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FBI Investigates Open Records Request
GrooveMoose writes "A university student at the University of Texas
makes an open
records request for information on the underground tunnel system at the school.
A few months later the FBI and Secret Service come knocking on his door to see
if he's a terrorist. He's still under investigation by the federal government
regarding a completely open request."
I guess the supposition was that everyone should know what it is, especially when it was mentioned along with the ACLU. I don't, though, but I guess it has something to do with the UT camera system they mentioned?
...University? Anyone else less than convinced by this scenario? Sounds like Americans are so crazy, they'd suspect anyone. Hey I have a bomb... ... and a big hello to my new FBI fans and admirers,
xx ben.
I know the guy (Mark A Miller) being described in this article. I use IRC mostly as a contact list, and have a channel for users of my unremarkable non-profit server. Mark has been a regular in my small (under 20 people) channel for months. I know this is the same guy as the Mark Miller in this article because the user in my channel talked incessantly about these freedom of information act requests, months ago.
[04/13 00:16] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Ah.
[04/13 00:17] <@Mirell[Mobile]> District Attorney Office. Forgot to go by that.
[04/13 00:17] <@dyfrgi> Why do you want/need to?
[04/13 00:17] <@Mirell[Mobile]> To file a writ of mandumus against UT Austin.
[04/13 00:18] <@Mirell[Mobile]> They are ignoring one of my open records request.
[04/13 00:18] <@Mirell[Mobile]> To find out how much they pay for their Internet service.
[04/13 00:18] <@mspencer> "one of"?
[04/13 00:18] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Okay, several of.
[04/13 00:18] <@Mirell[Mobile]> They initiall complied.
[04/13 00:19] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Now they're ignoring me hoping I'll go away.
[04/13 00:19] <@mspencer> I'm surprised you've filed even one open records request, let alone several.
[04/13 00:19] <@mspencer> What are you using the data for?
[04/13 00:19] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Er?
[04/13 00:19] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Why are you suprised?
[04/13 00:20] <@mspencer> I mean, as long as you're being adult about it, and making sure your need for the data is worth the time they need to put into filling those requests.
[04/13 00:20] <@dyfrgi> Writ of Mandumus?
[04/13 00:20] <@Mirell[Mobile]> mspencer,
[04/13 00:20] <@mspencer> So what are you using the data for?
[04/13 00:20] <@Mirell[Mobile]> To satiate my curiousity.
[04/13 00:21] <@Mirell[Mobile]> I'm not sure if that's how you spell it, dyfrgi.
[04/13 00:21] <@mspencer> Do you think those requests are having any kind of negative effect on the University or its staff?
[04/13 00:21] <@dyfrgi> I'm just wondering what it is.
[04/13 00:22] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Let's see...I requested initially any contracts or invoices detailing the cost the University entails in gaining Internet connectivity.
[04/13 00:22] <@dyfrgi> Mm. I assume you want to file a petition for a writ of madamus.
[04/13 00:22] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Then I filed another one for something they withheld on an invoice.
[04/13 00:22] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Then another one for another thing they left out..
[04/13 00:22] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Then one about the UT Classroom Web Cams they deny knowledge of
[04/13 00:23] <@Mirell[Mobile]> Then one about the UT Information Security Council briefs, since we had the Social Security Number scare.
[04/13 00:24] <@Mirell[Mobile]> And I'm not at all sure what you are trying to say by "Negative Affect" when they have a position who's sole purpose is to manage Open Records Requests.
[04/13 00:25] <@dyfrgi> I think he is implying that you should not ask, because it costs money for them to tell you.
[04/13 00:25] <@mspencer> I was deliberately vague: any effect, emotional or financial or otherwise, that is more significant than the benefit you get from satisfying your curiosity.
[04/13 00:26] <@Mirell[Mobile]> No.
[04/13 00:26] <@mspencer> hopefully there isn't one, but if there is, I'd like to think you considered that.
[04/13 00:26] <@bl0d> i dunno, i'd really be curious about the Webcam one...that's just fucked up...
[04/13 00:26] <@mspencer> Ah, OK then.
[04/13 00:26] <@Mirell[Mobile]> http://www.dailytexanonline.com/main.cfm?include=d etail&storyid=620962
[04/13 00:27] <@Mirell[Mobile]> They pull crap like this as well.
[04/13 00:27] <@Mirell[Mobile]> And this: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/main.cfm?include=d etail&storyid=657367
[04/13 00:27] <@Mirell[
I'm an undergrad at Caltech and here at least it's really popular to illegally enter the underground tunnel system for various reasons. There are all sorts of reasons for it -- you can get to classes when it's raining, you can get into buildings that would normally be locked at odd hours to turn in homework, etc. Also, some of our parties and other events have components in the tunnels and there's a bit of a cultural legacy associated with them as well -- people who attend the school are often given midnight tours highlighting various murals and the like. I've heard that this is popular at Carnegie Mellon as well.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
I attend UT, and the explanation I got during orientation was that UT was, at least during the cold war, the custodian of the backup computer for various defense systems. In the event that the primary computer in who-knows-where was destroyed, the computer at our school was supposed to take over.
Scene: Interview
Interviewer "So have you ever been convicted of a felony"
Mark "No"
Interviewer "Have you ever been investigated for terrorist activites?"
Mark "well.. there was this one time in college..."
Interviewer "OK thanks we'll call you" (calls security)
I've seen comments saying "he could have denied the meeting or walked away". I'm sure that wouldn't inflame the agents curiosity even more. The question about the ACLU was really out of line. Personally I think he should join the ACLU before making any other requests and then pull the card out if any other agents stop by.
the sentiment that I have to agree with is American citizens making FOIA requests should NOT trigger investigations.
Yes, we may never know the reason FBI and Secret Service chose to investigate this Open Records request. Yes, perhaps they are investigating another case regarding a perceived threat to the campus and this was considered to be linked to that case. I'm fine with that.
But then: why did they both refuse FOI's on what they have already gathered about Mr. Miller? Shouldn't he be entitled to that?
Sure. I understand why he might be curious. It does seem like a way to draw attention to oneself. And I don't see why the university wouldn't just deny the request with a perfectly reasonable comment about security.
Okay: Someone is asking for information on infrastructure that could be exploited in a terrorist attack. I do wonder why they didn't just call the police/sheriff, but perhaps they naturally pass potential terrorist threats to the FBI.
I don't much like this. Are they saying that UT Watch might be planning terrorist attacks? If they are, then does it make sense to let the organization know that they know? (If this guy had been with UT Watch, pow, they know they're being tracked; if not, why wouldn't he mention the questioning to others?) Or are they just idly trying to find out if there might be a connections? Or are they completely clueless because they are a national law enforcement unit trying to follow up on a local group?
This is odd, too: The obvious answer is "We hand suspicious requests for infrastructure information to the police for further investigation, and they're free to share that with other law enforcement agencies." I'd HOPE that's what they'd do, in fact, and would feel more comfortable if that was their answer. But "I dunno"?
Overall, I'd call it disconcerting, but not really that big a deal. Am I in the minority here?
TSG
I used to be a resident of the UT system and heard all about the tunnels - even got to pass through one between ENS and RLM on a tour once. Would have loved to have gotten a big map of the tunnels to overlay the standard UT map just to see how quickly I COULD get from RLM to anywhere else but never thought to file a FOIA request ... Duh!
.. not surprised the SS got involved ... Y'all know one of the Bush twins attends UT right ... The SS has been all over UT since summer of 2000. They're discrete but not exactly in hiding.
But
First of all, my government's power would not be the product of my people, but rather would be the product of myself. Freedom would be a priveledge extended by the state, not by the Almighty Creator. In fact, if any religious propaganda, such as a plaque of the Ten Commandments, be found anywhere, said propaganda would immediately be removed.
Second, everybody would be my slave. Nobody would be allowed to do anything without government approval in the form of licenses (from driver licenses to business permits to rental unit occupation permits), because otherwise they would be considered terrorists and would have all of their property seized for my use.
Third, a tax system would be put into effect to steal half of everybody's income, from a numeric standpoint. I would pass legislation to make it extremely difficult to purchase and own property, and renters would be affected by high prices because their landlords would similarly have to make ends meet. Thus, with this tax system and property ownership legislation, both parents would have to work very hard to feed their children, and would be so concerned with making ends meet that they would ignore the above, because there are more pressing matters (food) to worry about. (The same tax system would further benefit me by providing detailed information, down to the finest detail, of everybody's business, because they would need to detail the source of every penny of income, and back it up with evidence. Failure to do this would constitute a felony, and would be selectively enforced to strike fear into peoples' hearts.) To steal the other half of everybody's money, the money itself would not be backed by anything of value. Thus it would be easy to continuously print money, thereby constantly increasing the total amount in circulation. This way, my government would steal the peoples' money, without reducing the amount they have from a numeric standpoint, by stealing the value of their money.
Fourth, the educational system would basically turn out people who can barely read, so they won't be smart enough to figure out what I'm doing to them.
Fifth, there would be propaganda all over the place telling people how free they are, etc.
That's how I'd run a government, if I were the king of my own country.
I can understand them asking why he wanted to know this information, but the questions concerning if he belongs to perfectly legal organizations are really troubling (if he is to be believed). Should belonging to a watchdog group (UT Watch) or communicating with the ACLU make any difference at all in the investigation of a Joint Terrorism Task Force? How is that relevant? There has been an ongoing trend of using new powers granted to "fight terrorism" to harass people and squelch dissent.
This reminds me of a kid I knew when he was in high school, back in the Vietnam War era (when the internal security systems of the various levels of government in the US had gotten 'WAY out of control).
..."
His use of a university's computer while a high school student (something he got started on as a guinea pig in a University program doing research on learning and teaching) had attracted the attention of the FBI.
A couple years later he decided to use the shiny-new FOIA to see what records the FBI and the state and local cops had on him. And while he was at it, he sent FOIA requests to several other agencies.
The first one he sent to the CIA was a classic self-referential hack: He requested their internal document describing their procedure for responding to FOIA requests. B-) (Obviously useful for generating the next round of requests, too.)
Needless to say the agencies involved didn't respond as required by the law. So with the aid of a Libertarian lawyer he started suing them. He won, and they eventually were ordered to give him what he asked for. Then they flaked on that, too, and he got a contempt citation and more court orders. Eventually he got much of his info (with big chunks blacked out). Then he sued them for his lawyer's fees and won that, too.
After a few iterations of this he was sitting on quite a number of interesting documents. So he started a newspaper to give them wider circulation and created a business of generating FOIA requests and publishing the results. This became quite popular with the CIA watcher, privacy advocate, private detective, and tinfoil-hat sets. Advertising revenue flowed in from such folk as buging and debugging equipment manufacturers.
At one point he got the petty cash records from a New York area CIA office. Items he found in it charged to one project (air compressor, flit guns, briefcase, auto exhaust system, washing a car) led to blowing the lid off a project to obtain information on how a biowarfare plague might spread in an urban environment by exposing the citizens of New York City to a "mostly harmless" bug that caused severe enough respiratory system symptoms that it could be tracked by hospital admissions. (Spread techniques included spraying subways with the bug from the gimmicked briefcase and spraying commuter traffic via the car's exhaust system.)
He also got hold of and published one year's version of the IRS procedures manual. And put out a pamphlet on how to use the FOIA. (Eventually he was enjoined from distributing either of these.)
Eventually the FOIA was modified to give the security agencies some loopholes against such requests.
Bob Dylan had something to say about this: "You have to pay to keep from going through these things twice." Also Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of Liberty must be watered, from time to time
He's still out there doing stuff like this, by the way. Last time he looked he had a web site dedicated to exposing personal information trading in the information age.
The above-mentioned kid was part of the Boomer's round. I guess now it's Generation X's (or maybe Y's) turn to pay some dues. (Sigh.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It would seem his IRC channel is a public forum. The two party consent laws would thus not apply.
Washington State prohibits recording conversations between two parties unless everyone agrees. That applies to party lines as well (potential public forums).
That is the foundation that some states are using to attack IRC logging. The conversation is carried over regulated carriers within the states.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
From what has been posted so far, it looks like the information was already available, and the request was pretty aimless in intent - to not investigate could have potential security problems. But like one poster said - students at some universities frequently use tunnels for all manner of reasons - weren't cables strung on campus by individuals this way before the present state of affairs? The problem is those days are gone, and many places simply will never allow that degree of freedom - for access to places - or information - anymore.
/. could actually agree on something to file massive FOI requests for a single item - what type of response that would bring. I'm sure it would be a total cog in the system. The point is that when an individual who is fanatically devoted to some cause - they may have lived for years building a *clean* life just to act on that one moment - and in fact plans on not living through the time of carrying it out - if they can slip something though - they may have just what they need.
My brother is an ex-pat - works all over the world - and a few years before 9/11, on a visit home he said *people in this country have no idea how loose our security is viewed worldwide. Something big will happen and the attitudes in the country will change forever*. That was about the time of the Oklahoma City bombings, when - if you were watching the first reports and speculations - everyone believed it *had* to an international organization. Palestine got the first blame - then nobody really woke up to the idea that people in our country could be every bit as extremist as is *others* are portayed in a xenophobic cultural lens.
I am generally very suspicious of all these government investigations - they make me uneasy in too many ways because the Patriot Act has been too loosely applied in ways that have already been well reported - and in fact have become good sport - as they should be in an open and free society.
Had the request had some intent - like the student was an architecture major - technically - not that he had to be to make the request, I think this would have just faded away very quickly.
I wonder though if a large group of individuals - say if a group as large as that as subscribe to
9/11 wasn't really terrorism, either. At least not how it's conventionally thought of. Al Quaeda has about as much in common with Hezbolla or something as the US Army does.
None of these people really felt harmed by us, even in their own heads. The motivation is more along the lines of a script kiddie. The US is the target because it's the greatest challenge. The logic of the attacks isn't to cause damage, death, or even really fear. It's more the elegence of the plan itself that's the deciding factor. Hence the embassies exploding simultaneously and trying to film your exploding tugboats. There's no reason to do that, other than that it's cool.
That's pretty much Ramzi Yousef's fault. He's tough to understand, but he's the guy behind pretty much everything big Al Quaeda's ever done and/or tried. The first WTC bombing, the dozen simultaneous exploding airliners crashing into the CIA building at midnight on New Years, and then sticking those two together, 9/11. This is why Osama looked so much like just a fundraiser up until recently. You have trained engineers coming up with crazy shit like that, and then you also have tens of thousands of 6th-grade-educated gun-nuts from the Arab equivailent of Michigan running around doing obstacle courses and then training random bunches of people in what are essentially US military tactics. They end up meshing pretty damn well, but it's not intuitive.
This is why Al Quaeda gets so much attention. They're just very, very good at blowing shit up and killing people, and they have no ideology. It's "the base", the vision is that they teach anybody who wants to know how to cause as much damage as is humanly possible. The Anarchist's Cookbook transformed into a university with grant money and facilities and everything.
Because that's there (and it just moved in with the Pashtuns now, invading Afghanistan did about shit) it's doubly important not to piss anybody off. It's ok to kill Luke's dad as long as you're the Empire, but once fucking Obi-Wan is hanging around in the caves in western Pakistan handing out free lightsabres and midichlorians to every dumbass that wanders in, you better make damn sure not to give anybody a reason to head down there.
UT pulls this kind of shit all the time. An open records request for information regarding the on campus security cameras was submitted by the Daily Texan; UT denied it. The Texan appealed to AG Abbott, who ruled in their favor; the University appealed and it continues to fester in the legal system.
No, the problem is that people should be investigated when suspected of committing a crime. People should not be investigated for suspicion of being somebody who might commit a crime. Because, if you allow for that, what is an acceptable critera for suspecting that someone might commit a crime? His looks, his friends, mailing lists he is on, organizations he donates money too, the length of his hair, his clothes, the library books he checks out, etc. I would say this most closely ties into ongoing debates about the governments new "rights" to search through your library records without your consent, without a warrant, etc. Our government should not be policing student research, even if it isn't obviously academic. If it's a problem of kids playing some stupid D&D or paintball or whatever in the basement then leave that up to campus security, not federal investigators.
These are the same tunnels that law enforcement "officials" used to enter the UT Tower on August 1, 1966 to get at Charles Whitman, the sniper.
Had it not been for this covert entry, he'd probably still be up there. Well..., I guess he would have ordered out for pizza at some point.
g
You'll have trouble convincing people because most of them are reacting emotionally.
The fertilizer bomb was a unique instance. Every day, millions of people go about their lives in the US without building a fertilizer bomb.
Yet that single instance is used by people who feel threatened to justify any amount of governmental "protection".
If you live in the US and are NOT in a combat zone, you are STATISTICALLY more likely to be killed by someone in your own family than by a terrorist.
What you're seeing is a fear reaction. Fear does NOT understand statistics. Fear does NOT take reasonable precautions.
This is a classical logical fallacy - I say 'A implies B' and you then respond "by your logic B implies A" and then you built an argument on this flawed premise.
My statement simply means that if you dont defend yourself with force that you will have serious problems no matter how nice and understanding and peace-loving you are. The rest of your argument appears to be an attemt to show how foolish my reasoning is by following it to it's logical conclusion. However, you used faulty logic, so you didn't succede.
Your try and ?extend? my reasoning to imply that simple reactionary defense is the only possible justifiable action (ie we shouldn't have been warring with Iraq because they didn't directly threaten us). If you believe that you should NEVER use force to stand up for what you believe, then I understand your point of view. I do not agree with that point of view however because I believe that sometimes you have to war for other reasons and simple reactionary defense.
And, by reactionary defense I mean 'wating around till someone attacks you to fight back.'
As for rethinking what I said, you read a lot of things into my argument that are not there.
Wake up and smell the *sig-laden-with-coffee*
Yes, war and death suck. Yes people on both sides of the conflict are dying, daily. Yes, according to the information we had at the time it was NECESSARY to enter Iraq - in retrospect, we probably could have waited and things MIGHT be different, but hindsight is always 20-20. No war has ever been won without tragedy. Is this one going to turn out to be worth it? We wont know for 10 or 20 years.
Yes, I know that you have issues with the war. Those issues appear to be based mostly on the questionable media assertion that our president can not actually [GASP!] tell the truth about his motivations.
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