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Local councils accused of spying on residents' sex lives
Council have been accused of using surveillance powers to pry into residents sex lives.
A "surveillance dossier" used by Rotherham Council and released under freedom of information laws has shown how claims are checked.
The document suggests officials undertake "surveillance" of cars registered to addresses "to substantiate the allegation of living together".
It also suggests surveillance "to establish if customer's partner is living at the property" and to establish if couples are living "as husband and wife." Council have been accused of using surveillance powers to pry into residents sex lives. ... more -
Bush pushes for easier spying at home
US President George W. Bush is proposing a new law which allows local and state police to spy on American citizens with no evidence.
The law proposed by the Department of Justice would permit local and state cops to gather intelligence on police suspicion, not evidence, keep it secret for up to 10 years, and share it with the federal government.
The draft has mounted fears among American activists as it gives the US police the go-ahead to stake out antiwar groups or people who the cops might deem as threats.
The police will be free to use public records, the Internet, undercover surveillance and other techniques to spy on threat groups and listen in on Americans' communications, even when no crime has been committed and the likelihood of a crime is low.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticized the proposal by the Department of Justice, saying the US state police have already launched spying programs against those opposing the Iraq war.
The Bush-proposed law gives local police the authority to violate the constitutional rights of thousands of Americans.
“The federal government has increasingly encouraged state non-enforcement agencies to become basically intelligence gatherers and we have seen problems as a result,” Mike German, an ACLU lawyer, told Press TV.
Referring to the use of undercover agents against peace activists in California and protest groups in New York, Colorado and most recently in Maryland, German said, “It's indicative of what happens when we start playing not by the rules."
The new Justice Department/FBI guidelines for police operations supposedly contain procedures to protect people's constitutional rights.
But critics say the history of rights enforcement by the Justice Department over local law enforcement has been less than stringent and abuses are likely to happen.
Some members of the Congress have called the new rules troubling, but the White House which gives only $2 billion to local law enforcement is eager now to lift restrictions on local police to spy on whomever they 'think' is acting suspiciously. US President George W. Bush is proposing a new law which allows local and state police to spy on American citizens with no evidence. ... more -
Spy Teddy catches thief
A forensic science graduate and her father caught his terminally ill mother's care assistant stealing by putting a camera in a teddy bear's eye.
Robert Sampson, 46, and Emma, 21, fixed the tiny camera in the Liverpool home of his mother Thelma Sampson, 75.
Last week, care assistant Yvonne Allen, 28, of Halewood, Liverpool, was sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of theft.
Mr Sampson said his mother, who has cancer, was pleased about the sentence. A forensic science graduate and her father caught his terminally ill mother's care assistant stealing by putting a camera in a te... more -
U.S. man who spied for China gets nearly 16 years
A New Orleans furniture salesman who spied for the People’s Republic of China and helped the Beijing government obtain secret U.S. military information was sentenced Friday to nearly 16 years in prison.
The sentence for Tai Kuo, 58, was in line with what prosecutors had requested and more than twice as long as the term sought by defense lawyers.
“I have no one to blame but myself,” Kuo told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema at Friday’s sentencing hearing. “I’m going to shoulder this remorse and guilt for the rest of my life.”
Kuo, a native of Taiwan and a naturalized U.S. citizen, masqueraded as a Taiwanese agent when in fact he was working for the government in Beijing. He convinced a Pentagon analyst to give him classified information about U.S.-Taiwanese military relations.
Preliminary assessments by the Department of Defense have determined that the actual damage inflicted by Kuo to national security was minimal, but analysts have not yet completed their review.
Court records indicate that Kuo received $50,000 for his actions from an unidentified Chinese agent, who lured Kuo into espionage with promises of helping him secure business deals in China. A New Orleans furniture salesman who spied for the People’s Republic of China and helped the Beijing government obtain secret U.S. mil... more -
Unmanned spy planes will police Britain
The Government is drawing up plans to use unmanned "drone" aircraft currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to counter terrorism and aid police operations in Britain.
The MoD is carrying out research and development to enable the spy planes, which are equipped with highly sophisticated monitoring equipment that allows them to secretly track and photograph suspects without their knowledge, to be deployed within three years.
The plans have been backed by the House of Commons Defence Committee but have attracted criticism from civil liberties campaigners concerned about the implications of covert surveillance of civilians.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can obtain clear images while flying at up to 50,000ft. If ministers give the scheme the go-ahead the UK will be among the first countries to use UAVs to monitor its own citizens.
The Israeli military operates them over Palestinian cities such as Gaza and Ramallah, while the US Customs and Border Protection agency flies them over the Mexican border to detect illegal migrants along specified routes. The Government is drawing up plans to use unmanned "drone" aircraft currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to counter te... more -
British UFO fan in 'biggest US military hack of all time' faces 60 years...
"A UFO fanatic who hacked into hundreds of American military computers faces a 60-year jail sentence in the U.S. after the Law Lords rejected his appeal against extradition.
Gary McKinnon, 44, who was first arrested six years ago, now plans to take his case to the European Court.
A self- confessed 'bumbling nerd', he became a hacker after watching the film WarGames, in a which a teenager almost starts a war by accessing Pentagon secrets.
Convinced that the U.S. Government had made contact with aliens, McKinnon spent years seeking evidence by hacking into official computers from a North London bedroom. He claims he was caught while trying to download a photograph of a UFO.
But he also caused concern when, calling himself Solo, he left a threatening message on an army computer suggesting the September 11 attacks were an 'inside job'.
His message said: 'US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days...It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year...I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.'
In November 2002 specialist UK police arrested him and seized his simple home computer in the bedroom of his girlfriend's aunt's house in north London.
The UK Government supported the American extradition call, but McKinnon fought through the High Court to the House of Lords, complaining that the U.S. government had infringed his human rights by threatening him.
The programmer, who wanted to be prosecuted in Britain, says he will be treated as a terrorist, could be tried by a military tribunal and held in Guantanamo Bay, and that one U.S. attorney said the authorities want him to 'fry'.
McKinnon's lawyers said he faces dire consequences after rejecting a deal to accept extradition and guilty to limited offences. That would have meant serving as little as 18 months.
But McKinnon said he was told the deal would not be put in writing and 'only a fool' would have gone to the U.S. on those terms. He admits hacking into 97 computers belonging to the U.S. army, navy, air force, Nasa and the Pentagon, but denies sabotage."
(End of excerpt)
Full story at link by Neil Sears// Daily Mail Online "A UFO fanatic who hacked into hundreds of American military computers faces a 60-year jail sentence in the U.S. after the Law Lo... more -
Bush signs new rules, roles for spy agencies
President Bush approved an order Wednesday that rewrites the rules governing spying by U.S. intelligence agencies, both in the United States and abroad, and strengthens the authority of the national intelligence director, according to a U.S. official and government documents.
Executive Order 12333, which lays out the responsibilities of each of the 16 agencies, maintains the decades-old prohibitions on assassination and using unwitting human subjects for scientific experiments, according to a power point briefing given to Congress that was reviewed by The Associated Press. The CIA notoriously tested LSD on human subjects in the 1950s, which was revealed by a Senate investigation in 1977.
The new order gives the national intelligence director, a position created in 2005, new authority over any intelligence information collected that pertains to more than one agency - an attempt to force greater information exchange among agencies traditionally reluctant to share their most prized intelligence. The order directs the attorney general to develop guidelines to allow agencies access to information held by other agencies. That could potentially include the sharing of sensitive information about Americans.
The order has been under revision for more than a year, an attempt to update a nearly 30-year-old presidential order to reflect organizational changes made in the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It was carried on in secret in the midst of pitched national debate about the appropriate balance between civil liberties and security, spurred by the president's warrantless wiretapping program.
The briefing charts assert that the new order maintains or improves civil liberties protections for Americans.
Interest in the rewrite inside the 16 agencies has been high because it establishes what agencies' powers and limitations will be.
The order, which has not yet been publicly released, is expected to cut into one of the CIA's traditional roles. The CIA has for 50 years set the policy and largely called the shots on relationships between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts. According to the briefing charts, the national intelligence director will now set the rules for engaging with foreign intelligence and security services. The CIA will now just "coordinate implementation," according to the briefing charts.
The order also gives the national intelligence director's office the power of the purse: It was granted the authority to make acquisition decisions on certain national intelligence programs. It is also updated to include the national intelligence director and two major defense spy agencies - the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes imagery. It did not explain the FBI's domestic intelligence mission, which has gotten increasing attention since 9/11. President Bush approved an order Wednesday that rewrites the rules governing spying by U.S. intelligence agencies, both in the United ... more -
Bush Changes the rules on spying.
More power-hungry desperate antics by our favorite Bush.
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British airline boss is locked in solitary for 25 days after arrest for 'spyi...
A former British Airways executive was kept in solitary confinement for 25 days after being arrested in the Middle East for alleged industrial espionage.
Ian Heywood, 47, was heading off for a weekend break in Bahrain with a group of colleagues when he was seized by police as he was about to board a flight at Doha airport in the Gulf state of Qatar.
The Foreign Office in London admitted that Qatari officials had verbally confirmed his arrest to them after eight days – but they did not tell his distraught family of his whereabouts for another fortnight until they got ‘official confirmation’. A former British Airways executive was kept in solitary confinement for 25 days after being arrested in the Middle East for alleged in... more -
CIA-funded university program trains the next generation of spies
When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central Intelligence Agency spook. In fact, some of them will even be learning from him.
This fall, Dr. Tim Thomas, a CIA agent specializing in "open source" data mining, will begin a two-year stint as an officer-in-residence at the UW's Institute for National Security Education and Research (INSER), which is financed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That office is an umbrella organization for groups such as the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the CIA—which will provide the university with $2.5 million in grant money over the next five years.
It's not unusual for political or military organizations to recruit on campuses, but it seems strange for the UW to align itself with an agency most recently in the news for overseas kidnappings and harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding. When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central... more -
Police surveillance of war protestors reveals: plans to distribute fliers; suspici...
What have we learned from the Maryland State Police's undercover spying program targeting peaceable groups opposed to the death penalty and the war in Iraq, other than that the police are prone to ludicrous misspellings? Well, here's a sampling of the "intelligence" gleaned during 288 hours of police surveillance in 2005-06, in reports unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland:
· On Oct. 3, 2005, an undercover state police agent attending a meeting of activists ferreted out the fact that antiwar protesters were laying plans to distribute fliers at the Towson Town Center mall.
· On July 11, 2005, an officer attending an antiwar meeting held by "an activist named Bernie" and "five middle-aged women" discovered that in a protest held a week earlier at the National Security Agency, peaceniks shared cookies with NSA guards who issued them a citation for trespassing.
· On June 6, 2005, an agent who infiltrated an anti-death-penalty protest in Baltimore reported "no problems" at the event, attended by about 25 known and "currently unidentified recurrent death penalty protestors."
American governments have an inglorious history of spying on domestic dissidents; compared with FBI operations during the Red Scare, the Maryland State Police seem like Keystone Kops. But it's a mistake to dismiss Maryland's police espionage against its own residents as the work of hapless bunglers. In fact, it is pernicious and symptomatic of a post-Sept. 11 erosion of respect for fundamental civil liberties.
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Justice Department regulations explicitly prohibit police from gathering information on groups and individuals unless "there is reasonable suspicion that the subject of the information is or may be involved in criminal conduct or activity." But with state and local law enforcement agencies awash in federal money meant to root out domestic terrorist plots, civil libertarians have warned that police will start seeing potential terrorists and plots everywhere, "reasonable suspicion" be damned. The Maryland episode and other recent cases in Colorado and Massachusetts suggest their concerns are justified.
If the authorities equate dissent with criminal intent, they undermine the impulse for free speech and political activity itself. The specter of police infiltration can sow suspicion and paranoia and prompt people to keep their mouths shut. Could anything be more anti-American than that?
The police, invoking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, suggest that any operation undertaken for any reason is legitimate. "In a post-9/11 world," said Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, superintendent of the Maryland State Police, officers are duty-bound "to protect the citizens of Maryland from threats foreign and domestic." But if they cannot distinguish five middle-aged peaceniks from criminals, the police themselves become the real threat to American society. What have we learned from the Maryland State Police's undercover spying program targeting peaceable groups opposed to the death p... more -
Maryland troopers spied on activist groups
Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.
The documents show the activities occurred from at least March 2005 to May 2006 and that officers used false names, which the documents referred to as "covert identities" - to open e-mail accounts to receive messages from the groups.
Also included in the 46 pages of documents, obtained by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is an account of an activist's name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.
ACLU attorney David Rocah said state police violated federal laws prohibiting departments that receive federal funds from maintaining databases with information about political activities and affiliations.
The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His "primary crime" was entered into the database as "terrorism - anti govern(ment)." His "secondary crime" was listed as "terrorism - anti-war protestors." The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
"This is not supposed to happen in America," said Mr. Rocah. "In a free society, which relies on the engagement of citizens in debate and protest and political activity to maintain that freedom ... you should be able to attend a meeting about an issue you care about without having to worry that government spies are entering your name into a database used to track alleged terrorists and drug traffickers."
Mr. Rocah called the surveillance "Kafka-esque insanity."
State police Chief Col. Terrence B. Sheridan said the agency "does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protesters or organizations acting lawfully."
The surveillance of Mr. Obuszewski, of Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, and another person came to light during his trial for trespassing and disorderly conduct in a 2004 protest outside the National Security Agency's headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
Documents released by the prosecution revealed that the protesters had been under surveillance by an entity called the Baltimore Intelligence Unit.
The Maryland ACLU sued last month, claiming the state police refused to release public documents about the surveillance of peace activists.
The documents, which include intelligence reports and printouts from the database, show that several undercover officers from the state police's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division attended meetings of three groups: Mr. Obuszewski's group; the Coalition to End the Death Penalty; and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a convicted murderer who was slated for execution.
The documents show at least 288 hours of surveillance over the 14-month period. The undercover officers attended at least 20 organizing meetings at community halls and churches and a dozen rallies against the death penalty, including several at the state's SuperMax jail in Baltimore.
Included in the documents are references to a proposed sit-in at the offices of Baltimore County State's Attorney SandraA. O'Connor. However, they show no trooper reports of violence or threats of violence. Organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of peaceful and orderly demonstrations, the documents show.
***Article continues, click link to read*** Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and... more -
Embracing Big Brother
CANDACE COHN
Counterpunch
Friday, June 27, 2008
It may be June, but Christmas came early this year for Big Brother and the telecommunications giants. Unfortunately, it is average Americans who will pay--dearly--on three separate counts.
First, precious constitutional and other legal protections against warrantless domestic surveillance have been shattered. The federal government may now secretly and legally eavesdrop on virtually any American's e-mail, cell phone and landline communications--without first getting a court-ordered warrant.
New federal legislation gives the government and phone companies sweeping new domestic surveillance powers. It allows for mass, untargeted, warrantless eavesdropping against ordinary American citizens and political activists. It sets back hard-fought free speech, civil rights and privacy protections that were won by popular pressure following the Vietnam War and Watergate era.
The second price that Americans will pay is by those who have been illegally monitored since 9/11. They will lose billions of dollars from dozens of anti-spying lawsuits pending against the likes of Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. These suits, covering the last seven years, will now be dismissed in a huge giveaway of immunity to the telecommunications lobby and big campaign donors.
The lawsuits arose from the government's secret eavesdropping on American citizens, carried out since September 11 by Verizon, AT&T and others at the behest of the Bush administration, without court-ordered warrants--which until now had been legally required.
Third, Americans will be unable to discover the extent and details of the government's post-9/11 domestic spying operation, which barely came to light three years ago. That domestic eavesdropping campaign will now continue and expand further--with legal sanction--in the dark recesses of total secrecy. The new bill is a huge and blatant cover-up. CANDACE COHN Counterpunch Friday, June 27, 2008 ... more -
ACLU Sues Over Unconstitutional Dragnet Wiretapping Law
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a landmark lawsuit today to stop the government from conducting surveillance under a new wiretapping law that gives the Bush administration virtually unchecked power to intercept Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls. The case was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose ability to perform their work - which relies on confidential communications - will be greatly compromised by the new law.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed by Congress on Wednesday and signed by President Bush today, not only legalizes the secret warrantless surveillance program the president approved in late 2001, it gives the government new spying powers, including the power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications.
"Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power - and that's exactly what this law allows. The ACLU will not sit by and let this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment go unchallenged," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Electronic surveillance must be conducted in a constitutional manner that affords the greatest possible protection for individual privacy and free speech rights. The new wiretapping law fails to provide fundamental safeguards that the Constitution unambiguously requires."
In today's legal challenge, the ACLU argues that the new spying law violates Americans' rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. The new law permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and email addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it's conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing.
(End of excerpt)
Full story at link by the American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union filed a landmark lawsuit today to stop the government from conducting surveillance under a new wire... more -
Big Brother gets the greenlight
FTC says it won't intervene to protect Internet user privacy
WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission indicated Wednesday that it would leave it to data-mining Web companies and Internet marketers to decide how best to protect users' privacy.
"Self-regulation may be the preferable approach for this dynamic marketplace," Lydia Parnes, the director of the commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, told a Senate committee.
The FTC's decision not to step in — even as Microsoft and Google representatives testified that some regulation would be helpful — means that Washington won't address the matter before a new administration and Congress take office in January.
At issue is what privacy rights consumers have when data-mining companies use their Web browsing patterns to target them for ads. It's a gold mine for online advertising and Internet marketing, but consumer and e-privacy groups say it's intrusive.
NebuAd, a media company based in Redwood City, Calif., has been in the hot seat for partnering with Internet service providers to deliver personalized ads to users' computer screens.
The company's chief executive officer, Bob Dykes, told the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that there's no privacy lost in the process.
"NebuAd's systems are designed so that no one, not even the government, can determine the identity of our users," Dykes said.
Leslie Harris, the chief executive for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based civil liberties group, said that NebuAd and other data-miners shouldn't be able to track browsing patterns without advance consent from computer users.
She also fears that privacy will be lost as more companies enter the field and their techniques become more sophisticated.
"Self-regulation is a piece, but self-regulation alone is not enough to protect privacy, and we need to have some baseline legislation in place," Harris said.
Microsoft and Google representatives said they supported a privacy protection scheme that included advance consent, encryption of identities and clear notification of what information was being collected.
Federal regulation would be easier for Internet companies to live by than inconsistent state and local regulations.
"There's just this emerging patchwork of federal and state privacy laws," said Michael Hintze, associate general counsel for Microsoft. FTC says it won't intervene to protect Internet user privacy ... more -
Bush's secret army of snoops and snitches
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive. Posted July 9, 2008.
The full scale of Bush's assault on our civil liberties may not be known until years after he's left office.
At the moment, all we can do is get glimpses here or there of what's going on.
And the latest one to come to my attention is the dispatching of police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and utility workers as so-called "terrorism liaison officers," according to a report by Bruce Finley in the Denver Post.
They are entrusted with hunting for "suspicious activity," and then they report their findings, which end up in secret government databases.
What constitutes "suspicious activity," of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But a draft Justice Department memo on the subject says that such things as "taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value" or "making notes" could constitute suspicious activity, Finley wrote.
The states where this is going on include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.
Dozens more are planning to do so, Finley reports.
Colorado alone has 181 Terrorism Liaison Officers, and some of them are from the private sector, such as Xcel Energy.
Mark Silverstein of the Colorado ACLU told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that this reminds him of the old TIPS program, which "caused so much controversy that Congress eventually shut it down. But it is reemerging in other forms." Silverstein warns that there will be thousands and thousands of "completely innocent people going about completely innocent and legal activities" who are going to end up in a government database.
On the web, I found a description for a Terrorism Liaison Officer Position in the East Bay.
Reporting to the Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and the city of Oakland, these officers "would in effect function as ad hoc members" of the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group, which consists of local police officers and firefighters.
The "suggested duties" of these Terrorism Liaison Officers include: "source person for internal or external inquiry," and "collecting, reporting retrieving and sharing of materials related to terrorism. Such materials might include ... books journals, periodicals, and videotapes."
Terrorism Liaison Officers would be situated not only in agencies dealing with the harbor, the airports, and the railroads, but also "University/Campus."
And the private sector would be involved, too. "The program would eventually be expanded to include Health Care personnel and representatives from private, critical infrastructure entities, with communication systems specifically tailored to their needs."
In this regard, Terrorism Liaison Officers resemble InfraGard members. (See "The FBI Deputizes Business".) This FBI-private sector liaison group now consists of more than 26,000 members, who have their own secure channels of communication and are shielded, as much as possible, from scrutiny.
Terrorism Liaison Officers connect up with so-called "Fusion Centers": intelligence sharing among public safety agencies as well as the private sector. The Department of Justice has come up with "Fusion Center Guidelines" that discuss the role of private sector participants.
"The private sector can offer fusion centers a variety of resources," it says, including "suspicious incidents and activity information."
It also recommends shielding the private sector. "To aid in sharing this sensitive information, a Non-Disclosure Agreement may be used. The NDA provides private sector entities an additional layer of security, ensuring the security of private sector proprietary information and trade secrets," the document states.
As if that's not enough, the Justice Department document recommends that "fusion centers and their leadership encourage appropriate policymakers to legislate the protection of private sector data provided to fusion centers." By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive. Posted July 9, 2008. ... more -
AT&T whistleblower says spy bill creates "infrastructure for a police sta...
Mark Klein, the engineer who discovered and publicized the secret NSA program to tap much of the Internet when he worked at AT&T, speaks out against the bill currently before congress that would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The bill, known as the FISA Amendments Act would grant legal immunity to AT&T and others for their cooperation in the spying programs. It would also, Klein says, provide "the physical apparatus for the government to collect and store a huge database on virtually the entire population, available for data mining whenever the government wants to target its political opponents at any given moment—all in the hands of an unrestrained executive power. It is the infrastructure for a police state." Mark Klein, the engineer who discovered and publicized the secret NSA program to tap much of the Internet when he worked at AT&T, ... more -
Barbara Boxer stands up for our rights
- One of the only good people involved in government these days it seems.
Senator Boxer speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate regarding the upcoming vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, after a compromise on the legislation was reached and passed in the House. - One of the only good people involved in government these days it seems. ... more -
Telecom paying off Democrats to get immunity?
More of the telecom pie goes to the Democrats who caved on immunization. The dollar *is* the all-mighty.
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Obama supports FISA legislation, angering Left
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.
In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.
In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a "vital national security matter" -- and alienating his base.
(End of excerpt)
Full story at link by Paul Kane// The Washington Post
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Photo by flickr user Barack Obama
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.e... Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by... more
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