George W Bush // Current

Scholars reject Obama's Stance on Warrantless Cellphone Recording

The Obama administration’s position that the government can force mobile carriers to hand over cellphone tower location information on their customers without a warrant is wrong, two legal scholars say.

"Because CSLI acquisition is hidden, indiscriminate and intrusive, and because it reveals information over a period of time, it should be subject to the highest level of Fourth Amendment oversight (the same procedures used for wiretapping and video surveillance)," the scholars wrote late Friday.

The scholars are Susan Freiwald, of the USF School of Law, and Peter Swire, of Ohio State University.

Their words, published by the American Constitution Society, came a month after the Justice Department made its claim in a little-noticed case that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply.

Most Americans have or will carry a mobile phone in their lifespan, so the outcome could have wide-ranging privacy ramifications. Smartphones, like the iPhone, use cell-tower information to power geo-location applications like Google Maps.

In a case pending before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the government maintains it can require federal judges to order mobile phone companies to release historical cell-tower information of a phone number without probable cause — the standard required for a search warrant.

While judges have differed on the issue, the resulting evidence can be used in a criminal prosecution. The case on appeal concerns a Pennsylvania judge who rejected the government’s position in a drug prosecution that the new administration inherited.

Mobile-phone providers keep cell-site information for up to 18 months. Historical cell-site location information includes the tower connected at the beginning of a call and at the end of the call. The government does not claim a warrantless right to cell-site information for future calls, only for calls already dialed.

"Cellular providers could, if they wanted, keep track of your cell phone’s location every seven seconds," the scholars wrote, "because your phone ‘registers’ that often with the nearest tower."The Obama administration’s position that the government can force mobile carriers to... more

asherp
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25 days ago
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The Story of Four 9-11 Widows

This is a video from the families who fought to create The 9/11 Comission -- and... more

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2 months ago
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Where were you on 9-11?

I remember waking up, getting ready for English class. It was my second week of my freshman year of college. Before leaving to catch the bus to the other campus, I was checking the primussucks.com bullitan board, as was my habit at the time. There were several posts about the "airline accident" in NYC, and then suddenly, there were posts of a second plane hitting. It was probably a few minutes after 9am. My class didn't start until 10:30am.

I ran downstairs to see what was going on on the news. I sat there watching in disbeleif. I had become friends with the RD of the dorm, and I ran and got her, because I figured she ought to know.

She and I sat there watching as the towers burned. I remember watching as the first tower fell in total disbelief. I already knew at that time that a steel structure building had never collapsed due to fire. I imagined all the people's lives inside being extinguished in a horrible instant, and my could feel my heart fall to the floor with the tower.

Cookie, the RD turned to me and said, "I would hate to be president right now." I looked at her in disbelief, and asked if she was kidding. I looked back at the television and said, looking into the smoke, "for at least a year after something like this, you could pass whatever laws you wanted to. If he wants to the Senate to declare war, he can declare war on whomever he wants. Nobody will question the President during a crisis like this."

Looking back, I don't know how I knew that. I'm not a Machiavellian person myself. Studying history, probably, knowing how we interned the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. Knowing how we had the Red Scare during the 1950s. I was too young at the time to understand the Gulf War, but I knew enough by the time Clinton was in office that I was against Clinton bombing Iraqi aspirin factories during the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a distraction. I had followed the 2000 election quite closely as a Senior in high school, watched as it was stolen, and was convinced that G.W. Bush wanted to declare war on somebody. I even have a letter I was assigned to write myself as a Sophomore in College writing to my self as a Senior about what the future holds for me. It scares me a little now, but I said in that letter, half joking, "with George W Bush in office, we're sure to be at war with somebody by now, for no good reason." There was an inevitability I felt about it. Perhaps I was just that jaded.

Sitting there watching as the remaining tower burned, both of us not knowing what to do, Cookie looked back at me after my comment with tears and bit of anger in her eyes, visibly upset by what I'd said, and understandably. She said then, what I would come to agree with in the following October, when the congress passed the USAPATRIOT act. She said then, sitting next to me, "I hope you're wrong."

I wish I had been too.

[full article at link]I remember waking up, getting ready for English class. It was my second week of my... more

asherp
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2 months ago
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1 comment

Bush officials rebut Ridge's accusations

From Politico: '“We went over backwards repeatedly and with great discipline to... more

afitzgerald
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3 months ago
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30 comments

The Real Operation Shock ‘n’ Awe

From Bobby Nelson, one of the newest contributors to Blommit.com: Whoever the... more

alexaloise
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3 months ago
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10 comments

Jeremy Scahill: Democrats have selective Amnesia on CIA assasinations

While the focus is on Dick Cheney’s role, the U.S. has long had a bi-partisan assassination program.

By Jeremy Scahill

Members of Congress have expressed outrage over the “secret” CIA assassination program that former vice president Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. But this program—and the media descriptions of it—sounds a lot like the assassination policy implemented by President Bill Clinton, particularly during his second term in office.

Partisan politics often require selective amnesia. Over the past decade, we have seen this amnesia take hold when it comes to many of President Bush’s most vile policies. And we are now seeing a pretty severe case overtake several leading Democrats. It makes for good speechifying to act as though all criminality began with Bush and—particularly these days—Cheney, but that is extreme intellectual dishonesty. The fact is that many of Bush’s worst policies (now being highlighted by leading Democrats) were based in some form or another in a Clinton-initiated policy or were supported by the Democrats in Congress with their votes. To name a few: the USA PATRIOT Act, the invasion of Iraq, the attack against Afghanistan, the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, the widespread use of mercenaries and other private contractors in US war zones and warrant-less wire-tapping.

Regarding the Bush-era assassination program, there is great reason to be skeptical that the program CIA Director Leon Panetta alleges was concealed from Congress is actually the program the public is currently being led to believe it is. Why would the CIA need to conceal a program that never was implemented and, if it never was implemented, why did Panetta need to shut it down? Moreover, who was running this inactive program from the minute Obama was sworn in until June 24 when Panetta supposedly announced its cancellation? This program—as it is currently being described— should hardly be a major scandal to members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as some are now treating it. As they well know, President Obama has continued the Bush targeted assassination program using weaponized drones and special forces teams hunting “high value targets.” As former CIA Counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro and others have pointed out, “The CIA runs drones and targets al Qaeda safe houses all the time.” Cannistraro told Talking Points Memo that there is no important difference between those kinds of attacks and “assassinations” with a gun or a knife.

Now, if it turns out that the actual plan Cheney allegedly concealed is something other than what has been publicly described, that will be a different matter. For instance, if the CIA had a secret post-9/11 program planning assassinations on US soil or of US citizens and it was ordered concealed by Cheney. Or, if it was a plan to target in other ways “enemies of the state” within the U.S. as Seymour Hersh has suggested: “The Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state,” Hersh said in March. “Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.”

Let’s look at the program the Democrats claim was kept secret. The Bush administration reportedly authorized the CIA to use small paramilitary teams to hunt down and assassinate “al Qaeda” leaders around the world. It is currently being reported that this plan was never implemented and was born after 9/11. Both of these assertions are very, very doubtful.

The plan, as currently described in the press and by Democrats, is one that continues to exist under the Obama administration right now. In fact, this program has been part of official U.S. policy—under Democratic and Republican administrations—for decades.

[continues at link]While the focus is on Dick Cheney’s role, the U.S. has long had a bi-partisan... more

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4 months ago
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Anti-War leader Cindy Sheehan supports a new investigation into 9-11

Cindy Sheehan 7/16/2009 On April 4th, 2004, my son Casey was killed serving the... more

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4 months ago
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Vast majority of scientists say Bush Administration suppressed research findings

I know that there are many of you in the Current Community who refuse to acknowledge... more

tbowman131
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5 months ago
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3 comments

Bush Lawyer, Yoo, Ordered to Testify

Could this be the testimony that rips open the flood gates? I'll be watching this... more

tbowman131
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5 months ago
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How the U.S. Surplus Became a Deficit

Sorry conservatives, you can't blame Obama for overwhelming majority of the looming budget deficits. I know that may be hard to believe but these stats come directly from the Congressional Budget Office. Not to mention it is the Congress who is in charge of our countries purse-strings. What party was it that had control for the bulk of the time of the last decade?

I can almost hear the responses now: These facts are a conspiracy by the liberal, left-wing media and the radical New York Times... Too bad you can't argue with numbers

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"There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.

Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of pay-as-you-go rules, requiring Congress to pay for any new programs it passes.

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama. "

(Click link to complete the article)Sorry conservatives, you can't blame Obama for overwhelming majority of the looming... more

tbowman131
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6 months ago
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The Punk Patriot * I'm Not Mad at Obama. I'm Mad at You.

I'm Mad at you. Not you specifically. I like you.

asherp
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6 months ago
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4 comments

Wall Street Time Bomb?

Or a misrepresentation by the pundits and spin-doctors? What really happened on... more

asherp
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6 months ago
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5 comments

Pelosi and the CIA Briefings: Why all the Fuss Over Old News?

Strangely absent from the recent coverage of Pelosi's past knowledge of U.S. torture policies is any acknowledgement that this story is old news. Really old news. Way back in December, 2007, the Washington Post ran a piece headlined, "Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002." It hit Pelosi with the exact same allegations that have been so breathlessly reported as of late:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

So what's new? For one, Republicans are under intense moral and political threat and see a chance divert responsibility for their misdeeds back to Democrats.

To be sure, Pelosi should have taken action against U.S. torture policies as soon as she was briefed on them. And she's now paying the price for being too politically cowardly-or opportunistic-to address this issue head-on when the Post broke the story back in 2007. But it's disingenuous for the press and Pelosi's political rivals to feign outrage over what Pelosi knew and when. What did they know and when? Assuming they read the news, why didn't they make an issue of this back in 2007?

One politician did make an issue of the Post story at the time.

Cindy Sheehan, the Peace Mom, ran a quixotic campaign against Pelosi for her House seat last year, and garnered 16 percent of the vote and very little press. Key to her electoral strategy was capitalizing on liberal outrage-surprisingly tepid outrage, it turned out-over what Pelosi knew. She even called for Pelosi to be stripped of her leadership post over the news. "I was appalled and really saddened," Sheehan told me at the time. "We can't be represented by a person like this."

Seventy two percent of San Francisco voters thought otherwise.

With Sheehan's failed challenge in mind, it's hard to put credence in today's New York Times story on Pelosi's political fate, which quotes Bay Area resident Delphine Langille of San Ramon: "I'm very skeptical of what she's saying, Langille told the Times on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, "and when she goes to get re-elected, this could really damage her credibility." Yeah right. There's simply no way a Republican could ever mount a viable challenge in San Francisco, no way the Democratic establishment would ever try, and no way--as we've seen--that a third party outsider will take her down.

Politics is morally mushy business. The political climate was clearly more pro-torture back in 2002 than it is now. A braver politician might have spoken out sooner, but also might not have risen to the Speaker post. The interesting thing about San Franciscans is that they are politically sophisticated enough to entertain a race like Sheehan's while also voting for a pragmatist like Pelosi. And they can certainly distinguish between the moral clarity-or absolutism-of someone like Sheehan, and the immoral opportunism of liberal-come-lately Republicans. Let's hope the press and the rest of the nation eventually figure this out too.Strangely absent from the recent coverage of Pelosi's past knowledge of U.S. torture... more

asherp
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6 months ago
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Pew Poll notes Significant Rise in Independant Voters

For the past two years, centrism has dominated Americans' political views. That's the conclusion of the latest survey, released Thursday, from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Pew President Andy Kohut says the number of people reporting that they are political independents reached a 70-year high, but there was little movement regarding people's values. That's even though President Obama's election marked a watershed moment for the United States.

"Even though it was a big Democratic win and the Republicans are in free-fall, there's no sign of an ideological shift," Kohut tells NPR's Melissa Block. "Values are pretty much the same. It's not like the mid-'90s, when we were showing the public becoming more conservative, or the beginning of this decade, showing the public was more partisan. Public remains pretty much where it was two years ago on very basic values."

Of the independents surveyed, more described themselves as "leaning" Democratic than Republican (17 percent vs. 12 percent.) But in surveys conducted this year, 33 percent of independents described their views as conservative, up from 28 percent in 2007 and 26 percent in 2005, according to Pew.

Kohut says this just means that independent voters are "unbalanced centrists" — they tend to have conservative views about government and regulation, and more liberal views regarding the hot-button social issues, national security and religion, he says.

He also says African-Americans reported having a more positive view of American society than they did two years ago. Sixty-two percent of African Americans — vs. 40 percent two years ago — say the country can solve its problems, Kohut says.

"Among whites, there's an even larger percentage saying that African-Americans are making progress," he says.

But the biggest surprise for Kohut was people's attitudes toward business and the free market, and Wall Street. He says they haven't changed "all that much" in two years.

"The public continues to think that business is what continues to make this country successful," he says. "They are very reluctant about regulation. This is mostly the views of Republicans, but independents joined them in this perception — some Democrats, but less often Democrats."For the past two years, centrism has dominated Americans' political views. That's the... more