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Cringely on Domestic Eavesdropping
krygny writes "In this week's The Pulpit, Robert X. Cringely presents some interesting factoids he uncovered in his research into the NSA's domestic surveillance. He makes no judgements but offers some interesting stuff you might not have already known." From the article: "Intercepting communications for purposes of maintaining national security is nothing new. From before Pearl Harbor through 1945, EVERY trans-Atlantic phone call, cable and indeed letter was intercepted in Bermuda by the Coordinator of Information (COI) in the White House and later by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Sir William Stephenson revealed this in his autobiography, A Man Called Intrepid. They literally tapped the undersea cables and shipped all post to Europe through Bermuda, where every single call was monitored, every cable printed out, and every letter opened. FDR and Churchill needed intelligence and they took the steps they needed to get it."
But of course FDR never did anything illegal or unconstitutional as president.
Agree with me that Clinton was as bad a person for doing this as Bush is, and you'll show everyone that at least you're consistent.
The US opened, and censored, international mail during WWII. This was no secret. The US was very open about it; letters were resealed with the marking"Opened By Censor."
When there is a congressional election. If democrats can take back the house, they could possibly impeach the president; no Republican controlled house would ever betray their parties president (especially after he was re(s)elected). The angle that I don't think has been stressed enough is how Bush acted. If he really thought that having to go through a court that has approved 18,742 wiretap warrants and denied 5 was such an unconstitutional restraint of his power, he should have spoken up when he started doing it. Bush is asking for huge increases in executive power during a war he started under false premises.
According to a recent Zogby poll, 52% of Americans approve of impeaching Bush if he wiretapped an American citizen without a judges approval.
This wiretapping scandal can only get bigger as more and more layers get exposed. It appears Bush may have been wiretapping Americans before 9/11.
Good luck figuring all that out, before something blows up when you least expected it.
FISA is not the be-all and end-all of Surveillaince law, any more than Jim Crow, the law of the land, was consistent with the Constitution. Yes up to and including Plessy vs. Ferguson and a Supreme Court decision affirming the legality of segregation.
FISA was written in 1978, before throw-away cell phones and the idea that terrorism would ever be a threat to Americans. We are at war with a stateless enemy that exists in every nation of the globe and is sworn to our destruction.
Given that, does GWB have the authority under the Consititution to establish basically a giant version of "Snort" on US telco switches and filter out comms to/from Al Qaeda?
My guess is probably. The Constititution and FISA are both notably silent on data mining on telco traffic to/from foreign nations. Though it's worth noting that Bill Clinton and Al Gore asserted JUST such an authority with Echelon back in the 1990s (using the Canadians and Brits to surveill us while we surveilled them and the Aussies and everyone shared). Not to mention Al Gore's defense of the Clipper Chip and Carnivore.
There likely needs to be better oversight (sure any technology can be abused) but adhering to FISA rigidly is like not trusting this new-fangled fingerprint business, or DNA testing. As it is this tech gives us LOTS of leads we'd otherwise never get. Your computer can be used to invade people's privacy, I don't see Slashdot readers deciding to abjure technology and go live in a mud hut somewhere.
Point being that with changes in technology and society the understanding of the Constitution changes. We don't live in the 1890's and don't have LEGAL and Supreme Court approved Segregation. I assume that the Supremes will hold that the President DOES have the authority to check out who's in contact with Al Qaeda without a FISA warrant, and like property qualifications for officeholding and voting FISA itself will go away.
This is intresting, as in Sweden, the goverment is investigating whether to allow for international calls and data transmission in wires to be intercepted. The FRA (Swedish version of the NSA), already intercept radio transmissions, and they want more.
And as usual, international is defined as not-in-sweden, so this includes intra-european traffic as well, which is really way over the line. Not that I am surprised, Sweden have a facshist as minister of justice, who just recently together with his British collegue, pushed through a law in Europe, forcing ISPs, mail-servers, mobile phone companies &.c to log data on their customers communications (not the contents, but bad enough) for TWO years.
While it might be reasonable for European police to be given access to existing records after a court order, this new law is unprecedented in that it regulates what data that is to be stored, which turns out to be a lot more information than was actually stored by telephone and internet companies by default.
This is disgusting and I want none of it.
PS! To any Swede reading this, dispose Bodström in the autum elections, all other questions are secondary! DS!
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
There are plenty who argue that neither knew about the attack, which would mean that those planning such things are probably smart enough to be discrete about it, which would mean that such surveillance is utterly worthless.
There are claims that Churchill knew about the attack, because older Japanese diplomatic codes had already been broken and enough could be extracted from messages to know the generalities even if not the specifics. (The newer diplomatic codes used were apparently derived from the ones that had been broken, to the point where partial decryption was possible.) If that is the case, then basic signals intelligence between key figures would seem to be more valuable than general monitoring.
Regardless of which of the popular theories you subscribe to, there is one common aspect - the kind of spying being practiced against American citizens is useless, whether or not other forms of signal intelligence has any value.
(Actually, existing sigint practices in general seem pretty crappy. We've had numerous false alarms, where the threat level has been raised but no evidence of any attack ha ever emerged. On the other hand, actual attacks in very recent times - such as those in London - were missed entirely.)
It does nothing to raise confidence levels when you realize that several top US Government officials have been arrested on spying charges in the US... ENTIRELY through a mix of blind luck, observation and routine detective footwork. If the US monitoring program can't even monitor national secrets and foreign agents, then it's not much use as a monitoring service.
Well, either that or it's not being used to monitor "threats" of that kind at all, which raises the question of what it IS monitoring. Nixon's crusade against the Democrats had far more to do with keeping himself in absolute power than with keeping the country safe, and Hoover was notorious for finding out the dirty secrets of anyone who could threaten his personal powerbase. Not to be cynical (reader: "you expect me to believe that?") but a comparison of results versus approach would seem to indicate that this program isn't as much for the benefit of national security as we're being told.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Again IIRC, the Supreme Court backed down. Certainly the power of the Supreme Court has increased substantially since Jackson's remark. I doubt any president would repeat the remark.
There may well be a streak in the American character that sees in the presidency something akin to the British Monarchy. Afterall the JFK presidency was called Camelot.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Actually, FISA has a provision of it that states the president can authorize warrantless wiretapping and physical searches for 15 day periods after a declaration of war, with the first part on electronic surveillance, as you said, being passed in 1978, and the second part, on physical searches, being passed as an amendment to FISA during the Clinton administration in 1994. A third amendment was made during the Bush administration, I think by the Patriot Act, in 2001 that makes companies have to turn over their business records if a very high-ranking FBI agent demands it, but only if it doesn't relate to a U.S. citizen and it is for foreign intelligence only. World War II clearly had many declarations of war by the U.S. The Iraq War and the War on Terrorism, unfortunately, had none. Thus, under FISA, domestic wiretapping would be legal for World War II, disregarding constitutionality.
Answer to your first question: YES, McCarthy and Hitler were exactly at the same level of scum. The difference between them being that Hitler was more successful in his goals, at least for some time.
The fact that McCarthy trampled on the civil liberties of a lot of people (just like Hitler did) is not changed by the fact that some of his targets were really communists.
The fact that McCarthy destroyed the life of a lot of people in the process is not changed, either.
Every single witch-hunting season brings exactly the same, ultimately: don't like the way your neighbor parks his car near your driveway? He is a witch/jew/communist/terrorist... go deliver word of that to the authorities. Normally, no proof is needed before the poor guy loses his job/car/house/liberty/life, ie, before real damage is done to him.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
sorry for the poor spelling/grammer ... I'm a little hung over.
But has war been declared? We declare wars in the press: War on Terror, War on Drugs.....etc. But these are just labels. The reality is a REAL war the ENTIRE nation is at immediate risk of their live and nation being dissassembled by a foreign threat.
Today in the US over 50,000 people are killed in Auto accidents. We have Nuclear Plants that are an intrinsic threat of mistakes ( not terrorist attacks ) melting down a plant and the surrounding population.
Yet we live with these threats.
This war is endless? Crime is endless......drug taking is endless......car accidents are endless. This is NOT a war. Terrrorists are criminals and we have plenty of resources to track, arrest and convict criminals. You will NEVER defeat terrorism via military means. repeat: NEVER. Anyone who buys into using the military to defeat Ossama et al is a fool.
The reality is that people in power usually get there because they are addicted to power, and like all addict will perform and act, tell any lie, do any action to ensure they can indulge their addiction. The US political system ensures that only crack junkie power crazed junkies get elected.
Once they get enough power they tell more lies to get more crack power. Altruism? Bah!
They believe that they can cement their hold on power via information - they want to know what you are saying they want to know what you are thinking. This attack on Google is motivated on knowing what you are thinking. What better way to find out? You think a thought.....bang you refine information related to that thought via google. Thinking of a wank? Search = favorite porn phrase. Thinking of criticism of your elected leaders = search for validation of your thoughts with other people or organizations. Once Google is defeated, then they can quietly continue to expand until Google is just an appendage of the power crack junkies search for negative thoughts that MUST BE STAMPED OUT.
This is just a power grab by a load of crack junkies that in other times with a real press with spine would be sent for the therapy they need.
You may laugh, but consider this; The Netherlands, the pesky little country I'm from actually has secret treaties with the US. These supercede our own constitution. They're the reason we let the US use our airspace and their military bases on our soil in preparation of the current war on Iraq, even though our Parliament did NOT approve. Nor did they get to read said secret treaties with the US.
Now consider this; if our Parliament isn't aware of their content.. Who is? They didn't get to look it up on www.loc.gov, otherwise they wouldn't be secret anymore..
So there you have it folks, the US has secret international treaties with foreign powers, and it holds that these supercede at the very least other countries' constitutions and Parliaments.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Wikipedia, which is a noble experiment and a great resource, has long acknowledged that in controversial areas, its accuracy is suspect. And indeed it is. During the 2004 election campaign, I put some information that was unfavorable to John Kerry into it. I gave a reference, which was an easily obtained book. My change was rejected because "the book probably doesn't exist" even though the simplest Amazon search showed that it does and was available.
Even today, if you read the Bush and Kerry sections, you will find the phrasing of the Kerry section to be much more favorable than that of Bush (if you have ever studies actual propaganda, you will recognize the technique). The concentration of various facts to be similarly more favorable - selective editing - I'm sure the many Bush haters on here are itching to tell me that both are accurate. They are not - in either case.
Hence citing the Wikipedia as authorithy on *controversial* subjects is ridiculous, as has been discussed here before.
I praise the Wikipedia effort, but one unfortunately side effect is that those who control the keys to the kingdom, or the faction which works the hardest to change an entry, determine the content, regardless of truth and damgingly against balance. Wikipedia is trying to change this, although I cannot think of any methodology that are consistent with its character that will work.
And no, I'm not going to debate this. If you don't believe me, go find some other controversial area and eventually you will discover this sort of shading to be common.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Hey, a rational response - I'm impressed!
The article you link to (and everything else that I have read) doesn't say that Executive Orders can be used to override Congressional laws, although some Presidents have tried to use them to do so (and when direct conflict between Congressional law & the Executive Order came about, the courts have ruled against the President).
It _does_ say (and I'd agree) that the Executive Orders use the gray areas caused by sloppy Congressional law-writing to bend/multilate/spindle the law in a way that a President wishes to interpret it, and that the courts have traditionally been pretty lenient about the scope of these gray areas.
When it comes down to it, though, the precedence is pretty straightforward: Constitution (including amendments) trumps all, then Congressional law, then Executive Orders, then agency regulations. As much as it annoys the executive branch, there is no legal way thay can overrule the power of the Constitution & Congressional statutes - it can only interpret in the bounds of any wiggle room that the Constitution & Congress sees fit to grant it.
Of course, if the Supreme Court doesn't have the cajones to call the executive branches on abuses of this law-making power-order, then it's pretty obvious that a President would have essentially the same power as a dictator - making, enforcing & passing judgement.