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The Future of Tech And NSA Wiretaps
Tyler Too writes "Is there more to last week's story about President Bush authorizing wiretaps without court review? Ars Technica writes about what's going on behind the curtains with the National Security Agency's technology: 'When the truth comes out (if it ever does), this NSA wiretapping story will almost certainly be a story not just about the Constitutional concept of the separation of powers, but about high technology.'"
The Bush administration really screwed up this time, and I'm saying this from a completely non-partisan point of view. The FISA court exists specifically for quick wiretaps when the government believes there is an immediate threat, and they even have a 72 hour period where you can get the tap authorized by FISA after the tap is placed. As far as I'm aware, they never even brought some of these cases before FISA.
The fact that they did this without even consulting the FISA court is completely illegal, and bypasses the checks and balances of our government. I don't think anything will happen to the prez, but this is really just disgusting.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
This really isn't anything new. In fact Carter used the Exact same Authority that Bush is using now. That executive order became Executive Order 12333 under Reagan in 1981. Gorelick also stated that Clinton used the same authority. From a CATO Report:
The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place. . . .
FISA itself has ruled that:t ml?id=110007703
The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.h
Bush also pointed out that the 9/11 resolution gave him additional authority. Here is the verbage:
"use all necessary force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons [...] "
All the NSA (or some other attacker) need to do is sit between you and the person you're trying to call. You exchange keys with the NSA, the NSA exchanges keys with the other person, and everything else they can pretty much just relay verbatim -- listening in the whole time.
The only slightly tricky part of this is that the NSA have to convincingly imitate the other person when you're exchanging keys.
Classic Man-in-the-middle attack; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_middle