Sibel Edmonds re-emerges - finally - with a book

i've posted a great deal in the past about sibel edmonds (see here) but it's been nearly three years since my last post... the constraints of her gag order coupled with personal threats have been severely detrimental in getting her story out... now i see that she has a book which lays out everything and i can only hope that her re-emergence and renewed visibility will be sufficient to shield her from any unexplained, coincidental "accidents"...
 
first this from rt and the alyona show...

Sibel Edmonds has called the most classified woman in US history. But now, after a long battle with government secrecy, the full story has finally been written. She faced a nearly yearlong FBI campaign to prevent its publication. She joins the show to tell us about her memoir, "Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story".

here's david swanson...

Sibel Edmonds' new book, "Classified Woman," is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as "page-turners" and "gripping dramas," but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell.  This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11.  She considered it her duty.  Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks.  That's where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically.  It's rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.

Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security.  The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves.  The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to "say something if you see something" is the rarest commodity.  Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.

[N]o branch of our government has lifted its little finger to fix the problem of secrecy and the corruption it breeds, which Edmonds argues has grown far worse under President Obama.  That's why this book should be spread far and wide, and read aloud to our misrepresentatives in Congress if necessary.  This book is a masterpiece that reveals both the details and the broader pattern of corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C.  Edmonds has not exposed bad apples, but a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all -- not just the whistleblowers like Sibel and the thousands of people in our government who see something and dare not say something for fear that we will not have their back.

now, if our brain-dead media could just manage to sit up and take notice of what sibel is exposing, we just might be able to shed some light on all the creepy-crawlies that infest even the highest reaches of our government...  

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The definitive authoritarianism of the U.S. National Security State

glenn speculates on the ramifications of ongoing efforts by the obama administration to force the internet industry to provide the u.s. government with “backdoor” access to all forms of internet communication...

[F]or anyone who defends the Obama administration ... and insists that the U.S. Government simply must have access to all forms of human communication: does that also apply to in-person communication? Should home and apartment builders be required to install monitors in every room they build to ensure that the Government can surveil all human communications in order to prevent threats to national security and public safety? I believe someone once wrote a book about where this mindset inevitably leads. The very idea that no human communication should ever be allowed to take place beyond the reach of the Government is definitive authoritarianism, which is why Saudi Arabia and the UAE — and their American patron-ally — have so vigorously embraced it.

in-home communication monitors...? wow...! just think about that for a few minutes...

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CISPA heads for a vote in the House

sopa, acta, pipa and now cispa... our rulers keep bringing this shit back in different guises, thinking that eventually we'll grow tired of fighting and let them have their way... it's a timely reminder that our super-rich elites will stop at nothing to control the internet and to make sure that absolutely nothing we do, whether it's on the internet or anywhere else, no matter how small or innocent, escapes the notice of the ptb... 

from democracy now...

As it heads toward a House vote, critics say the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would allow private internet companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to hand over troves of confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, effectively legalizing a secret domestic surveillance program already run by the NSA. Backers say the measure is needed to help private firms crackdown on foreign entities — including the Chinese and Russian governments — committing online economic espionage. The bill has faced widespread opposition from online privacy advocates and even the Obama administration, which has threatened a veto. "CISPA … will create an exception to all existing privacy laws so that companies can share very sensitive and personal information directly with the government, including military agencies like the National Security Agency," says Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Once the government has it, they can repurpose it and use it for a number of things, including an undefined national security use."

still more from democracy now...

Computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum argues the measures included in the proposed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would essentially legalize military surveillance of U.S. citizens. "When they want to dramatically expand their ability to do these things in a so-called legal manner, it’s important to note what they’re trying to do is to legalize what they have already been doing," Appelbaum says. He is a developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a network enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the internet, and has volunteered with WikiLeaks.

as much as i hate to repeat myself, i've been saying for years that you can be sure that anything and everything you do on an electronic network of whatever variety, whether it's using an atm or swiping your supermarket affinity card or making a phone call or even driving your car down the road in range of surveillance cameras, is being at minimum sniffed and most likely recorded for possible later retrieval... and when i say years, i mean at least since the early to mid 90s... 

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Foreclosure fraud, false claims and stonewalling by Wells Fargo

marcy wheeler...

[T]he government has been sitting on evidence of significant crime for the last 18 months–crime that resulted in people losing their homes and the government being defrauded.

she's got more and it makes for distressing reading...

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The MF Global theft

from the nyt...

Federal investigators examining the final days at MF Global and how customer money went missing are poring over scores of wire transfers in and out of the brokerage firm, including the possible movement of $325 million that may have belonged to customers, according to people briefed on the matter.

The suspicious transfer, which until now has not been made public, was first discovered in the early hours of Oct. 31, the day the firm filed for bankruptcy. Initially, the firm attributed a shortfall of more than $1 billion in customer money to an “accounting error,” records show. But after hours of searching, executives acknowledged to regulators in the firm’s offices in Chicago that the shortfall was real — and may have been caused in part by the $325 million transfer, said one of the people briefed on the matter.

It remains unclear where that money went, or even if it belonged to customers. But it is one of many significant wire transfers that federal authorities — including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation — have spent months reviewing to piece together MF Global’s final days.

pushing aside the patent b.s. lack of "clarity" about where the money went, atrios chooses to call it what it really is...

When a billion bucks or so goes "missing" it isn't due to complexity, or accounting errors, or those crazy moments right before the firm went bankrupt. It's theft. The money was stolen from customers and then given to somebody else. Precisely why, by who, and to whom are questions that should be answered, but the underlying issue shouldn't be obscured. People were robbed. [emphases added]

seems to be a lot of thievery goin' around these days...

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Social media surveillance in the National Security State

i saw this article earlier today and, given how disgusted i am with most everything that's coming out of the obama administration, i have to confess, i merely shrugged, rolled my eyes and moved on... then it popped up again in another venue and i thought, well, hell, it deserves any additional visibility i might be able to give it...

FBI seeking social media monitoring tool

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a tool to mine social media for intelligence tips.

The US domestic law enforcement agency is asking information technology contractors about the feasibility of building a tool that would “enhance its techniques for collecting and sharing ‘open source’ actionable intelligence.”

The January 19 open request was published on a website offering federal business opportunities and was first reported by New Scientist magazine.

The FBI said it is seeking an “open source and social media alert, mapping and analysis application solution” for its Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC).

“Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations,” the FBI request said.

“Intelligence analysts will often use social media to receive the first tip-off that a crisis has occurred,” it said.

The FBI said the tool “must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identity, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats.”

It would need to be able to “instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all ‘publicly available’ tweets across the Twitter site and any other ‘publicly available’ social networking sites/forums.”

It would also need the ability to “search the data across a myriad of parameters and view terrorist activities by location, terrorist group, and type of attack and see trends and analytics.”

it's sad... five years ago, i would have been apoplectic over something like this, along with a lot of other people... now, after having gagged down serial surveillance atrocities and constitution-shredding maneuvers year after year, this is just one more in a long series...

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Anonymous strikes back

good on them...

Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

[...]

Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.

i like their style...

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Bullshit being spread about Muslims

this kind of garbage really pisses me off... i have made some very, very special friends in afghanistan, devout muslims all, and the notion that devout muslims are "violent" is not only the height of misinformation, it's criminally wrong...

spencer ackerman writing in wired's danger room...

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

The FBI isn’t just treading on thin legal ice by portraying ordinary, observant Americans as terrorists-in-waiting, former counterterrorism agents say. It’s also playing into al-Qaida’s hands.

Focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens instead of proven indicators of criminal activity like stockpiling guns or using shady financing makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism. And depicting Islam as inseparable from political violence is exactly the narrative al-Qaida spins — as is the related idea that America and Islam are necessarily in conflict.

"focusing on the religious behavior of American citizens" not only "makes it more likely that the FBI will miss the real warning signs of terrorism," it also is just plain wrong... if they really wanted to teach those counterterrorism agents something worthwhile, they should make them read, study and discuss the koran, preferably with mainstream imams or mullahs who could explain what islam is really all about...

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My first and last comments on Weinergate

so, the compulsive sex addict is going to resign... woo-hoo...

two comments...

one, what anthony weiner does to pursue his sexual inclinations is absolutely none of anyone else's goddam business... period...

two, how anyone, particularly someone of weiner's purported intelligence and PARTICULARLY someone in his position, can NOT think that anything and everything they do on any electronic network (and that means everything from swiping your supermarket discount card to making an atm withdrawal to sending tweets) isn't being swept up by SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE - whether it's vile-minded hackers working for andrew breitbart or the nsa or the fbi - is SERIOUSLY deluded...

so, while i think it's absolutely insane to hound someone from office for anything based on licit sexual behavior, i think weiner deserves everything he gets based on his sheer STUPIDITY... sure, he should be free to engage in whatever sexual behavior he cares to pursue as long as it's legal, but to think that tweeting, sexting and posting photos of his genitals via open and highly-surveilled electronic networks WOULDN'T make their way into the public domain eventually is just plain idiocy... in my book, weiner is a prime candidate for the next edition of the darwin awards...

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Meanwhile, Egyptians are busy documenting their fallen government's use of torture

do you think we in the u.s. could take a lesson here...?

With Mubarak out of power, Egyptians turned today on the brutal State Security Services he used to cement his reign. Thousands of protestors stormed the agency's main headquarters in Cairo, ransacking offices and searching for evidence of Mubarak's wrongdoing among classified documents. This is basically like if Americans were given free reign at the FBI's HQ.

The State Security Services were responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses during Mubrarak's 30-year rule, according to the AP. "We all suffered and saw horrible torture at the hands of this agency," one protestor said. And many of those who raided the agency's offices today were victims of abuse.

not only did they raid the headquarters of the state security services, they also documented everything they found, posting it on social networking sites... NOW, it's getting really REAL...!

again, scott horton...

This weekend tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt [flooded] the Internet with pictures of the cells and torture devices used there. Leaders of the effort said their raid was undertaken to preserve evidence of the mistreatment of prisoners so that appropriate measures could be taken for accountability in the future. Around the world, the outcry against this regime of torture and terror is rising and fueling massive public uprisings–as we see today in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.

here's a photo gallery... like scott says, what if the american people could do the same at fbi headquarters...

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My biggest concern with the Arizona shooting - the internet

yes, violence targeting anybody, be they ordinary u.s. citizens, elected officials of our or any other government, or innocent civilians in the endless "war on terror," is something to be condemned and, by all means, prevented... but, as glenn points out, we should be hyper-attentive to our fear-mongering government using the excuse of any and all such horrific events - as well as the non-horrific ones, e.g. wikileaks - to further advance the national security state...

There has been much talk over the last several days, in the wake of the Arizona shooting, about attempts by some citizens to instill physical fear in elected officials. That's a worthwhile and necessary topic, but the fear that government officials are attempting to instill in law-abiding, dissenting citizens is far more substantial and sustained, and deserves much more attention than it has received.

why do i raise the specter of the national security state in connection with the arizona shooting...? here's our esteemed fbi director, robert mueller, speaking in tucson...

“The ubiquitous nature of the Internet means that not only threats but also hate speech and other inciteful speech is much more readily available to individuals than quite clearly it was 8 or 10 or 15 years ago,” Mr. Mueller said. “That absolutely presents a challenge for us, particularly when it results in what would be lone wolves or lone offenders undertaking attacks.”

fueled by wikileaks, obama's proposed internet id for everybody and now this, i predict a crackdown on internet freedom like nothing we've yet seen...

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Extraordinary rendition of a U.S. citizen - it could happen to you...!

note: mr. meshal was never charged...

"U.S. officials repeatedly threatened Mr. Meshal with torture, forced disappearance, and execution in order to coerce him to confess to wrongdoing in which he had not engaged and to associations that he did not have," according to the lawsuit [the suit, brought on behalf of Amir Meshal by the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first by a U.S. citizen seeking damages for the practice of "rendition," the extrajudicial transfer of terrorist suspects between countries], which targets two FBI agents, identified as Chris Higgenbotham and Steve Hersem, and two unidentified U.S. officials who allegedly questioned Meshal in Kenya and Ethiopia.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment, citing the Justice Department's policy in civil litigation cases.

Meshal, a Muslim born to Egyptian parents, traveled to Somalia in 2006 "to enrich his study of Islam," according to the lawsuit. Mogadishu, the Somali capital, had recently come under the control of a militia known as the Islamic Courts Union. Later that year, the U.S.- and Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government of Somalia launched a military offensive and took back the city.

As he fled the fighting, Meshal was picked up in Kenya, near the Somali border, and held at the behest of U.S. officials, often in filthy and crowded cells, according to the lawsuit. He was repeatedly questioned by FBI agents who threatened to send him to Israel or Egypt unless he acknowledged ties to al-Qaeda, the lawsuit alleges.

Meshal signed a document waiving counsel, but the lawsuit claims that the FBI told him doing so was the only way he would get home, effectively leaving him no choice.

When a Kenyan human rights group filed a habeas petition on behalf of Meshal and other foreigners picked up at the border with Somalia, the American was secretly flown back to Somalia, where he was held for a number of days, before being taken to Ethiopia. He was also questioned repeatedly by U.S. agents in Ethiopia before finally being allowed to return to the United States on May 26, 2007, the suit says.

mr. meshal is now back home in new jersey...

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Just in case you'd forgotten about Sibel Edmonds

here's a "little" (52 min.) reminder...

Sibel Edmonds, a 32-year-old Turkish-American, was hired as a translator by the FBI shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 because of her knowledge of Middle Eastern languages. She was fired less than a year later in March 2002 for reporting shoddy work and security breaches to her supervisors that could have prevented those attacks.

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Greenwald's thoughts on the Minnesota raids - an "excessive and truly despicable intimidation campaign"

he's right, of course... this should be a front-page story all over the country and it's not... our constitution is being actively violated and deliberately destroyed before our very eyes while we dish about sarah palin...

As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government. Just sit quietly in your house and mind your own business. That way, the Government will have no reason to monitor what you say and feel the need to intimidate you by invading your home. Anyone who decides to protest -- especially with something as unruly and disrespectful as an unauthorized street march -- gets what they deserve.

it's wrong... completely wrong... and we sit and watch it happen...

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8500 National Security Letters in 2000, 47000 in 2005, as the FBI tracks our every move

more so-called "news" in the category of, "yeah, so tell me something i DIDN'T know"...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been routinely monitoring the e-mails, instant messages and cell phone calls of suspects across the United States -- and has done so, in many cases, without the approval of a court.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and given to the Washington Post -- which stuck the story on page three -- show that the FBI's massive dragnet, connected to the backends of telecommunications carriers, "allows authorized FBI agents and analysts, with point-and-click ease, to receive e-mails, instant messages, cellphone calls and other communications that tell them not only what a suspect is saying, but where he is and where he has been, depending on the wording of a court order or a government directive," the Post says.

But agents don't need a court order to track to track the senders and recipients names, or how long calls or email exchanges lasted. These can be obtained simply by showing it's "relevant" to a probe.

[...]

Some transactional data is obtained using National Security Letters. The Justice Department says use of these letters has risen from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to the Post.

[...]

The new revelations show definitively that telecommunications companies can transfer "with the click of a mouse, instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico" upon request.

the incredibly naive notion that the fbi is illegally monitoring ONLY the electronic transactions of "suspects" is truly astounding... they are and have been monitoring every goddam electronic transaction for YEARS, and, bit by painful bit, we are finally having this godawful reality confirmed...

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Why would we be surprised that our military would be involved in domestic surveillance...?

yes, it's chilling, but i've made the assumption for quite some time that everything we do that involves an electronic network that isn't under our absolute individual control is either accessible or actively being scrutinized by any and all agencies of our government... that the defense department has adopted the same tactics as the fbi - the use of national security letters (nsl's) - to dig even deeper, should be no surprise to anybody... it's just a further indication of what i've thought right along, that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, and that there's still a massive bulk of shocking revelations lurking below the surface...

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage at the new revelations, based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena.

"Newly unredacted documents released today reveal that the Department of Defense is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power," said the ACLU, whose lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.

ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied "make us incredibly concerned." She said it would be understandable if the military relied on help from the FBI on joint investigations, but not when the FBI was not involved in a probe.

shocking... just shocking... NOT...! stay tuned... there's a LOT more to come...

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Total Information Awareness

the aclu posts a diary on daily kos...

By Barry Steinhardt, director the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project.

Yesterday’s report in The Wall Street Journal about the NSA’s domestic spy dragnets should be major, major news. It is nothing less than the return of TIA: "Total Information Awareness." Yet there has been barely any followup coverage of the story in the mainstream media. I know the media thinks the sexual behavior of the governor of New York is earth-shatteringly important for American life – but this NSA report actually is.

I mean, when we warn about a "surveillance society," this is what we’re talking about. This is it, this is the ballgame. Mass data from a wide variety of sources – including the private sector – is being collected and scanned by a secretive military spy agency. This represents nothing less than a major change in American life – and unless stopped the consequences of this system for everybody will grow in magnitude along with the rivers of data that are collected about each of us – and that’s more and more every day.

The TIA program, you may recall, was a massive Pentagon plan (run by Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame) to tap into as many databases containing personal information about Americans as possible (program materials listed "Financial, Education, Travel, Medical, Veterinary, Country Entry, Place/Event Entry, Transportation, Housing, Critical Resources, Government, Communications"). All that information would then be pulled together and scanned for "suspicious" patterns. Given the density of the "data trails" that we all create in our daily lives today and in the future, it was a recipe for the routine surveillance of Americans and their every move.

TIA was supposed to have been killed off by Congress in 2003 amid widespread objections to its sweeping Orwellian scope. There have been always been hints about a secret annex to the law that permitted some limited aspects of TIA to operate within the Pentagon’s black budget for intelligence and with respect to foreigners only. Now it appears that, like a vampire that can’t be killed except with a stake through its heart, TIA has arisen again from its coffin in full body with its voracious appetite for privacy of Americans and foreigners alike.

The reporter on the Journal piece, Siobhan Gorman, describes stunning new spying capabilities that flow from a distributed collection of new domestic spying capabilities (each of which the ACLU has long warned against):

• TIA and data mining more broadly


• The NSA’s illegal wiretapping program, the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP)


• The Patriot Act’s broadening of FBI power to collect third-party personal information without a subpoena through Section 215 searches and National Security Letters.


• The Treasury Department’s expanded surveillance of financial transactions through Cash Transaction Reporting and Suspicious Activity Reporting.


• The CIA’s illegitimate access to the SWIFT database to monitor international financial transactions.


• DHS’ efforts to increase collection and monitoring of airline passenger data.


• Partnerships between government agencies and private sector entities to collect and monitor customers’ data and transactions.


• The erosion of privacy through the judicial creation of a distinction between content and "transactional" or "addressing" information (such as the recipients of e-mails or phone calls and the times and dates of each communication) through the Patriot Act and prior developments.
  

In the ongoing battle over FISA and the NSA’s warrantless spying program (which appears to be but one part of this larger effort), the government has been saying in effect, "trust us." Why should we trust an agency that has been running this secret program in contravention of the Wyden Amendment, the law passed by Congress shutting down TIA.

It’s time for Congress to find out exactly what is going on here, inform the public, and put a stop to what appears to be the construction of a sweeping infrastructure for the routine mass surveillance of innocent people.

anybody who wants to believe that this shit started with the bush administration is certainly entitled, but, when it all comes rolling out into the cold, hard light of day - as it will, eventually - there are many of us who will not be in the least bit surprised to learn that it's been going on at least since echelon was revealed in the mid-90s and probably for quite a bit longer than that...

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McJoan: Why isn't Mark Klein being called to testify before Congress?

from mcjoan at daily kos, a follow-up to my post the other day on babak pasdar... important enough to post the whole thing...

Mark Klein is the former AT&T technician who exposed the infamous secret room at AT&T's facility in San Francisco, the room that was equipped to vacuum up "comprehensive customer usage data ... and transforms it into actionable information.... (It) provides complete visibility for all internet applications." For his efforts in exposing this massive warrantless wiretapping program by AT&T on behalf of the NSA, Klein received the Electronic Frontier's Foudnation Pioneer award.

What he has yet to receive is an invitation from any committee of Congress to testify about AT&T's illegal activity. In fact, the only member of Congress to make an attempt to reach out to him has been Senator Chris Dodd.

In this video, Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin interviews Klein and EFF legal director Cindy Cohn about the case, the Congress, and the Constitution. Klein has some harsh words for Democrats who care to listen.

Maybe it's time for Mark Klein to have his day testifying before Congress. While they're at it, they could invite whistleblower Babak Pasdar who tells a very similar story about one of the nation's major wireless carriers, ironically enough very likely the wireless carrier that sponsored that video you just watched.

It's unbelievable that these stories haven't been heard by Congress, that the Democratic leadership and the chairs of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees haven't given them the opportunity to tell what they know about this highly controversial, and illegal spying on Americans.

Instead, they want to sweep it all under the rug. Tell them not to. Call your Senators and Representative and tell them to demand a hearing for these allegations. No further action on FISA until they, and we, have heard the whole story.

Call leadership and the intelligence committee chairs, and tell them, too.

Harry Reid, Phone: (202) 224-3542, Fax: (202) 224-7327
Nancy Pelosi, Phone: (202) 225-4965, Fax: (202) 225-8259
Jay Rockefeller, Phone: (202) 224-6472, Fax: (202) 224-7665
Silvestre Reyes, Phone: (202) 225-4831, Fax: (202) 225-2016

Update: Adding in Judiciary Chairs, because they could probably find some angle to bring these guys in with, and frankly would be a lot more likely to do it.
Patrick Leahy, Phone: (202) 224-4242, Fax: (202) 224-3479
John Conyers, Phone: (202) 225-5126, Fax: (202) 225-0072

yeah, it may be nothing more than the little dutch boy, sticking his finger in the dike, but we gotta keep fightin' against our police state...

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The back-BACK-story on the Spitzer outing?

kevin at cryptogon has his usual interesting take...

This is probably a FBI counterintelligence operation targeting a Mossad HUMINT operation. The fact that the U.S. is going with prostitution/money laundering probably indicates that some kind of deal has been worked out between the U.S. and Israeli governments.

he's got a lot more... go read it...

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Oferchrissake, NOW the FBI wants telecom immunity

i'd no sooner finished with the previous post than i ran across this totally self-serving piece about fbi director mueller recommending telecom immunity...

At the heart of President Bush's plea to give telecommunications companies legal immunity is the contention that these companies were merely being patriotic corporate citizens when they facilitated the warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

FBI Director Robert Mueller undercut that argument Wednesday, telling Congress that the 'good faith' argument should have nothing to do with whether or not they are let off the hook in dozens of pending court cases.

"I would focus more on the downsides, substantial downsides, of not providing retroactive immunity as being the principal rational of the legislation, providing immunity," Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

go back and re-read my previous post and then tell me if you don't think the fbi is making a big move to protect its OWN miserable, exposed ass...

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