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Eavesdropping Helpful Against Terrorist Plot [UPDATED]
AcidPenguin9873 writes "The New York Times reports that the U.S. government's ability to eavesdrop on personal communications helped break up a terrorist plot in Germany. The intercepted phone calls and emails revealed a connection between the plotters and a breakaway cell of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union. What does this mean for the future of privacy in personal communications? From the article: '[Director of national intelligence Mike McConnell's] remarks also represent part of intensifying effort by Bush administration officials to make permanent a law that is scheduled to expire in about five months. Without the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Mr. McConnell said the nation would lose "50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know about these terrorists, what they're doing to train, what they're doing to recruit and what they're doing to try to get into this country.'" Update: 09/13 12:59 GMT by J : See followup story.
Chaining everybody up in their homes in straightjackets all day probably helps against terrorist plots too, but that doesn't make it right.
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Eavesdropping helps stop terror plots? WOW! What a surprise!
You know what also helps stop terror plots? Turning a country into a giant maximum security prison. Maybe we could have a study that tests that out.
Yes, violating privacy can help law enforcement. No ****. People oppose any given measure because they don't consider that tradeoff justifiable, NOT because they are unsure if it's useful. (Though in fairness, I guess a lot of people feel compelled to go all the way and think they have to consider a method *ineffective* before they'll oppose it, even where they can't rationally justify that...)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Obviously even more anti-privacy laws will make the US even safer, and do more to reduce the number of terrorist attacks to even less than the...erm...none over the last 6 years.....
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
--Benjamin Franklin
Just like eavesdropping on conversations helped the KGB find and arrest dissidents in the (former) Soviet Union.
Which we appear to be heading towards faster and faster with each passing day!
No matter where you go... there you are.
When did what happens in Germany effect us in the States?
Oh yeah, Germany is one of the 135 countries that we currently occupy. Here is the list:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan
Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile
China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cote D'lvoire, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic
Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador
Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana
Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia
Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia
Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique
Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway
Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore
Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden
Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia
Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom
Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
source
[*] That is Pashtun for, "Don't call me in my cell phone, the Satanists are on to it. just send emails using 2048 bit encryption."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Did the Germans find the plot BEFORE we got involved?
Did we find the plot BEFORE the Germans got involved?
Was this plot uncovered through basic German police work?
or
Was this plot uncovered through our massive surveillance program of all communications that we can get into?
I'm a little bit suspicious as to the TIMING of this announcement, too.
It seems that the Bush administration released this information to bolster their case that the newly gutted FISA (Federal Intelligence Service Act, the legislation that banned domestic spying and requires a warrant from a special FISA court to conduct evesdropping on US citizens). They claim that the intelligence gathering that lead to the arrest of the terrorism suspects in Germany happend only because of their new powers. I've seen nothing about whether they could have done the same evesdropping under the older (and some would argue, much better) FISA law. In particular, the NY Times article on the subject references intercepting email and phone traffic between non-US citizens who were not on US soil. I'm not sure that the restrictions of FISA would even apply in this case. Once again, this story may be just a bunch of smoke an mirrors from the Bush administration (though it is heartening to hear that the US intelligence agencies have managed to do one thing right in the "war on civil liber^D^D^D terror").
The NY Times reported that the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. Mike McConnell, *claimed* that the law helped. It's a claim by an official with a vested interest.
That doesn't make it false (or true), but it's much different than a statement of fact.
Very few people are against court sanctioned and oversought eavesdropping. What people are upset about is eavesdropping without warrants, on US citizens. As far as I can tell from the very brief article, this isn't a case where warrantless wiretapping, or data mining occoured.
AccountKiller
Checks and balances in government power to prevent abuses? This idea that the government should be allowed unfettered access to private communications just goes completely against what the Constitutional Framers had in mind. It would be best that these creeps be made to go through the paces of getting a warrant and *then* conducting a perfectly legal wiretap. The unfortunate part is that these clowns couldn't come up with believable grounds to get the warrant in the first place.
Future of privacy? Your privacy is already completely gone. You gave it up to find the terrorists, remember?
Sure, there's no such thing as a 'terrorist' - but at least you're getting cheap oil out of Afghanistan. I mean Iraq. I mean more expensive.
Ace
Eavesdropping on potential terrorists -- assuming "potential" means "suspected" not just "hypothetically possible" -- is all well and good. That's exactly the kind of thing government law enforcement should be doing. That's how law enforcement succeeds in catching real criminals.
If they're claiming this was part of a Carnivore/Echelon style dragnet, then hurray for catching the one tuna in a net bursting with dolphins.
The article mentions listening in on the members of a specific terrorist group, so I'm taking that to mean they already had suspects, and surveilling these suspects allowed them to discover the plot. I.e. the targeted search that is good.
However you can tell in articles like this that they want you to believe that this justifies extended surveillance powers, in particular the we-should-be-able-to-spy-on-anyone-any-time kind.
The article also mentions FISA and how Bush is trying to extend the law that will expire. It is very important to remember that the whole problem with Bush's program was that he couldn't even be bothered to go to the FISA court to get back-dated warrants. The best explanation for why that I've heard so far being that the program was spying on so many people that it was infeasible to actually get a warrant for each one. If they can't take the time to get a warrant for each one, then they certainly couldn't have taken the time to establish probably cause that any of these people were terrorists, and ergo they wouldn't have been granted by FISA anyway.
So look at this how it is -- a success for law enforcement, of the traditional pre-USAPATRIOT and pre-NSA-wiretapping kind. Don't see it how they want you too -- as justification for removing what few of our privacy protections remain, and justification for allowing the Executive branch and law enforcement to operate outside the 4th Ammendment.
The enemies of Democracy are
Those who would give up non-essential liberty to purchase permanent safety will have both essential liberty and safety.
--Workindev
My objection is not that the government eavesdrops. It is that they do it without court orders. I guarantee that if the government went to a judge and asked for a warrant to eavesdrop on particular suspects that it would be granted. The secretive dragnet approach is the problem. What is the problem with requesting warrants anyway? Do they really think the judge is going to spill the beans and the suspect will be alerted. I doubt it.
Your points would carry a lot more weight without the hyperbole. Having a military base in some country, with their permission, isn't "occupying" them.
The term 'occupation' indicates control over territory. We don't 'occupy' Cuba. We have a naval base there, but we don't control the rest of the country. (Unless you think that Castro is just a U.S. puppet. Or something.) To be honest, the world would probably be a significantly safer place if the U.S. did have significant control over several of the countries on that list, but we don't.
You undermine your own point through exaggeration and inflated rhetoric.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
No rational person would disagree that these eavesdropping methods don't work. But the proponents of this legislation have been focusing the conversation on a "no eavesdropping = potential danger" argument.
... but they also required a court order (to allow for oversight and transparency, a key element to a free democracy). The only cogent argument against this oversight -- that sometimes there isn't enough time to get a court order -- was shown to be patently incorrect, as the prior laws allowed for immediate eavesdropping (as long as a court order was eventually filed).
However, the discussion by opponents has not been against eavesdropping, but that with current law, there is no OVERSIGHT by any governmental agency of the eavesdropping. Prior laws always allowed eavesdropping
I'm too lazy to provide links, but it has been documented both that a) during the time of the court-order requirement, almost no court order requests were denied (something like 2 in 17,000); and b) during the non-court order law there were some thousands of eavesdropping events that were shown to have no connection to terrorism.
The reason, plain and simple, for articles like this is that the US administration is fearmongering to push the strategy that they do not want oversight into what they are doing. This is a bad thing. Democracy dies behind closed doors. Don't be fooled. Keep the focus where it should be!
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 119 >
2511. Interception and disclosure of wire, oral, or electronic communications prohibited
TFA does not ask the right question, and McConnell does not answer it:
"Was the surveillance covered by the relatively uncontroversial provisions for surveillance conducted overseas, was it covered by the relatively uncontroversial provisions where the surveillance is reviewed by the appropriate court, or was it done under the provisions for warrantless wiretaps and data mining that are very controversial?"
Are McConnell and the Bush administration trying to run a public relations gambit by association again? Are they trying to use the fact that electronic surveillance of some sort, possibly based on relatively uncontroversial provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, led to the arrests to get the controversial provisions of the FISA extended as well? I recognize that this may be classified information that should not be publicly disseminated. However, our elected representatives should be asking these questions and have a right to get truthful, complete, and non-evasive answers from the executve branch. If they do receive evasive answers, then the assumption should be that these programs are not necessary and should not be renewed.
--Paul
All this means is that terrorists will adapt to the new environment. Most likley heavily encrypted email. And to confuse the governments they could randomly send outs millions of heavily encrypted "spam" emails as decoys. And as usual they could always "go retro" and use short-wave radio with encrypted messages.
This "electronic vacuum" method will catch a few fish while also trampling on our rights. But these groups will always evolve. If all the $$$ used in technology - manpower - analysis were steered to creating an effective network of agents (feet on the ground) I believe the results would be more effective without trampling our basic freedoms.
We do need the capabilities to intercept messages - decode etc. --- but this shotgun method is really just a lazy-mans way to go about it.
Its not the years, its the mileage
These people are liars, and I wouldn't trust them to take out the trash. Only a fool would trust anything they say about national security.
Soviet East Germany had practically no terrorist activities. It did have about a third of its people spying on everyone else. Universal wiretaps, keeping political order by terrorizing them.
Spying on our own people without even a warrant is terrorism. It's political control by fear and threat of force.
Under Bush, the terrorists have won everything, because Bush is a terrorist. Even in Germany, people aren't safe from Bush's terrorism. Bush is indeed the greatest terrorist of them all. By any measure, including by body count (the way terrorists terrorize) and by how much liberty he's destroyed.
--
make install -not war
about "liberals" not wanting the govt to be able to surveil terrorists, the real (in fact the only) issue at question was oversight. No leftie (or rightie) was saying that the government should have no wiretapping powers, or that terrorists should get a free pass. The only question was whether or not a warrant should be needed, which by the 4th amendment it clearly should.
So, if a bomb goes off (it hasn't) anytime after 9-11-01, then the gigantic and completely unconstitutional police state is justified? And if it doesn't go off, it's still justified? So, therefore, a police state is the only logical form of government until such time as a bomb can never, ever go off? When would that be, when we are all wired to mind-reading machines connected to HAL?
We've had lots of bombs go off. Some, like the "bomb" in the USS Maine in Cuba that launched our takeover of the Philipines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, didn't even really exist. Europe has been bombed by separatists and nationalists for decades. Somehow they managed not to build torture centers overseas. At least, most didn't. And they still managed to maintain constitutional government.
As the rest of the world has been saying with clenched teeth, grow. up. already. We aren't the first country to ever have been bombed. Stop wetting your pants. Get a grip, you pansies. And kindly stop killing any and all brown people who seem to be sitting on oil. Kinda obvious, ya know, how we determine who is "evil".
The attackers never used phones, fax machines, email, or snail mail. The security we had before 9-11 was more than adequate; the Bushies and the Freeh-crippled FBI simply did not listen to the warnings. The bin Ladens were made, so were the men training to only fly, not land, planes. The Bush was warned about planes being used as bombs, he convened with Jesus to think about the poor unborn stem cells that week instead. The FBI under Freeh fired the entire middle level of intel analysis under his fetish of getting rid of "useless" bureaucrats. He consolidated intel decisions into upper levels, his levels, and they ignored the warnings because they were undermanned.
There will be always people with bombs, even if they are eternally in your imagination. And, say, what about that pesky anthrax terrorist that hit Democrats? Osama bin Laden? What about the militia groups, armed to the teeth to bring revolution to the socialists in Washington, the groups that spawned the only successful native terrorist act in Oklahoma City? Are we rounding THOSE loons up yet? The entire nation of Saudi Arabia, ya know, the actual country that attacked us on 9-11? Why aren't we at "war" with anyone who actually attacked us?
How many people did we torture to death the last six years? Over a hundred, from Gitmo and Iraqi accounts. How many innocent? Good chunk. We killed dozens under torture and stress. I can't live with that. We aren't that important. No country is.