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Obama down in polls after FISA flip
Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience--an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who'd slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama's reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.
More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama's outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June's NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent. Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in earl... more -
Can You Hear Me Now? Bush's Expanded Wiretap Power!
Big Brother is watching- Big Brother Bush, that is!
"President Bush signed a bill into law Thursday that broadens the government's surveillance power. The move came just a day after the Senate passed the legislation, by a 69-to-28 margin, culminating months of political fireworks. The package includes a controversial clause that grants immunity to telecommunications companies that participate in National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The change is the most sweeping since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was adopted three decades ago to prevent the government from spying on people in the U.S. suspected of engaging in espionage or terrorism without court approval. The new provisions allow the U.S. Justice Department and National Security Agency (NSA) to recruit telephone companies to bug their customers' phone conversations, and prohibit lawsuits against the telecoms for privacy rights violations. The measure also protects the companies against suits for past wiretaps. That means lawsuits will likely be dropped against AT&T and Verizon that charged they had violated privacy rights by tapping their customers phone lines at the request of the NSA. (Qwest Communications, on the other hand, refused similar requests in 2001.)"
There's more, read on if you wish- but remember, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you! Big Brother is watching- Big Brother Bush, that is! ... 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 -
This generation's 1984, download it for free
From the book:
Marcus, aka "w1n5t0n" is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works-and howto work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of his networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high schools intrusive but clumsy security systems.
But his whole world changes when, having skipped school, he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison, where they're mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: Take down the DHS himself.
Can one teenage hacker take fight back against a government out of control? Maybe, but only if he's really careful... and very, very smart.
"A wonderful, important book... I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year" - Neil Gaiman, author of Sandman and American Gods.
"A worthy younger sibling to Orwell’s 1984, Cory Doctorow’s LITTLE BROTHER is lively, precocious, and most importantly, a little scary." - Brian K Vaughn, author of Y: The Last Man
"Scarily Realistic... Action-packed with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophiles civil protest". - Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox
"Read this book. You'll learn a great deal about computer security, surveillance and how to counter it, and the risk of trading off freedom for 'security'. And you'll have fun doing it." - Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media.
This is one of my favorite books if not my favorite book. Everyone in this generation should read it, because we might need it should things go wrong.
From the book: ... more -
Senate passes no-warrant wiretapping bill. Kiss your rights good bye
The Senate Wednesday approved a bill to put new rules in place for intelligence agency eavesdropping on suspected terrorists.
Communication technologies like mobile phones have made the 1978 FISA bill out of date, supporters say.
The bill also effectively protects telephone companies from being sued for cooperating with a government surveillance program launched in the wake of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The White House pushed hard for the provision, with a threat to veto the bill if it did not contain protection for phone companies.
The vote was 69-28, with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois voting in favor. Republican candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona was not present for the vote.
President Bush said Wednesday afternoon he will sign the bill, calling it "vital" and "long overdue." Watch Bush praise the new FISA bill »
The bill, formally known as the FISA Amendments Act, updates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It will:
Require the secret court set up to oversee FISA to review the surveillance of any targeted American whether the person is in the United States or abroad;
Provide for the FISA court to sign off on procedures for removing the name of any American inadvertently captured in a communication with a foreign target;
Prohibit reverse targeting, which is when intelligence officials eavesdrop on a foreigner's communications overseas as a means to spy on someone in the United States.
Close a loophole by explicitly establishing the 1978 law as the exclusive means for authorizing electronic surveillance;
Set up a procedure for federal judges to determine whether a telecommunications company can be sued for providing the intelligence community access to its networks without a court order.
The bill essentially grants immunity to the telecommunication companies, the opponents said, because all of the telephone carriers received government certifications saying their participation in the program was legal.
Obama was criticized for backing away from his early opposition to the bill by liberal bloggers and individuals commenting on his campaign Web site.
Before voting for the bill, Obama voted for an amendment offered by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, that would have stripped the language granting immunity to telecommunications companies.
Civil liberties groups have vowed to fight the legislation in court.
"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement issued minutes after the Senate approved the bill. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and e-mail communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."
President Bush acknowledged in 2005 that he ordered the secretive National Security Agency to intercept communications between U.S. residents and people overseas suspected of having ties to terrorism. The administration says the program was authorized when Congress approved military action against al Qaeda after the 2001 attacks.
The Senate Wednesday approved a bill to put new rules in place for intelligence agency eavesdropping on suspected terrorists. ... more -
Judge's ruling in FISA lawsuit suggests Bush is a felon
Amid all the recent controversy over the presumptive presidential nominees' stances on the congressional bill regarding FISA regulations, the media appears to have forgotten the central issue, of the actual lawsuit itself, and possible consequences for the defendant, George W. Bush.
Late last week, a federal judge ruled against the legality of Bush's secret wiretapping campaign, rejecting certain aspects of his lawyers' argument that "the president has exclusive authority over matters of national security and may disregard laws like FISA that impose checks on presidential power." If successful, the lawsuit would hold Bush personally accountable for violating these laws, constituting a series of felonies.
"On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker… ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon."
Much of the story is still shrouded in secrecy, but due to the inventiveness of the plaintiff's legal team, who managed to argue against arguments they couldn't see, using documents they could only construct in secret (and shred immediately), flirting with treason simply by remembering certain aspects of the case, some of the proceedings are finally bubbling up from the gutter of 'national security' into the public eye.
Amazingly, the defendant's legal team seems to have made several key blunders, effectively invalidating some of the national security laws hampering other such lawsuits from establishing proof and cause. "Of the four dozen lawsuits challenging various aspects of Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program, the Al-Haramain case is unique because… we can show they were victims of the unlawful conduct for which they are suing. Nobody else has been able to produce such proof. Our proof is a top-secret classified document, which the government accidentally gave to Al-Haramain's lawyers in August of 2004."
In the protracted, seven year process of constructing a legal defense, "We [the plaintiffs' lawyers] went forward, drafting our secret appellate brief in a DOJ office, on a DOJ computer, under the watch of a DOJ security officer -- that is, under the auspices and control of our adversary in the legal case. We could print out drafts but couldn't take them from the room; instead, we were to leave the drafts on the table to be shredded by Hogarty [the government's defense lawyer] later… We would not be allowed to keep a copy of what we had written; the brief in Hogarty's safe was 'our' copy.
Hogarty explained that anything we wrote down that contained classified information, then or later, would instantly become 'derivatively classified' and thus unlawful for us to possess. I wondered whether this meant that the portion of my brain that remembers the Document is also 'derivatively classified,' making its presence in my skull unlawful."
This is but one moment in a baffling, twisted tale of modern constitutional law colliding with Congressional regulation and post-9/11 Bush administration fear tactics. Follow the jump to read the lawyer's actual first-person account, Involving impossibly Byzantine legal semantics, a 'who's on first' style courtroom scene, a banana peel which may (or may not) have been shredded for its implication in state secrets, and a pervasive, Orwellian level of privelaged secrecy. It is an intricate network of checks and balances, almost beyond belief.
Although this ruling will not end the case,
"Judge Walker's decision last week was a major victory for us. Walker concluded that FISA does indeed preempt the state secrets privilege. More broadly, he addressed the key issue raised by our lawsuit -- the validity of the 'unitary executive' theory -- and said what we've been long awaiting: that the president does not have unbridled power to disregard federal statutory law in the name of national security."
With this ruling, handed down on the day before Independence Day, the federal judge's decision suggests that freedom may still reign in America.
Amid all the recent controversy over the presumptive presidential nominees' stances on the congressional bill regarding FISA regulatio... more -
Five key bills in House and Senate that you should know about.
These bills will affect housing, energy reform, Medicare, wiretapping, and war funding. click on link to view.
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AT&T whistleblower says spy bill creates "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, 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 -
Why the new wiretapping law is a lot worse than you think
Wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.") Wiretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any au... more
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House Helps Bush Shred The Constitution
Don't be fool by the new FISA wiretapping bill. It's still pretty much does the same thing as the old bill, violate the 4th amendment.
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US Warrantless Wiretaps Will Continue
"US lawmakers have passed a bill to shield telephone companies who helped in the White House's controversial warrantless wiretaps programme.
The bill also grants the US government the power to continue with its warrantless surveillance scheme.
The Bush administration faced criticism when details emerged of its programme to monitor the phone calls of foreign targets in the US without warrants.
President Bush said the scheme was needed to prevent attacks on the US.
Telephone companies were facing as many as 40 lawsuits for their involvement in the scheme."
--BBC World News
It is also said that this bill is likely to pass in the Senate as well. "US lawmakers have passed a bill to shield telephone companies who helped in the White House's controversial warrantless wiretaps prog... more -
Telecoms get free ticket
Congress has confirmed once again that they represent major corporations, and not the people who elected them.
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Sweden approves wiretapping law
Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic.
The country's intelligence bureau will be able to scan international calls, faxes and e-mails.
The measure was passed by a narrow majority after a heated debate in the Stockholm parliament.
Critics say it threatens civil liberties and represents Europe's most far-reaching eavesdropping plan.
(End of excerpt)
Full story at link by BBC NEWS | Europe Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic. ... more -
Congress craps out again, set to approve more wire-tapping
We elected these clowns to end the war; instead they are about to allow Bush to further spy on us when they should be busy impeaching him.
"It sounds like they've crafted a bill that gives the president everything he wants," said ACLU legislative director Caroline Frederickson. "The essence of this so-called compromise appears to be the White House legislation with a couple of ribbons around it." We elected these clowns to end the war; instead they are about to allow Bush to further spy on us when they should be busy impeaching... more -
McCain believes wiretapping is constitutional
"WASHINGTON: A top adviser to Senator John McCain says McCain believes that President George W. Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team."
"WASHINGTON: A top adviser to Senator John McCain says McCain believes that President George W. Bush's program of wiretapping without ... more -
McCain flip-flops and now backs Bush's wiretaps
According to the New York Times, John McCain, who used consider warrantless wiretaps illegal, has changed his mind and now supports Bush's policy that allows the National Security Agency to spy on Americans' phone calls and monitor e-mails. According to the New York Times, John McCain, who used consider warrantless wiretaps illegal, has changed his mind and now supports Bu... more
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John McCain would continue to spy on Americans; exercise Bush's unlimited wartime ...
If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.
McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.
As first reported by Threat Level, Chuck Fish, a full-time lawyer for the McCain campaign, also said McCain wanted stricter rules on how the nation's telecoms work with U.S. spy agencies, and expected those companies to apologize for any lawbreaking before winning amnesty.
But Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements, and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's.
"Neither the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001"
We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.
The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001. If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, ba... more -
MONSTER AMONG US
ACLU and The Underground present spoken word artists Steve Connell and Sekou (tha misfit) as they defend their need for privacy and protection against new technology and surveillance. For more of Steve & Sekou check out past pods by The Underground or go to http://www.aclu.org/unabridged ACLU and The Underground present spoken word artists Steve Connell and Sekou (tha misfit) as they defend their need for privacy and pr... more
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The CIA's Family Jewels
Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years,
Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents
Update - Full Report Now Available and Full Text Searchable
CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File,
Archive Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975,
With White House Memcons on Damage Control
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You guys gotta check these declassified documents out. Domestic surveillance of Anti War protesters is nothing new. They have been working in this manner since Nixon. We have all been living in a bubble or a lie if we think that the government knows much more than their letting on to about domestic surveillance. Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents ... more -
Your World, Monitored
Beautiful guerrilla "re-phrasing" project.
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