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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 problem for the average American isn't necesarily that liberties are being taken with regard to surveillance of fringe elements who might be prone to terrorism. The real problem is in defining what is a fringe element and who might be prone to become a terrorist. The recent news that groups like Greenpeace and PETA are being investigated leads me to believe that the authorities consider anyone with an opinion about anything as being involved in a fringe element. Strangely, the NSA, FBI and other institutions harbor people who think like this regardless of the current administration and political climate. It seems that we have to clarify to them what is acceptable every couple of decades or so.
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 [...] "
What's the real difference between spying and restriction? Spying is, of course, a necessary prerequisite for restriction as the government needs to know what you're up to in order to prevent you from doing it. So what the president ordered wiretaps? If the president ordered wiretaps in violation of his Constitutional duties then he violated his oath. If you allow one president to violate the Constitution for "security", then you are saying the President is above the law. That, unfortunately, is a prerequisite for dictatorship.
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When the truth comes out (if it ever does)
You'll be pushing 70, at a minimum, and the technology will seem quaint, though cool from a historical perspective.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
1 579.html
George W Bush
April 20, 2004
Here is his full statement from that day:
http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2004/Apr/21-38
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
The article talks about "Soft Triggers" which are interesting. A lot of focus has gone on keywords, but there are far more efficent technologies out there for building predective models. Why do you want a predective model? Simply put with Petabytes of data out there from intercepted transmissions you have to predict based on the content of a message if a message in innocent or threat. Replace the words "threat" with "spam" and all of a sudden technologies like Bayes and other data mining techniques are interesting.
If you don't think this is valuable, go read a book on Enigma and find out how much exactly reading your opponents mail helps.
However technologies such as this are not covered by FISA. I think it would have been better to revise FISA to cover technologies such as this, but non-withstanding that, it's really nothing new in terms of excercise of power then anything Clinton or even Carter did.
If the article in question is to believed, and they are scanning 1% of all US calls, they probably aren't distinguishing between foreign and citizen conversations. They're simply eavedropping on everybody and then trying to figure out what's going on.
Ignoring civil liberties is almost never warranted, and every time we do it, it turns out that not only do we regret it, but most important *it was never necessary to do in the first case*.
Didn't we learn anything from the internment of Japanese citzens during WWII?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The way things are going you probably won't get either.
We've read a lot about the network wiretapping technologies in use by the intelligence agencies, Carnivore, and similar At least one of the technology providers allows us to take a closer look at the actual technologies used. Unispeed openly claims to provide solutions to police and intelligence agencies. They'll even let you try the stuff for yourself
If the Dems manage to gain back a majority in the house next election, I would think they would be obliged to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush. It would have a lot more validity than the impeachment of Clinton, and they would look like wimps if they didn't.
If you post it, they will read.
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
Look. The word "terrorist" has a rather specific meaning. Raiding a mink farm and freeing the mink doesn't qualify as terrorism. Sabotage, economic warfare, street theater, whatever, but it isn't terrorism.
Even if they killed the mink farmer, that's just murder. (My point is not to minimize how horrible murder is!) But it's not terrorism.
The real problem is that "terrorism" is getting stretched to mean "anything law enforcement wants to have an easier time checking into". This trivialization of the word "terrorism" means that pretty soon, we're going to need a new word for the real thing...
A reality of abolutes and black-and-white would be convenient for ethicists, philosophers and just about anyone else who wants to know the difference between right and wrong. You must know that it doesn't work that way. Invoking terrorism as an excuse for abusing civil liberties? Please. We may as well invoke the bogey-man as a reason to pay taxes or Santa Claus as a reason to be a moral person. Let's all put our shirts back on, set the can of Old Milwaukee down and take a deep breath. Civil liberties are at the core of a strong democracy, and as they are eroded, so will be a democracy's strength.
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon. --Woody Allen
The difference that you missed between what the Bush Administration has done and what past presidents have done is this: FISA only allows warrantless surveillance of NON-US-PERSONS. Warrants are still legally required under FISA and the Patriot act for surveilling US Citizens. Which is why the FISA court was set up - so they could get a warrant in minutes if necessary, or even within 24 hours AFTER the surveillance had begun. So what's their excuse? Judicial oversight just too much hassle, with that minutes-long waiting period?
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And the program was terminateed when no longer needed in 1945.
So, as soon as we've defeated all the terrorists, we get back our civil rights? How long will that take?
If you believe the Bush administrations definition of fast food as "manufacturing" jobs, you can start speculating what "international" and "terrorist" means.
For instance if you place a domestic long-distance phone call, it could go over a satellite link. Well, orbit is international territory. Therefore using Bush administration verbal gymnastics, this would be an international call. And what about cell phones??? Well, all those signals go into orbit, so that could be an "international"
What about terrorists??? Well we already know that the Bush administration considers unions (the NEA in particular), peace activists and environmental activists as "terrorists". And many Democrats subscribe to ideas of unionism, peace and environmentalism. Indeed they believe anyone who opposes this war is aiding and ebetting terrorists. Ergo, Democrats are terrorists.
And what about any businesses that do businesses in country where there may be terrorists? Couldn't they be terrorists as well. Well I'm sure there is a lot of strategic business information that could be learned from "international" calls by "terrorists".
The fact that Bush refused to go through the FISA court leads you to believe that this court was unlikely to approve the wire taps they wanted. This court has a history of rubber stamping pretty much anything an adminstration wants.
The alternative thought is that Bush is asserting a new right of "presidential supremacy". This basically means that the President can do whatever he wants so long as he claims it is pursuit of his "commander in chief" duties. Frankly, this is the more disturbing option. This is the avenue that Hitler took.
If Congress does NOT oppose these actions, Bush will have successfully established a precedent of violating the law simply because "he feels like it". This would transform GW Bush into a dictator. GW Bush could decide to cancel the next election because of "terrorist threats".
If you are a Republican, please think long and hard about giving your approval to this. Now think whether you would approve this if it was Bill Clinton.
Finally, consider Bush's justification. There have been no terrorist attacks since Bush started the program. Well, consider that from the first WTC attacks in '92, Al Queda made no successfull strikes until 2001. A total of NINE YEARS passed between Al Queda attacks against US territory without a SINGLE illegal wire tap (at least during the Clinton administration).
I would submit that there was PLENTY of intelligence available to the Bush administration to stop attacks. Indeed, the Clinton administration managed to thwart multiple Al Queda attacks against the US without using illegal wire-taps (but no doubt using the legal (and secret) FISA court). John Ashcroft de-prioritized anti-terrorism to just under porn and prostitution.
Richard Clarke was screaming as loud as he could to get access to the President and take anti-terrorism seriously. He was ignored. The intelligence fore-shadowing 9/11 was forestalled. Somehow the Bush administration had managed to bring the US airforce to a state of unreadiness whereby it could not intercept a jumbo jet.
Please Republicans, take your party and your Constitution seriously. This man is dragging your party into ignominy. If you are a patriot you MUST support checks and balance. The President is NOT an elected king. The Presidents job is to respect and enforce the laws passed by Congress. The President cannot just "make up" laws.
If you don't support checking the president's power, you are a fascist. If you don't like that label, than you need to change your position. You will bring this country to a state of civil war against those of us who will NOT bear a President affecting the same transformation on the US as Hitler did to Germany.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
...that they didn't think they could get the FISA court to rubberstamp?
The FISA court has only turned the government down, what, twenty times in thirty years? And the law allows them to wiretap first and get court approval afterwards... and if the court turns them down they can appeal to another secret court, and if that court turns them down they can appeal to the Supreme Court, meeting in secret session with only the government in attendance.
The mind boggles. What could they possibly have been afraid to take to FISA court?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You can read a summary of the past 5 years of spying on Americans in their own country here. Included are reasons why Ashcroft chose the N.S.A. instead of the F.B.I. and a timeline of the whole complicated story.
Throwing blood on minks is NOT a "terrorist" activity.
Burning down an empty house is not a "terrorist" activity.
I don't like PETA either and I don't approve of ELF. But property destruction is NOT murder. Terrorist KILL indiscriminately at civilian targets in order to produce a state of fear. As goofy as they are, none of these liberal radical groups do this.
By the way, it is quite ironic that while the FBI classifies PETA, Greenpeace and ELF as terrorists, they DO NOT classify white supremacist groups who practice para-military operations and gladly sport their copies of "The Anarchist Cookbook" and "The Turner Diaries".
I have NO DOUBT that the Bush administration is spying on liberal organization by labeling them "terrorists". And I also have no doubt that they are simply asserting another authority that they have not admitted to for domestic calls.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
"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."
WOW, talking about taking it out of context!
The court was talking about executive branch's ability to gather intelligence on FOREIGN SOIL!!! They deemed that the Fourth Amendment did not extend to foreign governments and their agents. Which is the correct reading and MOST of us here would agree to.
What the courts have CONSISTENTLY ruled against is using that power on US CITIZENS! In fact FISA specifically guards against and makes that illegal. To balance that it makes it easier for authorities to get secret warrants and allows warrantless searches within the first 15 days of a war and allow agents obtain warrant AFTER the tap.
They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties.
LIAR!!! Do you have security clearance? Have you seen the list of warrantless searches? No? Then how do you know? Oh because Bush said so? Oh, and they also said they didn't use Patriot Act on non-terrorist groups and guess what? They used it on Peace groups and PETA!
But the Members of Congress who were informed about this all along are now either silent or claim they didn't get the full story. This is why these columns have long opposed requiring the disclosure of classified operations to the Congressional Intelligence Committees.
LIAR!!! Were you there when they were briefed? No? Then how the FUCK do you know? EVERY senator (Republican & Democrat) said they did not get complete information on this. But you KNOW they are lying??
And NO, this is not a reason to hide things! It is a DAMN GOOD REASON TO NOT HIDE things!!! Because if they didn't then Bush would have some RECORD to bolster his statements.
By contrast, the Times' NSA leak last week, and an earlier leak in the Washington Post on "secret" prisons for al Qaeda detainees in Europe, are likely to do genuine harm by alerting terrorists to our defenses. If more reporters from these newspapers now face the choice of revealing their sources or ending up in jail, those two papers will share the Plame blame.
Man you are just a walking LYINGPALOOZA!!! You mean to tell me that Al Queda DID NOT suspect that this government was TAPPING EVERY PHONE call? Hello? Govt has been tapping Al Queda since the mid-80's. Are you REALLY that dumb to think that Al Queda was SHOCKED! SHOCKED I TELL YA to find this out from NY Times?
Not only are you a liar, you are dumb too...
Except, it's right on:
Let's use a conversation between Andrew and Charles, aka A and C... Now, assume I'm some ill-willed person named Bob, aka B that wants to play a man in the middle attack on A and C. If I can convince A that I'm C and C that I'm A initially, before they exchange public keys as the OP stated, I'm home free. Why? It should be clear... I give my public key to both A and C and they both give me their public keys. I can, therefore, receive messages from both (and decrypt them using my private key) and send messages to both A and C, using their public keys. So, A sends me a message encoded with my public key, I decrypt it, store the contents and then re-encrypt it with C's public key and send it along to C, etc. A B C but both A and C think they're talking directly to each other.
Prior exchange, out of band, of the public keys would make the man in the middle attack harder to do.
Osama is powerless to transform the United States into a totalitarian regime. GW Bush is well on his way.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I'm not endorsing this in any way at all, in fact I'm ashamed that he did this, but you are saying that this is worse than murdering 15 million of your own people and depriving them of property and liberty as well? I understand this is a bad thing, but acting in this polarized manner is exactly why today's political climate is as vicious and childish as it is.
But the problem is, they never start with killing 15 million people (side note: it doesn't matter "who's people" they are). They start with a little spying here, a little bending the rules there. Lie a bit a cause a few tens of thousands of people to die. Get your people into the positions of power, eviscerate the press (if it hasn't rolled over already). Come to some accommodation with the "opposition" ("play it our way or we'll ruin you" is always popular).
In short, make it so that no one dares move against you.
Then you can kill 15 million people, or even twenty if you're in the mood.
--MarkusQ
P.S. The polarization isn't causing the problem. The polarization is a consequence of some people realizing what is going on, and others squeezing their eyes shut and hoping it goes away.
The answer to the mystery of the NSA snooping scandal - why did they break the law when it was so ludicrously easy to get FISA warrants? - appears to be developing: they weren't just wiretapping, they were data mining. They were using Echelon to 'Able Danger' the whole country (this is Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, which is supposedly dead, in action). The problem is that FISA was enacted prior to the current capability for data mining, and didn't anticipate how ubiquitous it could be. The reason they couldn't use FISA is that they would have had to obtain a FISA warrant for every person in the country. Data mining requires that you follow each link discovered by your snooping, and wouldn't work if it had to be subjected to FISA or the Constitution. The NYT article, now being spun as resisted by the Bush Administration (as if the NYT would publish anything without Rove's say-so), appears to itself be part of the spinning, a limited hang-out to cover up the bigger scandal.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Wrong.
We're in charge.
That's the one and only thing that differentiates us from a dictatorship.
The fact that they seem to think that "THEY'RE IN CHARGE" is exactly what's got so many people who love this country so upset at them.
--MarkusQ
Isn't that what happens to any conservative speaker who visits a college campus these days? Maybe you should ask Ann Coulter. I'm sure you don't agree with what she says, but doesn't she have a right to say it?
Ann Coulter spews hate-filled tirades on an almost daily basis in her widespread column and in her countless network appearances, so she can hardly be considered an oppressed voice crying out in the wilderness. In one of her college stand-up routines, many students stood up and left the hall, prompting Coulter to yell: "Yeah, that's right, leave! The anal sex classes are just down the hall!" That's a little one-liner that would have made the brownshirts proud.
If GWB was half as bad as you make yourself believe he is, you'd already be dead. Michael Moore would be thin...in line for the "Showers" at Bush's Death Camps in West Texas.
No, but under gwb and his executive orders, his government has the power to detain you indefinitely without legal representation and even to outsource you to one of a prision in Guantanamo, Syria, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan and various other countries in Africa and Asia; hey, now that is one distinguished list!
So until we have forced labor camps and we're filling gas chambers daily, I suggest you rethink your position and keep your mouth shut.
And
So, go ahead, join what's left of the Taliban if that is what your truly belive.
Wow, spoken like a true west texas brownshirt.
Once we have forced labor camps and we're filling gas chamber daily, it's already too late by several years, OBVIOUSLY.
What has happened in every country whose population has allowed its' government to take away its' freedoms for the sake of the illusion of a little safety is that eventually that population loses its' freedom with no benefit of safety. History only repeats itself over and over again because of ignorance. Vincible ignorance. Lazy ignorance. Mediocre ignorance. Ignorance creating fear, and this combination in turn creates a soul-destroying hatred which makes it impossible for meaningful analysis and discussion to take place.
Fortunately, the United States of America on the basis of an incredibly resilient document called The Constitution which cannot be destroyed overnight. But it can be destroyed with some time, a dash of power-crazed corporate whores, and a whole lot of ignorance from the population.
Oh, and speaking of ignorance, the Taliban controls around half of Afghanistan. The other half, the so-called good guys, the Northern Alliance (did you know that's their name, the Northern Alliance?), has in the past four years overseen the biggest bumper crops of opium in Afghanistan's history, most of it exported to Europe and Northern America. Right under the gun barrels of what's left of United States troops in the region.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty