country.
The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.”
While a majority of the five-member board embraced that conclusion, two members dissented from the view that the program was illegal. But the panel was united in 10 other recommendations, including deleting raw phone records after three years instead of five and tightening access to search results.
The report also sheds light on the history of the once-secret bulk collection program. It contains the first official acknowledgment that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court produced no judicial opinion detailing its legal rationale for the program until last August, even though it had been issuing orders to phone companies for the records and to the N.S.A. for how it could handle them since May 2006.
The privacy board’s legal critique of the program was approved by David Medine, the board’s chairman and a former Federal Trade Commission official in the Clinton administration; Patricia M. Wald, a retired federal appeals court judge named to the bench by President Jimmy Carter; and James X. Dempsey, a civil liberties advocate who specializes in technology issues.
But the other two members — Rachel L. Brand and Elisebeth Collins Cook, both of whom were Justice Department lawyers in the George W. Bush administration — rejected the finding that the program was illegal.
They wrote in separate dissents that the board should have focused exclusively on policy and left legal analysis to the courts. Last month, two Federal District Court judges reached opposite legal conclusions in separate lawsuits challenging the program.
Ms. Brand wrote that while the legal question was “difficult,” the government’s legal theory was “at least a reasonable reading, made in good faith by numerous officials in two administrations of different parties.” She also worried that declaring that counter terrorism officials “have been operating this program unlawfully for years” could damage morale and make agencies overly cautious in taking steps to protect the country.
But the privacy board was unanimous in recommending a series of immediate changes to the program. The three in the majority wanted those changes as part of a brief wind-down period, while the two in dissent wanted them to be structural for a program that would continue.
Some of those recommendations dovetailed with the steps Mr. Obama announced last week, including limiting analysts’ access to the call records of people no further than two links removed from a suspect, instead of three, and creating a panel of outside lawyers to serve as public advocates in major cases involving secret surveillance programs.
Other recommendations — like deleting data faster — were not mentioned in the president’s speech. And all members of the board expressed privacy concerns about requiring phone companies to retain call records longer than they normally would, which might be necessary to meet Mr. Obama’s stated goal of finding a way to preserve the program’s ability without having the government collect the bulk data.
The program began in late 2001 based on wartime authority claimed by President Bush. In 2006, the Bush administration persuaded the surveillance court to begin authorizing the program based on the Patriot Act under a theory the Obama administration would later embrace.
But the privacy board’s report criticized that, saying that the legal theory was a “subversion” of the law’s intent, and that the program also violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
“It may have been a laudable goal for the executive branch to bring this program under the supervision” of the court, the report says. “Ultimately, however, that effort represents an unsustainable attempt to shoehorn a pre-existing surveillance program into the text of a statute with which it is not compatible.”
Defenders of the program have argued that Congress acquiesced to that secret interpretation of the law by twice extending its expiration without changes. But the report rejects that idea as “both unsupported by legal precedent and unacceptable as a matter of democratic accountability.”
The report also scrutinizes in detail a handful of investigations in which the program was used, finding “no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack.”
Still, in her dissent, Ms. Cook criticized judging the program’s worth based only on whether it had stopped an attack to date. It also has value as a tool that can allow investigators to “triage” threats and provide “peace of mind” if it uncovers no domestic links to a newly discovered terrorism suspect, she wrote.
End the Phone Data Sweeps
- By THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD - JAN. 23, 2014
Once again, a thorough and independent analysis of the government’s dragnet surveillance of Americans’ phone records has found the bulk data collection to be illegal and unconstitutional. Just as troubling, the program was found to be virtually useless at stopping terrorism, raising the obvious question: Why does President Obama insist on continuing a costly, legally dubious program when his own appointees repeatedly find that it doesn’t work?
In a 238-page report issued Thursday afternoon, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a five-member independent agency, called on the White House to end the phone-data collection program, for both constitutional and practical reasons. The board’s report follows a Dec. 16 ruling by Federal District Judge Richard Leon that the program was “almost certainly” unconstitutional and that the government had not identified “a single instance” in which it “actually stopped an imminent attack.”
Two days later, a panel of legal and intelligence experts convened by Mr. Obama after the disclosures by Edward Snowden echoed those conclusions in its own comprehensive report, which said the data sweep “was not essential to preventing attacks” and called for its end.
The growing agreement among those who have studied the program closely makes it imperative that the administration, along with the program’s defenders in Congress, explain why such intrusive mass surveillance is necessary at all. If Mr. Obama knows something that contradicts what he has now been told by two panels, a federal judge and multiple members of Congress, he should tell the American people now. Otherwise, he is in essence asking for their blind faith, which is precisely what he warned against during his speech last week on the future of government surveillance.
“Given the unique power of the state,” Mr. Obama said, “it is not enough for leaders to say: trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached.”
The more likely reality is that the multiple analyses of recent weeks are correct, and that the phone-data sweeps have simply been ineffective. If they had assisted in the prevention of any terrorist attacks, it is safe to assume that we would know by now. Instead, despite repeated claims that the bulk-data collection programs had a hand in thwarting 54 terrorist plots, the privacy board members write, “we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”
That reiterates the findings of Judge Leon — who noted that even behind closed doors, the government provided “no proof” of the program’s efficacy — as well as the conclusion of a report released this month by the New America Foundation that the metadata program “had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity.”
No one disputes that the threat of terrorism is real and unrelenting, or that our intelligence techniques must adapt to a rapidly changing world. It is equally clear that the dragnet collection of Americans’ phone calls is not the answer.
Here are some good news we wanted to share it with you!
* California Installed More Rooftop Solar In 2013 Than Previous 30 Years Combined — ThinkProgress
* Mexican Congress passes bill opening oil industry to U.S., others — CBS News
* Iceland thumbs nose at international opposition to advance $1.2bn debt relief plan — RT News
* First Step Towards Nullification: Michigan Governor Signs Anti-NDAA Bill into Law — Tenth Amendment Center
* New "Freedom Act" Would Curtail the Patriot Act — Truthout
* Congressman Holt pushes to abolish Patriot Act — YouTube
* Modern Prohibition Takes It on the Chin with Uruguay’s Marijuana Legalization — The Dollar Vigilante
* World's first legal recreational marijuana sales begin in Colorado — The Denver Post
* State Marijuana Laws Map — Governing
* Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago And The Results Are Staggering — Business Insider
* Canada's Anti-Prostitution Laws Struck Down By Supreme Court — Huffington Post
* City Cites “International Code” in Effort to Evict Off-Grid Woman — Infowars.com
* Cincinnati judge orders all speed cameras confiscated, manufacturer held in contempt — Natural News
* UC Santa Cruz students prepare for ethics competition — Santa Cruz Sentinel
* America Greatest Threat to World Peace — Global Research
Regina Dugan, Ex-DARPA Head Wants You to Swallow ID Microchips
Google executive Regina Dugan also pushes e-tattoo that reads your mind
- By Paul Joseph Watson - January 7, 2014
Former DARPA director and now Google executive Regina Dugan is pushing an edible “authentication microchip” along with an electronic tattoo that can read your mind. No this isn’t a movie script about a futuristic scientific dictatorship, it’s trendy and cool!
Dugan, who is Head of Advanced Technology at (Google-owned) Motorola, told an audience at the All Things D11 Conference that the company was working on a microchip inside a pill that users would swallow daily in order obtain the “superpower” of having their entire body act as a biological authentication system for cellphones, cars, doors and other devices.
“This pill has a small chip inside of it with a switch,” said Dugan. “It also has what amounts to an inside out potato battery. When you swallow it, the acids in your stomach serve as the electrolyte and that powers it up. And the switch goes on and off and creates an 18 bit ECG wide signal in your body and essentially your entire body becomes your authentication token.”
Dugan added that the chip had already been FDA approved and could be taken 30 times a day for someone’s entire life without effecting their health, a seemingly dubious claim.
Would you swallow a Google microchip every day simply to access your cellphone?
Privacy advocates will wince at the thought, especially given Dugan’s former role as head of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that many see as being at the top of the pyramid when it comes to the Big Brother technocracy.
Indeed, when host Walt Mossberg asked Dugan, “Does Google now know everything I do and everywhere I go because let’s face it….you’re from Google,” she responded by laughing and saying Mossberg should just swallow the pill.
In addition to the edible microchip, Motorola is also working on a wearable e-tattoo that could also read a user’s mind by detecting the unvocalized words in their throat.
“It has been known for decades that when you speak to yourself in your inner voice, your brain still sends neural spike volleys to your vocal apparatus, in a similar fashion to when you actually speak aloud,” explains Extreme Tech’s John Hewitt, noting that the device could allow covert voice activation as well as being used to detect stress and emotion (because Big Brother cares about your feelings).
During the D11 conference, Dugan predicted that if the e-tattoo was made to look cool with different artistic designs, young people would want to have it fused to their skin, “if only to piss off their parents.”
The edible microchip and the wearable e-tattoo are prime examples of how transhumanism is being made “trendy” in an effort to convince the next generation to completely sacrifice whatever privacy they have left in the name of faux rebellion (which is actually cultural conformism) and convenience.
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Lawmakers introduce a bill to restore 'Net Neutrality' rules
- By J. D. Heyes - February 14, 2014
It is one of those pieces of legislation that should be unnecessary, but as it happens, it is being welcomed, especially by online publishers, bloggers and other producers of news and opinions that might be considered unruly by the ruling class.
A group of Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill designed to allow the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reestablish so-called "Net Neutrality" rules that were struck down by a federal appeals court in January.
As reported by the Huffington Post:
Under the Open Internet Preservation Act of 2014, the FCC could enforce net neutrality rules, which require telecom companies to treat all websites equally, until the agency comes up with a permanent solution to last month's [court] ruling. ...
Democrats said they are hopeful they will shore up more support among their colleagues, although even some of the more progressive members of the party have aligned themselves with telecom companies in the past. The bill will also likely hit a roadblock with Republican lawmakers, who have tried multiple times to repeal the FCC's net neutrality rules.
FCC act ruled improper by federal appeals court
Indeed, House Republicans considered killing net neutrality rules last fall, in exchange for going along with raising the debt ceiling. When HuffPo asked if the Waxman-Eshoo bill even had a chance of coming up for a vote in the House, which the GOP controls, a Republican leadership aide simply responded, "No."
For their part, Republicans have said they back the appeals court ruling, because when the FCC initially approved an order called "Preserving an Open Internet," the agency exceeded its authority. In addition, Republicans say the order puts the government in the position of deciding who gets access to the Internet and which companies benefit. And they say that, before the FCC issued its regulations, the Internet was already open, free and "net neutral."
Still, some Internet rights and free speech groups are hopeful that the FCC will exert the authority that they say it has to restore its rule over the Internet. As such, they have undertaken a campaign with Free Press to urge the agency to do so. So far, advocates have collected more than a million signatures in support of federal net neutrality rules, and some 85 groups have backed the issue, including the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union, the uber-progressive MoveOn.org, Reddit and the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
"We're calling on the FCC to reclassify broadband connections as 'telecommunications services,' a simple move that would allow it to pass robust net neutrality rules that would actually hold up in court," Free Press said in a statement. "Without net neutrality, the internet as we know it could be a relic of the past."
The FCC's authority to issue the rules was challenged by Verizon in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where challenges to federal regulations are most generally heard. In January, the court ruled that the agency had indeed overstepped its authority, and ordered a recision.
GOP endorsed 'Internet freedom' in 2012
President Obama has also weighed in. During a recent live video chat, he repeated earlier support for net neutrality and said he was confident that the FCC would take new action to ensure an open Internet.
"It's something that I've cared deeply about ever since I ran for office, in part because my own campaign was empowered by a free and open Internet and the ability for citizens all across the country to engage and create and find new ways and new tools to mobilize themselves," Obama said. "A lot of that couldn't have been done if there were a lot of commercial barriers and roadblocks and so I've been a strong supporter of net neutrality."
He went on to say that, while it was important to respect the court's decision, FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler, who was appointed to the agency by the president, is examining all options available to the agency to evaluate and respond to the court's ruling.
"The one good piece of news coming out of this court opinion was that the court did confirm that the FCC can regulate this space -- they have authority," Obama said. "And the question now is how do they use that authority. If the old systems and rulings that they had in place were not effective in preserving net neutrality, do they have other tools that would stand up to court scrutiny that accomplishes the same goals?"
In its 2012 platform, the GOP endorsed "Internet freedom."
"We will ensure that personal data receives full constitutional protection from government overreach and that individuals retain the right to control the use of their data by third parties," the party said.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.theverge.com
http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Verizon killed Net Neutrality. But the FCC can save it.
Verizon killed Net Neutrality when a federal appeals court ruled in its favor and struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Open Internet Order.
Net Neutrality rule is a principle, which put the Internet users, the people, not big the few greedy Internet service providers (ISPs), in control. Net Neutrality ensures that Internet service providers can not speed up, slow down, or block web content based on its source, ownership, or destination.
And now Net Neutrality is dead – at least until the FCC stands up to the greedy bastards Verizon and AT&T and passes strong rules that will pass the legal test for ensuring Americans have access to an open and free from greedy corporate rule Internet.
Tell new FCC Chair Tom Wheeler: Save Net Neutrality. Click here to sign.
What is "Net Neutrality?" - Net Neutrality 101
When we log onto the Internet, we take lots of things for granted. We assume that we'll be able to access whatever Web site we want, whenever we want to go there. We assume that we can use any feature we like -- watching online video, listening to pod-casts, searching, e-mailing and instant messaging -- anytime we choose. We assume that we can attach devices like wireless routers, game controllers or extra hard drives to make our online experience better.
What makes all these assumptions possible is "Network Neutrality," the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies. But all that could change.
The biggest cable and telephone companies would like to charge money for smooth access to Web sites, speed to run applications, and permission to plug in devices. These network giants believe they should be able to charge Web site operators, application providers and device manufacturers for the right to use the network. Those who don't make a deal and pay up will experience discrimination: Their sites won't load as quickly, and their applications and devices won't work as well. Without legal protection, consumers could find that a network operator has blocked the Web site of a competitor, or slowed it down so much that it's unusable.
The network owners say they want a "tiered" Internet. If you pay to get in the top tier, your site and your service will run fast. If you don't, you'll be in the slow lane.
What's the Problem Here?
Discrimination: The Internet was designed as an open medium. The fundamental idea since the Internets' inception has been that every Web site, every feature and every service should be treated without discrimination. That's how bloggers can compete with CNN or USA Today for readers. That is how up-and-coming musicians can build underground audiences before they get their first top-40 single. That's why when you use a search engine, you see a list of the sites that are the closest match to your request -- not those that paid the most to reach you. Discrimination endangers our basic Internet freedoms.
Double-dipping: Traditionally, network owners have built a business model by charging consumers for Internet access. Now they want to charge you for access to the network, and then charge you again for the things you do while you're online. They may not charge you directly via pay-per-view Web sites. But they will charge all the service providers you use. These providers will then pass those costs along to you in the form of price hikes or new charges to view content.
Stifling innovation: Net Neutrality ensures that innovators can start small and dream big about being the next eBay or Google without facing insurmountable hurdles. Unless we preserve Net Neutrality, startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web. On a tiered Internet controlled by the phone and cable companies, only their own content and services -- or those offered by corporate partners that pony up enough "protection money" -- will enjoy life in the fast lane.
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