ACLU: warrantless surveillance of Americans spikes under Obama

[Winehole23]

Justice Department documents (https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/pen-register-trap-and-trace-foia-request-documents-released-department)released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.


The documents, handed over by the government only after months of litigation (http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-sues-doj-ignores-surveillance-transparency-law), are the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power. http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-justice-department-documents-show-huge-increase

[Winehole23]

http://www.aclu.org/files/original_orders.jpg
http://www.aclu.org/files/people_affected.jpg


http://www.aclu.org/files/email_and_internet_authorizations.jpg

[Winehole23]

really, nobody cares?

[Wild Cobra]

really, nobody cares?
Sorry.

I don't believe the ACLU at face value. Can you find a "spin free" version by someone else?

[Winehole23]

the ACLU sued the government to get the data. you don't believe the government's own records showing the increase in domestic surveillance?

[Winehole23]

Bush pioneered it, Obama normalized it.

[Wild Cobra]

Did you even look at the 12 files the ACLU has attached?

[Winehole23]

why would the ACLU lie to make the liberal look bad?

[Winehole23]

Did you even look at the 12 files the ACLU has attached?what do they say, maestro?

[Wild Cobra]

I see.

You didn't.

[Winehole23]

what do they say?

[Wild Cobra]

why would the ACLU lie to make the liberal look bad?
They have their own agenda which if most often in line with liberals, so they most often work with them. For the most part, they are not really partisan.

[Winehole23]

so, you reflexively defend power (even Obama) against civil libertarians. why am I not surprised?

[Wild Cobra]

so, you reflexively defend power (even Obama) against civil libertarians. why am I not surprised?
Not at all.

I just do not believe what the ACLU has to say.

Many of those documents show they were court orders.

Again, did you look at them, or are you just an ACLU lemming?

[Winehole23]

Many of those documents show they were court orders.court orders for what, please?

[Wild Cobra]

Again.

I see you didn't read them.

I'm not going to read it a second time for an accurate summary.

[Winehole23]

authorized by courts, therefore, ok with you?

[Winehole23]

who's the lemming now?

[Wild Cobra]

authorized by courts, therefore, ok with you?
As much as any warrant. Some are still bad warrants. Sometimes probable cause is enough.

Don't you get it?

It's the credibility of the ACLU I don't trust. I didn't see what I can call wrongdoing by justice officials in the released documents. There is not enough facts in the material.

You know I have argued for the 4th amendment, and argued there is a probable cause clause, and that a warrant is a tool rather than always being required. Can you not accept that, or do you plan to turn it into that argument of which we disagree on, and already agree we disagree?

Were they unreasonable searches? We really don't have enough facts. Do we.

Does a warrant have to be court ordered? A: no. Ever look up it's definition? I can tell you, it only has to be ordered by a "competent officer."

[Winehole23]

lemming

[Wild Cobra]

lemming
If you say so.

9_hZHW6Ef1I

[Wild Cobra]

WH.

Am I to understand that you think that no matter the evidence, that search warrants should never be used?

What the ACLU is calling warrantless is not.

Again, look up the definition of warrant.

[Clipper Nation]

so, you reflexively defend power (even Obama) against civil libertarians. why am I not surprised?

:lol But he's the "board libertarian"...

[FromWayDowntown]

There are only limited circumstances in which warrantless searches are constitutionally permissible. Those are the only cases in which a warrant isn't constitutionally required. Whatever you might think the 4th Amendment says, that is our agreed upon understanding of its requirements (since courts across the country apply the 4th Amendment consistently).

I argued against the prior administration's unconstitutional surveillance programs and maintain that position. Obama's willingness to extend the Bush-era disregard for civil liberties tells me that we're unlikely to ever go back to the pre-9/11 standards. It's a great irony that our political machinery was insistent that 9/11 wouldn't cause us to compromise our rights in the name of freedom -- they hated us for our freedom and we weren't going to let them win -- and here we are, eleven years hence, having institutionalized the grab-back of critical civil rights in the putative name of security.

[Th'Pusher]

There are only limited circumstances in which warrantless searches are constitutionally permissible. Those are the only cases in which a warrant isn't constitutionally required. Whatever you might think the 4th Amendment says, that is our agreed upon understanding of its requirements (since courts across the country apply the 4th Amendment consistently).

I argued against the prior administration's unconstitutional surveillance programs and maintain that position. Obama's willingness to extend the Bush-era disregard for civil liberties tells me that we're unlikely to ever go back to the pre-9/11 standards. It's a great irony that our political machinery was insistent that 9/11 wouldn't cause us to compromise our rights in the name of freedom -- they hated us for our freedom and we weren't going to let them win -- and here we are, eleven years hence, having institutionalized the grab-back of critical civil rights in the putative name of security.

Bin Laden won.

[Wild Cobra]

Bin Laden won.
Yes, he did. What the TSA does pisses me off the most. That is totally uncalled for.

[TeyshaBlue]

really, nobody cares?

Par for the course, tbh. Hope. Change.

[boutons_deux]

Par for the course, tbh. Hope. Change.

so you want to kick Barry out because of something the chair-warming, useless NatSec/police state did of its own accord?

Do you really think Gecko/Ryan would stop or roll back the police state?

It's not that nobody cares. It's that nobody thinks they have influence on what happens in govt. aka, disaffection.

and UCA has TBytes of data on all of us, and it's readily shared with the NatSec secret police. But even fewer people care.

America is fucked and unfuckable. Just ignore it, since you can't do anything about it.

[ElNono]

I read about this a few days back. Didn't forward it because, sadly, it's been seemingly the norm. 100% in agreement with FWD post.

[boutons_deux]

Orwell Time: 5 Creepy New Ways You Are Being Tracked

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/orwell-time-5-creepy-new-ways-you-are-being-tracked?akid=9472.187590.0jcUqd&rd=1&src=newsletter719738&t=9

[boutons_deux]

9 Frightening Things About America's Biggest Police Force


The NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalled in the history of local US law enforcement.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/9-frightening-things-about-americas-biggest-police-force

[Winehole23]

@ boutons: "just ignore it, since you can't do anything about it."

[boutons_deux]

Then, do something about, WH. and tell us exactly what you plans are, other that posting on Internet. Which candidate, and we need 100s of them in Congress to change laws, will be elected that will stop and reverse the shit?

There is nothing to be done. America is fucked and unfuckable. America, at least its 99%, is in irreversible decline.

[Winehole23]

getting the word out there isn't nothing.

[Winehole23]

why else do you post?

[Winehole23]

just to taunt and tease, or do you think information can make a difference?

[boutons_deux]

Americans are mostly disaffected by the political process, as evidenced by the lowest voter turnout of all the industrial democracies, have been fed bullshit and kept in the dark by corporate media who depend on other corporations' advertizing.

And Americans are mostly politically naive, with massive blocks voting for the Repugs on the social/religious issues, while the Repugs fuck them hard economically.

Look at how the right-wingers and other establishment cocksuckers/defenders here piss on, ridicule OWS protesting financial sector predations and outright CRIMES.

[boutons_deux]

Justice Dept. to defend warrantless cell phone tracking The Obama administration will tell federal judges in New Orleans today that warrantless tracking (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html) of the location of Americans' mobile devices is perfectly legal.

Federal prosecutors are planning to argue that they should be able to obtain stored records revealing the minute-by-minute movements of mobile users over a 60-day period -- in this case, T-Mobile and MetroPCS customers -- without having to ask a judge to approve a warrant first.


The case highlights how valuable location data is (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20051461-281.html) for police, especially when it's tied to devices that millions of people carry with them almost all the time. Records kept by wireless carriers can hint at or reveal medical treatments, political associations, religious convictions, and even whether someone is cheating on his or her spouse.

"It's at a point now where the public awareness about this specific issue is growing," says Hanni Fakhoury (https://www.eff.org/about/staff/hanni-fakhoury), a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing the pro-privacy side before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this morning.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57524109-38/justice-dept-to-defend-warrantless-cell-phone-tracking/?tag=nl.e703&s_cid=e703

[boutons_deux]

What Is Happening to Muslims Will Happen to the Rest of UsMasri and the four others, all held in British jails, will soon join hundreds of other Muslims tried in Article III federal courts (http://www.lectlaw.com/def/a149.htm) in the United States over the last decade. Fair trials are unlikely. A disturbing pattern of gross infringements on basic civil liberties, put in place in the name of national security, has poisoned our legal system. These infringements include intrusive surveillance, vague material support charges, the use of prolonged pretrial solitary confinement, classified evidence that the accused cannot review, and the use of political activities, normally protected under the First Amendment, to demonstrate mind-set and intent. Muslims caught up in the Article III courts are denied the opportunity to confront their accusers and to have their religious and political associations protected, and they rarely find a judge courageous enough to protect their rights. These violations of fundamental civil liberties will not, in the end, be reserved exclusively for Muslims once the corporate state feels under siege. What is happening to them will happen to the rest of us.

“One of the misapprehensions of the last decade is that the government had to go outside the law to places like Guantanamo or Bagram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_Airfield) to abridge the rights of suspects in the name of national security,” said Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College who has been an outspoken critic of the rights abridgement occurring in Article III courts. “But this is not the case. A similar degradation of rights that has characterized the prison at Guantanamo has also affected the judicial system within the United States. The right to dissent, the right to see the evidence against you, the right to due process, the right to fair and speedy trial, the right to have a judge who will be impartial, the right to fair and not disproportionate punishment, and the right not to be punished before you are convicted have been taken from us in the name of national security. It is not just in special secret prisons that this occurs, but also—dismayingly—within the U.S. federal courts.”

This is not about the guilt or innocence of Masri, an Egyptian who lost an eye and a hand as a mujahedeen fighting in Central Asia and who has repeatedly called for violence against the United States and allegedly helped orchestrate violence. This is about the right of all accused to a fair defense and humane detention conditions. Once Masri arrives on U.S. soil he will receive neither. He will, even before he is tried or convicted, endure prison conditions that replicate the brutality suffered by those in our offshore penal colonies, including the one at Guantanamo Bay. He will enter a world of prolonged and psychologically crippling isolation, made worse by the likely application of so-called special administrative measures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_administrative_measure). He will spend his days in a tiny cell under constant electronic surveillance. At New York’s Metropolitan Correction Center, where Masri and the other men will most likely first be incarcerated, he will never be allowed outdoors. He will be permitted to spend only one hour a day outside his cell, alone in a cage. Masri and the four other suspects could spend years in these conditions before trial. Because of security restrictions, it will take as long as six months for letters from his family to reach him. His lawyers can be prosecuted if they repeat in public what he tells them, especially about the conditions of his incarceration.

And, once he goes on trial, he will be in an Article III court, where national security provisions will almost certainly guarantee his conviction. Once convicted, he and the others are likely to be sent to the federal Administrative Maximum facility (known as ADX), in Florence, Colo., to spend, potentially, a lifetime in solitary confinement. There he will be permitted, at most, an hour a day out of his cell, in a cramped cage nicknamed “the dog run” because it looks like a dog kennel. His meals will be delivered to his cell through a slot. He will not be permitted to work in prison industries or have congregational prayer, an essential tenet of the Muslim faith.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/what_is_happening_to_muslims_will_happen_to_the_re st_of_us_20121001/

[Winehole23]

WASHINGTON -- A marquee federal effort to share intelligence about terror threats with state and local law enforcers has produced no evidence of any. But it does appear to have caught a motorcycle gang telling members to obey laws, suspicious fishing at the border, and Muslims offering advice on marriage, success and reading.


That's according to a report (http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/10-2-12FUSIONCENTERS.pdf) by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee released Tuesday evening that found the work of some 77 U.S. "Fusion Centers" launched since 2003 have been fraught with troubles -- including trampling constitutionally protected activities -- while the Department of Homeland Security cannot even say how much has been spent on the effort.


According to the report (http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/10-2-12FUSIONCENTERS.pdf), DHS estimates for cost ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion. The costs may be even higher, the report said.
In spite of the expense of the fusion centers, the report said it could "identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot."


The probe by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations lasted more than two years and reviewed 610 homeland information reports produced by the fusion centers. Of them, 188 were squelched by DHS reviewers because they are useless or may have broken rules meant to guard civil liberties, the report said.


Of the ones forwarded to the borader intelligence community, most had nothing to do with terrorism or were too slow to be of use. Some may have violated privacy laws, were cribbed from newspapers or federal agency press releases, and some duplicated work done much faster by the FBI or National Counterterrorism Center.


"DHS-assigned detailees to the centers forwarded 'intelligence' of uneven quality -– oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism," concluded the authors of the bipartisan report led by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).



The subcommittee said numerous current and former officials involved fusion centers also found them lacking.


“A lot of [the reporting] was predominantly useless information,” one former official told committee investigators after working for the "Reporting Branch" of Intelligence and Analysis unit of the DHS from 2006 to 2010. “You had a lot of data clogging the system with no value."


Another former official estimated 85 percent of reports were “not beneficial” to anyone, the report said.


Beyond being useless, some reports are downright embarrassing.


One that never saw the light of day wrote how a pair of men were fishing in a suspicious fashion on a reservoir that spanned the U.S.-Mexico border. Another worried that the notorious Mongols Motorcycle Club -- recently busted in a major federal operation -- had printed pamphlets for members advising them to be courteous to police in traffic stops, to properly care for their vehicles, and to designate a sober driver. About 40 of the reports the committee examined were blocked because of potential infringement on liberties.


One report was focused on a document that was entitled “Ten Book Recommendations for Every Muslim.” Another DHS intelligence officer filed an item on a U.S. citizen who, the report said "was appearing at a Muslim organization to deliver a day-long motivational talk and a lecture on positive parenting."


The rejection of the latter report was blunt. “Intelligence personnel are not authorized to collect information regarding [U.S. persons] solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the U.S. Constitution,” the report recounted.
Another report by an investigator focused on a lecturer who once ran an Islamic school that was mentioned in a terrorism database. The investigator's would-be intelligence report highlighted the subject's participation in a daylong seminar on marriage.
In blocking that "intelligence," one DHS official declared “the number of things that scare me about this report are almost too many to write" and included the constitutionally protected rights to free speech, assembly and religion. It also offered no evidence.

Not all the embarrassing reports were blocked. On Nov. 13, 2009, DHS circulated a homeland information report, reaching as high as the White House situation room, that warned that terrorist leader Anwar Al-Awlaki was praising the Fort Hood shootings on his blog from Yemen. That might have been useful information, except the Los Angeles Times, ABC News and other news outlets had reported on the information four days earlier.


According to the subcommittee study, the author of that report later received an evaluation of "Achieved Excellence" from bosses who recommend him for promotion, citing the cribbed media stories as "a signature accomplishment."
Also, there appeared to be little penalty for agents who overstepped their authority.


"The DHS officials who filed useless, problematic or even potentially illegal reports generally faced no sanction for their actions, according to documents and interviews," the Senate committee found. "Supervisors spoke with them about their errors, but those problems were not noted on the reporting officials’ annual performance reviews. ... In fact, the subcommittee investigation was able to identify only one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes -- he was required to attend an extra week of reporting training."


The senators' report echoes the fears of a separate report issued last month (http://constitutionproject.org/pdf/fusioncenterreport.pdf) by the Constitution Project, which warned that because the fusion centers are so poorly organized and ill-defined that they pose a high risk of violating Americans' civil liberties while providing little useful information.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/homeland-security-fusion-centers_n_1933998.html

[Winehole23]

The Senate panel found 40 reports -- including the three listed above -- that were drafted at fusion centers by Homeland Security officials, then later “nixed” by officials in Washington after reviewers “raised concerns the documents potentially endangered the civil liberties or legal privacy protections of the U.S. persons they mentioned.”


Despite being scrapped, however, the Senate report concluded that “these reports should not have been drafted at all.” It also noted that the reports were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a year or more after they had been canceled —a potential violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing information on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so.


The report said the retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security’s own guidelines, which state that once a determination is made that a document should not be retained, “The U.S person identifying information is to be destroyed immediately.”

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14187433-homeland-security-fusion-centers-spy-on-citizens-produce-shoddy-work-report-says?lite

[Wild Cobra]

What do you expect from Homeland Insecurity?

[boutons_deux]

just to taunt and tease, or do you think information can make a difference?

Information makes a difference TO ME, but it makes no difference to the decline of America and the police state

[Winehole23]

New police tech tracks cell-phone location data without provider intermediary


See an amicus brief (https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/rigmaiden_amicus.pdf) (pdf) and press release (http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/court-uncovering-stingrays-troubling-new-location) from the national ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation about yet another cell-phone tracking device used by law enforcement that any new, restrictive Texas legislation filed next year should try to account for: "Stingray" phone surveillance. Here's a description of the new technology from ComputerWorld's Darlene Storm (http://blogs.computerworld.com/privacy/21204/fighting-unconstitutional-stingray-phone-surveillance-tracks-innocent-people):


Let’s say you have your cell phone with you, even if you are not talking or texting, otherwise minding your own business, innocent of being suspected of any crime . . . but hey your privacy can be invaded as if you have no Fourth Amendment rights at all. A portable device known as an IMSI catcher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher), also known by the generic term stingray (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576583112723197574.html), acts like a fake cell tower and tricks your mobile device into connecting to it even if you are not on a call. It is used for real time location tracking; some can pinpoint you within two meters as well as eavesdrop and capture the contents of your communications. There’s been a stink about them for a little more than a year, but three big privacy and civil liberty groups, the ACLU, EPIC and the EFF have all warned that the secretive devices threaten your rights and that the invasive technology is unconstitutional.



The ACLU/EFF amicus was filed, wrote Storm, in a case out of Arizona, but it turns out a federal magistrate judge in Texas has been recently been plowing the same earth. "Judge Brian Owsley in Texas pushed back against the warrantless use of stingrays, not once (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/479404-txopinion1.html) but twice (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/479403-txopinion2.html), the Wall Street Journal reported (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/10/22/judge-questions-tools-that-grab-cellphone-data-on-innocent-people/)." Indeed, the Wall Street Journal has been all over the Stingray story, which (to my knowledge) they broke about a year ago (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576583112723197574.html) documenting its warrantless use by the FBI. That earlier WSJ story mentioned that the same manufacturer, "holds trademarks registered between 2002 and 2008 on several devices, including the StingRay, StingRay II, AmberJack, KingFish, TriggerFish and LoggerHead." That piqued my interest because the Fort Worth PD (http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2012/02/will-cowtown-cell-phone-trackers-be.html) not long ago purchased a KingFish system (http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/24/3759099/fort-worth-police-say-theyll-follow.html). (Who knows whether other Texas agencies have purchased similar systems or not?)

Anyway, bully for Judge Owsley! Here's a link to his most recent order (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/479404-txopinion1.html), and an earlier opinion (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/479403-txopinion2.html) on the same subject. This week's Wall Street Journal story (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/10/22/judge-questions-tools-that-grab-cellphone-data-on-innocent-people/) on his cell-site orders opened, "A judge in Texas is raising questions about whether investigators are giving courts enough details on technological tools that let them get data on all the cellphones in an area, including those of innocent people." The Journal story concluded:

In the Texas cases, Judge Owsley held hearings to determine what devices were being used. Ultimately, he wrote that stingrays and cell tower dumps did not fall within the categories of tools that Congress has said can be used without a warrant.

According to Judge Owsley’s order, the U.S. attorney in the stingray case said the application was based on a standard model approved by the Department of Justice and indicated he would give the judge more examples of law supporting the application. But that memo, Judge Owsley writes, was never provided to the court.



In the end, wrote Judge Owsley, "cell-site data are protected pursuant to the Fourth Amendment from warrantless searches. Thus, the Government could obtain the cell site data only by establishing probable cause pursuant to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure." Orin Kerr said (http://www.volokh.com/2012/10/23/magistrate-judge-denies-court-order-application-for-cell-tower-dumps/) Owsley's opinion "relies primarily on Magistrate Judge Smith’s decision now on appeal before the Fifth Circuit that held that cell-site data is protected under the Fourth Amendment and compelling it therefore requires a warrant."

Two lessons arise for any privacy legislation going forward next spring at the Texas Lege tht may address these issues: 1) the language must be flexible enough to account for rapidly changing technology, and 2) it should echo Judge Owsley's decision to require a warrant, as opposed to a lesser court order based on reasonable suspicion. That latter, weaker standard is what the government would prefer in the federal cases (see the ACLU/EFF amicus (https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/rigmaiden_amicus.pdf) for more detail) and what, as I understand it, Texas law requires now for traditional GPS tracking. Technology is outpacing statutory Fourth Amendment protections at a dizzying clip, and nowhere is that more true than with regards to cell/smart phone data.

These cases, either way, are the beginning of a long discussion that will inevitably end up in SCOTUS' lap. Personally, I'd like to see the legislative branch for once, both state and federal, try to get ahead of the curve rather than wait for judges to write the law after the technology has been in use for years.http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2012/10/new-police-tech-tracks-cell-phone.html?spref=fb

[TeyshaBlue]

The rub: Technology is outpacing statutory Fourth Amendment protections at a dizzying clip, and nowhere is that more true than with regards to cell/smart phone data.

The statutory warrant only seems to be a stop gap action.

[Winehole23]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/big-brother-new-normal/

[boutons_deux]

"under Obama" ? as if he personally ordered it?

and does any right-winger "FREEDOM! LIBERTY! DONT TREAD ON ME! WATER THE TREE WITH BLOOD!" loving person here think Gecko/Ryan will stop or reverse Big Brotherhood or Petraeus/SOCOM/drones?

[Winehole23]

Obama defended it, Obama expanded it. I'd expect Romney to do much the same.

[Winehole23]

http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-1025.pdf

[Winehole23]

“As part of its concerted campaign to prosecute whistleblowers and to classify state secrets,” writes (http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109359/the-supreme-court-exposes-the-obama-administrations-circular-logic-wiretapping#) Jeff Rosen at The New Republic, “the Obama administration has taken a position in Clapper that makes the Bush administration pro-secrecy campaign seem pale in comparison: namely, that no one can challenge warrantless surveillance unless the government tells you in advance that you’re being surveilled—which national security interests prevent it from doing.”


The New York Times called (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/opinion/surveillance-and-accountability.html?_r=0) the Obama administration’s position in the case “a particularly cynical Catch-22: Because the wiretaps are secret and no one can say for certain that their calls have been or will be monitored, no one has standing to bring suit over the surveillance.”

[Winehole23]

in Al Haramain the government inadvertently gave the defense evidence it was spying on privileged communications, among other things; it was ruled inadmissable.

[Winehole23]

http://www.propublica.org/special/no-warrant-no-problem-how-the-government-can-still-get-your-digital-data

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

:lol tea baggers threatening to start a civil war because of their 2nd amendment rights Obama hasn't taken away while he strips this country of 4th amendment rights

:lol dumbshits who think having guns is stopping Obama from violating their other constitutional rights when in reality Obama gets to do whatever he wants to constitutional rights that actually matter because people think having guns actually protects their rights

[Winehole23]

The rub: Technology is outpacing statutory Fourth Amendment protections at a dizzying clip, and nowhere is that more true than with regards to cell/smart phone data.

The statutory warrant only seems to be a stop gap action.always has been, but that's better than nothing.

[Trainwreck2100]

:lol tea baggers threatening to start a civil war because of their 2nd amendment rights Obama hasn't taken away while he strips this country of 4th amendment rights

:lol dumbshits who think having guns is stopping Obama from violating their other constitutional rights when in reality Obama gets to do whatever he wants to constitutional rights that actually matter because people think having guns actually protects their rights

:lol people thinking their guns will save them when a drone can kill them from miles up

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

:lol people thinking their guns will save them when a drone can kill them from miles up

:lmao

[The Reckoning]

down with the patriot act. i cant believe there hasnt been a nationwide movement against this abomination of a bill.

[boutons_deux]

down with the patriot act. i cant believe there hasnt been a nationwide movement against this abomination of a bill.

the problem is that most Americans aren't immediately affected, so they go about their business, and really don't GAF about politics enough to even vote.

They realize that remote, inbred, myopic Beltway DC, either party, is not affected by popular opinion or their disenfranchised votes.

[Wild Cobra]

It's Bush's fault. He gave Obama the tools to do it with...

[boutons_deux]

It's Bush's fault. He gave Obama the tools to do it with...

Once this kind of stuff gets started and bureaucratically consecrated, it's impossible to stop.

So yes, dubya, as is standard with Repugs, gave the national security police state shitball a huge shove. no stopping it now.

Just another way that ...

America is fucked and unfuckable.

[Capt Bringdown]

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee280/rayong_kid/Obama-bush4thterm.jpg

[boutons_deux]

The national/local police/surveillance state is party-independent, will continue to increase under both parties, and no politicians can stop.

How would, eg, Barry roll back national/local militarized police/surveillance state?

they know dubya and dickhead, FBI/NSA/CAI escaped blame incompetence for 9/11 and that the next one (which dickhead promised us, trying to excuse himself and others, will be "when" non "if") won't be escapable.

OBL is laughing his ass off how how he fucked up America and created generations on new America-hating terrorists for only $500K max.

[Winehole23]

The Justice Department for the first time has notified a criminal defendant that evidence being used against him came from a warrantless wiretap, a move that is expected to set up a Supreme Court test of whether such eavesdropping is constitutional.

Prosecutors filed such a notice (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/810241-faa-notice.html) late Friday in the case of Jamshid Muhtorov, who was charged in Colorado in January 2012 with providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a designated terrorist organization based in Uzbekistan.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/us/federal-prosecutors-in-a-policy-shift-cite-warrantless-wiretaps-as-evidence.html?_r=1&

[symple19]

Smdh

[symple19]

And SCOTUS will almost certainly uphold this horseshit, setting a dangerous precedent and opening a can of worms that may never be closed again.

[Winehole23]

(fingers crossed)

[boutons_deux]

And SCOTUS will almost certainly uphold this horseshit, setting a dangerous precedent and opening a can of worms that may never be closed again.

yep, JINO Repug judges, 5-4

[Winehole23]

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/spies-dragnet-reaches-a-playing-field-of-elves-and-trolls.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

[Winehole23]

John P. Carlin is on track to become the Justice Department’s top national security lawyer, and assume responsibility for approving the thousands of domestic surveillance requests sent to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court every year. If Attorney General Eric Holder had his way, Carlin never would have been nominated.


As Shane Harris reported at Foreign Policy yesterday (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/08/white_house_v_justice_department?page=full), Holder “strenuously” objected to Carlin, who was instead the favored choice of White House officials “Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, and Lisa Monaco, the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser.” Carlin had been Monaco’s chief of staff when she held the position, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, prior to moving to the White House, and he now holds the office in an Acting capacity. Holder reportedly had his own list of candidates, including his own former national security counsel, Amy Jeffress.


Carlin’s anonymous critics quoted in the FP piece level two primary charges against him. First, while he is nominally qualified for the position, “several career prosecutors who know and have worked with Carlin say he does not have a firm enough grasp of national security and surveillance law, which is particularly important when approving applications for surveillance warrants in terrorism and espionage cases.” Second, and seemingly more to the core of the issue, “Former officials said they are concerned that Carlin … doesn’t speak as an independent voice for the department, but rather is aligning his positions first with the White House, and particularly with Monaco, thus undermining Holder’s authority.”http://www.theamericanconservative.com/white-house-gets-its-man-for-top-surveillance-lawyer/

[Winehole23]

The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result.

One senior collection manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA, said “we are getting vast volumes” of location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. Additionally, data are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones every year.


In scale, scope and potential impact on privacy, the efforts to collect and analyze location data may be unsurpassed among the NSA surveillance programs (http://www.washingtonpost.com/nsa-secrets) that have been disclosed since June. Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

[Winehole23]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-ecpa-tell-government-get-warrant/nq258dxk

[Winehole23]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-nsas-collecting-of-phone-records-is-likely-unconstitutional/2013/12/16/6e098eda-6688-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

[Winehole23]

Orin Kerr @ Volokh: http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/16/preliminary-thoughts-judge-leons-opinion/

[Winehole23]

Verizon said Thursday it will publish reports beginning early next year on the number of government requests it receives for customer data, setting a significant precedent for the telecommunications industry, which has kept that information private. Verizon, the nation’s biggest wireless provider, has been under immense pressure from shareholders and privacy groups after revelations that the National Security Agency obtained mountains of private information from the company and other telecom firms, including AT&T. Those disclosures, in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/nsa-secrets/) have damaged the reputation of U.S. communications companies around the world.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/verizon-to-publish-reports-on-surveillance-requests-wants-to-detail-nsa-efforts/2013/12/19/d9b38a06-68e4-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html?wprss=rss_technology

[Winehole23]

A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks.



“It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, in an interview with NBC News. “The results were very thin.”


While Stone said the mass collection of telephone call records was a “logical program” from the NSA’s perspective, one question the White House panel was seeking to answer was whether it had actually stopped “any [terror attacks] that might have been really big.”


“We found none,” said Stone.http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/19/21975158-nsa-program-stopped-no-terror-attacks-says-white-house-panel-member?lite

[boutons_deux]

"whether it had actually stopped “any [terror attacks] that might have been really big.”

tipped off by the Russians, CIA/NSI/FBI prevented the Boston Marathon bombing.

[Winehole23]

lol boutons defending big brother.

[boutons_deux]

lol boutons defending big brother.

:lol WhineHole totally lost

[Winehole23]

you said what you said

[boutons_deux]

you said what you said

and you don't have a clue what I said.

[Winehole23]

LE not intelligence. I misunderstood your riposte.

[Winehole23]

Obama upholds British style state secrecy:

“Disclosure of this still-classified information regarding the scope and operational details of N.S.A. intelligence activities implicated by plaintiffs’ allegations could be expected to cause extremely grave damage to the national security of the United States,” wrote the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.


So, he said, he was continuing to assert the state secrets privilege (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/state_secrets_privilege/index.html), which allows the government to seek to block information from being used in court even if that means the case must be dismissed. The Justice Department wants the judge to dismiss the matter without ruling on whether the programs violated the First or Fourth Amendment.


The filings also included similar declarations from earlier stages of the California litigation, which were classified at the time and shown only to the court but were declassified on Friday. The judge, Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California, had ordered the government to evaluate how the disclosures since Mr. Snowden’s leaks had affected its earlier invocations of the state secrets privilege (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/state_secrets_privilege/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier).

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/us/white-house-tries-to-prevent-judge-from-ruling-on-surveillance-efforts.html?hpw&rref=politics

[Winehole23]

Torturers are excused for committing acts that constitute crimes under U.S. law and international treaties signed by the U.S. Neither high-level officials who authorized brutal treatment — including, by his own admission, President George W. Bush — nor low-level personnel who carried it out were brought to justice.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Congress in 2008 that 108 detainees had died in U.S. custody, with at least 25 classified as homicides. But no one was ever prosecuted. Obama renounced any action against Bush administration officials, contending that "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."


The leniency extended all the way down. Among the last cases closed by the Justice Department involved the death of an Iraqi detainee after his interrogation in CIA custody. According to a U.S. military autopsy, he had five broken ribs, and his death was a homicide caused by "blunt force trauma to the torso complicated by compromised respiration."


So a lot of Americans who participated in acts that caused the deaths of inmates have no fear of prison. But Snowden faces the prospect of spending decades behind bars for his violation of the law.


What was so horrific about his leaks? Leon noted that "the government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature." Nor have I seen anyone in the executive branch or Congress offer specific evidence to support the claim that the leaks helped our enemies.


But so what? Snowden should have known the Washington rule: Abuse power, and you'll be protected by those with power. Expose abuse, and you're on your own.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/19/excusing-abuses-of-power

[Winehole23]

The one common theme that I can discern from a scan of a couple of note is that there is no reason in the world minimally redacted versions such as these could not have been made public from the outset. No reason save for the conclusion that to do so would have been embarrassing to the Article II Executive Branch and would have lent credence to American citizens properly trying to exercise and protect their rights in the face of a lawless and constitutionally infirm assault by their own government. The declarations by Mike McConnell, James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Dennis Blair, Frances Fleisch and Deborah Bonanni display a level of too cute by a half duplicity that ought be grounds for sanctions.

The record has been conned. Our federal courts have been conned. All as the Snowden disclosures have proven. And the American people have been defrauded by pompous terror mongers who value their own and institutional power over truth and honesty to those they serve. Clapper, Alexander and Obama have the temerity to call Ed Snowden a traitor? Please, look in the mirror boys.

Lastly, and again as Trevor Timm pointed out above, these are just the declarations for cases the EFF and others are still pursuing. What of the false secret declarations made in al-Haramain v. Obama (http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/03/01/some-clues-to-what-inaccurate-information-bush-provided-in-al-haramain/), which the government long ago admitted were bogus? Why won’t the cons behind “I Con” release those declarations? What about the frauds perpetrated in Mohamed v. Jeppesen (https://www.aclu.org/national-security/mohamed-et-al-v-jeppesen-dataplan-inc) that have fraudulently ingrained states secrets cons into the government arsenal?

If the government wants to come clean, here is the opportunity. Frauds have been perpetrated on our courts, in our name. We should hear about that. Unless, of course, Obama and the “I Cons” are really nothing more than simple good old fashioned cons.
- See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/#sthash.k50MwgV1.dpuf

[CavsSuperFan]

I sometimes get lonely over the holidays…Then I remember that NSA is right there with me….:toast

[boutons_deux]

I sometimes get lonely over the holidays…Then I remember that NSA is right there with me….:toast

"You better watch out,
you better not cry,
you better not pout,
I'm telling you why,
NSAnta Claws has come to town."

"He sees you when you're sleeping,
he knows when you're awake,
he knows if you've been bad or good,
so be good for goodness sake."

[boutons_deux]

Truman’s True Warning on the CIA

Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”

It sounded like the intro to a bleat from some liberal professor or journalist. Not so. The writer was former President Harry S. Truman, who spearheaded the establishment of the CIA 66 years ago, right after World War II, to better coordinate U.S. intelligence gathering. But the spy agency had lurched off in what Truman thought were troubling directions.

Truman began his article by underscoring “the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency … and what I expected it to do.” It would be “charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without Department ‘treatment’ or interpretations.”
Truman then moved quickly to one of the main things bothering him. He wrote “the most important thing was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.”

It was not difficult to see this as a reference to how one of the agency’s early directors, Allen Dulles, tried to trick President Kennedy into sending U.S. forces to rescue the group of invaders who had landed on the beach at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, in April 1961 with no chance of success, absent the speedy commitment of U.S. air and ground support.

After Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, the patrician, well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that Dulles also mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.

So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964, Dulles spent a half-hour one-on-one with the former president, trying to get him to retract what he had written in his op-ed. Hell No, said Harry.

Not a problem, Dulles decided. Four days later, in a formal memorandum of conversation for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA general counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction for Truman, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it. In a June 10, 1964, letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in John Kennedy’s assassination and in then covering it up? In my view, the best dissection of the evidence pertaining to the murder appeared in James Douglass’s 2008 book, JFK and the Unspeakable (http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1570757550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262104727&sr=8-1). After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes that the answer is Yes.

Obama Intimidated?
The mainstream media had an allergic reaction to Douglass’s book and gave it almost no reviews. It is, nevertheless, still selling well. And, more important, it seems a safe bet that President Barack Obama knows what it says and maybe has even read it. This may go some way toward explaining why Obama has been so deferential to the CIA, NSA, FBI and the Pentagon.

Could this be at least part of the reason he felt he had to leave the Cheney/Bush-anointed torturers, kidnappers and black-prison wardens in place, instructing his first CIA chief Leon Panetta to become, in effect, the agency’s lawyer rather than leader.
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/22/trumans-true-warning-on-the-cia/

NSA/CIA/FBI/militarized police are the American Stasi

[Winehole23]

The US Marshals Service slurps your cell phone data from small planes:


The US government defended (http://online.wsj.com/articles/justice-dept-defends-u-s-marshals-in-wake-of-secret-cellphone-spy-report-1415980141?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories) the Department of Justice's US Marshals Service on Friday following the revelation that the agency is spying from the skies with airborne devices that mimic cell towers and slurp mobile phone data.

The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/articles/americans-cellphones-targeted-in-secret-u-s-spy-program-1415917533?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories) on Thursday reported that since 2007 the US Marshals Service program has been using Cessna aircraft, flying them out of at least five metropolitan area airports, to slurp data from mobile phones in a flying range that covers most of the country's population.


The technology in the two-foot-square device enables investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location.
It's just to find crooks, a DOJ official told the WSJ, without admitting that the program actually exists.


In a statement sent to the paper, the official said that the Marshals Service doesn't maintain a database of innocent citizens' phones.


The official said that any of the service's investigative techniques are deployed "only in furtherance of ordinary law enforcement operations, such as the apprehension of wanted individuals, and not to conduct domestic surveillance or intelligence-gathering."
Sources familiar with the program told the WSJ that the cell tower mimicking devices - sometimes known as "dirtboxes (https://web.archive.org/web/20030623133848/http://www.drti.com/2101%20Spec%20Sheet.htm)" because of the Boeing unit, Digital Receiver Technology (DRT), that makes them - are two-foot-square boxes that scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight.

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/11/17/spy-in-the-sky-flying-surveillance-devices-are-scooping-up-americans-phone-data

[Winehole23]

dp

[Winehole23]

hard to keep track of the reversals. here's another one:


Law enforcement collection of cellphone data is a hot issue that some observers believe is destined for a hearing before the Supreme Court.

The 11 th Circuit ruled (http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/06/13/68728.htm)in June 2014 that police need a warrant to get cell tower data. The three-judge panel in Atlanta ruled that Quartavius Davis, whose cell tower data placed him near the scenes of six robberies, had a Fourth Amendment right to keep his whereabouts private.

Davis's records showed he was near the stores when they were robbed. He won his appeal of his conviction and sentence of 162 years in prison.

Unsatisfied with the ruling, the government sought an en banc hearing before the circuit, which was held Feb. 24.

The 5th Circuit took a different view in 2013, with a 2-1 ruling that determined "cell site records were ordinary business records of the provider in which the customer had no reasonable expectation of privacy," according to Smith's opinion.
Cell tower data can include the originating and receiving phone numbers for calls, the date, time and length of the calls and whether the communication was a call or text.

Smith gave a respectful nod to three rulings on the issue by his colleague, Corpus Christi federal magistrate Brian Owsley, the upshot of which was that cell tower records are protected by the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement needs a warrant to get them, and such requests are not authorized by the Stored Communications Act.

But Smith said he must defer to the 5th Circuit.

"The net effect is that the Fourth Amendment ground for Judge Owsley's rulings on cell tower dumps has been cut away, at least for the time being, in this circuit," Smith wrote.
Orders letting police obtain cell tower records are sometimes called "cell tower dumps."http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/03/12/careful-ruling-on-access-to-cell-tower-data.htm

[boutons_deux]

:lol at anybody thinking the American Police State can be reversed or restrained.

[Winehole23]

the ACLU tries and very occasionally wins. the attempt is worthy.

your unceasing counsel of despair and futility is cowardly: you mock the powerless and their struggle to fight back

your disdain for the oppressed and sympathy for the powerful couldn't be any clearer, tbh

[boutons_deux]

the ACLU tries and very occasionally wins. the attempt is worthy.

your unceasing counsel of despair and futility is cowardly: you mock the powerless and their struggle to fight back

your disdain for the oppressed and sympathy for the powerful couldn't be any clearer, tbh

Even if ACLU wins, who's going to enforce it?

Who's going to police the American Police State, which will LOL and continue as before.

Do you have ANY evidence of anybody Raging Against the Machine and winning?

The VRWC has installed a corporatocracy that is invincible.

Even socialist/Muslim terrorist Obama is pushing TTP/TTIP to be ratified verbatim, which will promote corporate power ABOVE country-state power.

O Noble Warrior, show us the way forward to do battle with the corrupt, wealth-sucking establishment corporotacracy.

How will we elect 225 Graysons, Warrens, etc to the House, and elect 60+ equivalent Senators?

How will we beat the VRWC's SCOTUS5?

Come on, my dear little pollyanna, show us the way to shut Pandora's box.

[Winehole23]

you mock the struggle against power and oppression. you hate the 99% and envy their masters.

[Winehole23]

A federal appeals court on Thursday said a National Security Agency program that collected the records of millions of Americans' phone calls was not authorized by Congress.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred in dismissing a lawsuit challenging the program's constitutionality, and returned the case to the judge for further proceedings. It also upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction to block the collection of phone records under the program.

Thursday's decision vacated a December 2013 dismissal of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit contending that the NSA's collection of "bulk telephony metadata" violated the bar against warrantless searches under the Fourth Amendment.http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4655001,00.html

[boutons_deux]

you mock the struggle against power and oppression. you hate the 99% and envy their masters.

totally false, but you're full of shit, per usual

[boutons_deux]

FBI's gonna win, ignore Congress

The FBI is fighting a losing battle over phone snooping

The FBI says it wants a golden key to access Americans' phones. Now, politicians are pushing back.

A top FBI official, Amy S. Hess, said at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday that encryption of phone data is limiting the FBI's ability to spy on communication. She said law enforcement needs a way to access smartphone content in order to stop criminals and terrorists, suggesting that the FBI have access to keys that can unlock customers' data.

But in a rare show of unity, Congressmen almost universally fought back against that idea.

U.S. Representative Rod Blum, a Republican from Iowa, likened that to homebuilders putting a camera in every new house -- and telling people to blindly believe they won't be turned on later.

"Isn't this analogous to that?" Blum asked Hess. "You're saying, 'Trust us, we'll only do it if we'll need to do it.'"

This hearing is the latest sign of a potential turning point. After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a nation in turmoil passed security-focused laws like the Patriot Act that widely expanded the use of secret surveillance.

But sentiment is starting to shift in the other direction. In 2013, we learned that government spies are collecting emails, phone records and tapping into phone and video chats.

Tech companies, feeling betrayed (http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/13/technology/security/mark-zuckerberg-nsa/?iid=EL), are encrypting more of their own communication -- and offering that to customers too (http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/20/technology/security/gmail-nsa/?iid=EL), guarding them from hackers, cybercriminals and government spies. Apple(AAPL (http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=AAPL&source=story_quote_link), Tech30 (http://money.cnn.com/technology/tech30/index.html?iid=EL)) has enhanced the security of iPhones by requiring a person's password to unlock his or her phone. Google (GOOGL (http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=GOOGL&source=story_quote_link), Tech30 (http://money.cnn.com/technology/tech30/index.html?iid=EL)) allows Android users to encrypt their phones -- but not by default.

When a phone is encrypted, law enforcement can't secretly search someone's phone remotely. Police need the physical device and a warrant. And -- theoretically -- detectives need someone's cooperation to go through their device.

The FBI says encryption of data shields kidnappers and pedophiles from cops (http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/13/technology/security/fbi-apple/?iid=EL). Hess reiterated this Wednesday, saying encryption has "a tremendous impact on our ability to fight crime and bring perpetrators to justice."

"If these devices are encrypted, the information they contain may be unreadable to anyone but a user," she said. "The process of obtaining a search warrant... could be an exercise in futility."

But in reality, cops can get into your phone if they grab it. Local police in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando told CNNMoney that devices exist to pull the data off smartphones, then hack into it.

Matt Blaze, one of the nation's top encryption experts, told members of the committee that breaking into an encrypted phone is a cinch. It'll take 10,000 tries to get past a four-digit passcode.

"On modern computing hardware, essentially no time at all," Blaze said. Seconds maybe.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/30/technology/privacy-encryption/

[Winehole23]

DPS retracts:


I reported something to you about the Texas Department of Public Safety that is in error.


DPS told me that its TrapWire super-surveillance detection system set up by former FBI and CIA agents to find terrorists is a success.
How do we know?


DPS told me (http://www.dallasnews.com/investigations/watchdog/20150425-watchdog-is-dps-surveillance-detection-just-plain-spying.ece), and by extension you, and also members and top staffers of the Texas Legislature that TrapWire resulted in 44 arrests.


Turns out that’s not true.


DPS is the one that made the boo-boo. And it’s a big one.


The Watchdog learned this week that the actual number of arrests resulting from the secret system that cost taxpayers millions of dollars is none.


Zero.http://www.dallasnews.com/investigations/watchdog/20150618-dps-admits-it-told-state-lawmakers-about-phantom-arrests.ece

[Winehole23]

If only this one exaggeration of success were an isolated incident for DPS. But it’s not. The agency, which received hundreds of millions of dollars more for crime-fighting and border security from the 2015 Legislature, is on the receiving end of criticism in newspapers in Houston, El Paso and Austin for a pattern of brags that ring false.


This week Austin American-Statesman reporter Jeremy Schwartz reported that DPS falsely claimed drug seizure numbers actually handled by federal officers as part of its own statistical haul. More puffery.


DPS puffs up its stats the way Donald Trump puffs his hair.


The agency’s credibility is in tatters. Whether you’re running a tiny police department or, like DPS, one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the nation, you can’t make up stuff to look good.


DPS does.same

[boutons_deux]

" newspapers in Houston, El Paso and Austin"

hmm, all BLUE cities. No rural red burgs gonna call out the DPS for LYING?

[Winehole23]

we'll see. it's a fairly new story.

[boutons_deux]

we'll see. it's a fairly new story.

not holding my breath. The rurals are stupid and ignorant and totally uninformed. That's why they keep voting for Repugs and the Repug DPS.

[Winehole23]

nobody votes for DPS officers, boutons. that's just silly.

[Winehole23]

your hatred for republicans has unbalanced you. shit you just said makes no sense.

[boutons_deux]

your hatred for republicans has unbalanced you. shit you just said makes no sense.

I simply return the hate, the denial that I exist, back to the extremist, corrupt, America-destroying Repugs.

In deep-red, totally Repug state, DPS direction, culture is clearly defined by Repug politicians.

[Winehole23]

Texans don't all belong to the same party, and the Republican political majority isn't permanent, just long-lived, like the one that preceded it.

[Winehole23]

Power doesn't define citizens or culture, except in your simplistic, one-track mind,

[boutons_deux]

Texans don't all belong to the same party, and the Republican political majority isn't permanent, just long-lived, like the one that preceded it.

the TX Repug gerrymandering and voter suppression will maintain Repug one-party power in TX for decades, most "probably".

The Dems that ruled TX for so long are now Repugs, switching along with the Southern Dems to Repug after the 1960s racial progress, the Repug Southern Strategy of Nixon/Ailes.

Then add in the abortion and evangelical crap that has arisen since 1970, and you have right-wingers, whether named Dems or Repugs, ruling TX for a long time to come.

Also, JimmyRicky polluted the entire state govt with Repug political tools, firing, demoting career professionals.

And of course, TX BigOil will heavily finance Repugs, as will out-of-state billionaires, BigCarbon, BigElectric.