is a parley with Feinstein wise?

from EFF: "Congress Keeps Telecoms on the Hook for Illegal Spying":

Full House and Senate Judiciary Committee Each Pass Bills with No Amnesty for Warrantless Surveillance

Washington, D.C. - Both the full House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to keep telecommunications companies on the hook for their role in illegal government spying on millions of ordinary Americans -- at least for now.

The bills each make changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). But, despite veto threats from the White House, neither of the two bills give blanket amnesty to telecoms that took part in the massive warrantless domestic surveillance program. Both bills would allow dozens of lawsuits against the telecoms to proceed, thus allowing federal courts to rule on whether dragnet domestic surveillance documented is legal."

I watched the 4 hours of the Senate Judiciary on Thursday. I am not convinced that the Telcom Immunity scandal won't raise the specter of its ugly head again, before the Fisa bill gets voted on in full session. I would give high marks to Senator Dianne Feinstein for her performance on Thursday though. Her call was to slow down in order to ponder the implications of what they were doing.

I haven't written on this up to now, because I have been wondering: Is Feinstein being honest about how she wants to learn more about what it means to grant Telcom Immunity? I have been contemplating communicating with her and spelling it out. But I have also been reluctant because I have been factoring in this logic.

Senator Arlen Specter held some ground, but then he tried to help usher in other advances to strip away more constitutional rights. It was clear from watching the meeting though, that there is far more going on than they were saying. There are other things being spied on than just "Terrorists". They repeatedly referred obliquely to other purposes. There is much much more going on here than watching a handful of terrorists, overseas. One thing clearly jumped out at me: The word "Terrorism" is being used as a code word to cover all manner of operations they are engaged in.

I did notice that Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy's face, looked like that of a jolly old man. But the face of Senator Orrin Hatch seemed frozen like stone, locked in sheer and utter hate and rage, his looked exactly to me, like the face of a Gargoyle. I think it has to do with his Mormon religion. Like Mitt Romney as well, their religion simply will not scale up to encompass the entire country and be able to destroy by force, those who will not surrender to its harsh rigors and strictures and cruel and intolerant demands.

In fact, Mitt Romney recently remarked as how it was "unAmerican" to hold his religion up to him. Excuse me? Romney is running for the most powerful office in the land, expressly to be able to use force to make people surrender in obedience to his religious bent.

Ars Technica writes that AT&T has made a significant purchase of a company with technology to identify files that pass as traffic through their networks -- even those that have been substantially modified:

AT&T announced earlier this year that was planning to introduce content filtering of some sort for all video passing across its network. Exactly what AT&T was thinking remained unclear: would the company truly attempt to reassemble the fragments of peer-to-peer transmissions, then extract video from all sorts of different codecs, then attempt to match it-in real time-to some database of copyrighted works? Would such a thing even be possible?

It's still not clear how AT&T plans to deploy its system, but the company is serious about it. Further evidence of that came today, when a brief Wall Street Journal writeup (subscription) pointed out that the company has just invested in Vobile.

Vobile's core product is a screening technology that it calls "VideoDNA." Like other systems of its kind, VideoDNA develops a unique signature from every frame of video. The signature is meant to be robust enough to survive various transformations and edits, and it can then be used to run matches against incoming content."

What is clear is that AT&T is gearing up to do a whole lot more packet inspections, not less; a whole lot more spying, not less.

The Seoul Times is reporting: "Internet a Threat, Says UN Terror Chief":

The threat of global terrorism is starting to roll back in some areas, but the Internet is a potent weapon being used to rally militants and must be better monitored, the new UN counter-terrorism chief said on Nov.13..

"The Internet is a real worry and I don't think we've found the answer yet," said Mike Smith, an Australian who starts work on Nov.12 as head of the United Nations' Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate in New York.

"In the old days extremists used to have to cross borders to plan and attack sites," Smith told Reuters. "Nowadays a lot of that stuff can happen on the Internet, they can give instructions, they can coordinate, they can recruit through these jihadi websites."

Will doing the bidding of RIAA fall conveniently under the auspices of fighting "Terrorism" now? It is starting to look that way as tools start to fall in place.

The Intelligence Community sure appears to be gearing up for something far bigger than fighting Middle Eastern terrorists.

Thinking of agitating to attract like minded rebel-rousers via your blog? That's why this could be a one-size-fits-all political control law.

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"Proof beyond a reasonable doubt" not required to start an impeachment inquiry

if what bush has done already doesn't warrant an impeachment inquiry, then, according to fein, impeachment as a constitutional remedy is meaningless...

bruce fein in slate...



he continues...

The House does not require, nor should it await, proof beyond a reasonable doubt of misconduct. To wait for such proof subverts the whole purpose of an impeachment inquiry.

[...]

Impeachment precedents fortified by the original intent of the Constitution's makers provide ample justification for a House judiciary committee impeachment inquiry targeting President Bush for—among other things—multiple criminal violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and frustration of legitimate congressional oversight with preposterous claims of executive privilege.

FISA makes it a federal felony for the president or vice president to "intentionally engage … in electronic surveillance [to gather foreign intelligence or otherwise] under color of law except as authorized by statute." A companion provision provides that the FISA's procedures are the "exclusive means" for conducting electronic surveillance.

[...]

An impeachment inquiry should further examine Bush's repeated assertions of executive privilege to operate a secret government eavesdropping program.

[...]

If what Bush has said and done falls short of warranting an impeachment inquiry, then impeachment of the president has become a virtual dead letter.

yeah, this criminal cabal needs to go, no doubt about it...

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Fuhgeddaboudit* says Bush to ACLU

rule #1: we make the rules... rule #2: see rule #1...

In a filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is itself secret and oversees the program, the U.S. Justice Department said the court should reject a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to disclose its legal rulings at the center of debate over the program.

It said the court had no authority to order such material declassified, the ACLU had no basis for filing its request with the court, and that granting it would jeopardize the surveillance program.

"The public disclosure of the documents the ACLU requests would seriously compromise sensitive sources and methods relating to the collection of intelligence necessary for the Government to conduct counterterrorism activities," the department said in its filing.

we ain't tellin' nobody nuttin' about nuttin'...

* fuhgeddaboudit

1. Forget about it - the issue is not worth the time, energy, mental effort, or emotional resources.

2. Definitively "no."

3. The subject is unequivocally excellent; further thought and analysis are unnecessary.

Often heard spoken by Robert De Niro, characters on the Sopranos, and people trying to sound hip and tough like a goomba.

There are many spelling variations. The consensus online is that it should be phonetically either "fu-ge-da-boud-it"; or "fu-ge-da-bout-it";

1. So they killed your brother's fiancee. Listen to me: fuhgeddaboudit.

2. You ask me once, I say fuggedaboudit, end of discussion.

3. Over there she got the best rigatoni in New Jersey. And the hot pastrami? Fuggedaboutit!

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"Government lawbreaking has become formally legitimized"

i posted yesterday on mcconnell's interview... glenn greenwald has some thoughts of his own...

McConnell clearly described that in 1978, we enacted a law prohibiting warrantless eavesdropping; the Bush administration broke that law repeatedly; and the telecommunications companies actively participated in that lawbreaking. And now -- as a matter of national security -- the Bush administration is demanding that Congress pass a new law declaring that telecom companies are immune from any and all consequences -- both civil and criminal -- in the event they are found to have violated the law. It is hard to imagine open contempt for the rule of law being expressed more explicitly than this.

What possible reason is there to protect anyone -- including telecom companies -- with a special law enacted to declare that they are relieved of all accountability for illegal behavior? And the premise of this argument is even more dangerous than the conclusion: it is all premised on the claim that these companies were only acting at the behest of George Bush, and therefore were entitled, even obligated, to do what they did. In other words, the President has the power to order private actors to break the law and when those orders are obeyed, the private actors are immune from the consequences of their lawbreaking, because they acted at the Leader's behest.

That government officials like McConnell feel so comfortable openly admitting that the government broke the law, obtaining amendments to legalize that behavior after the fact, and then demanding immunity for the lawbreakers, demonstrates how severely the rule of law has been eroded over the last six years. It is not hyperbole to say that government lawbreaking has become formally legitimized.

the entire article is well-worth reading, particularly UPDATE II at the bottom, where glenn excerpts tim shorrock's earlier salon article that details mcconnell's extensive contacts within the defense telecommunications industry he developed as director of defense programs at booz allen...

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McConnell talks: It's a "classified world" and "Americans are going to die"

yep... he's out there spilling the beans... bushco can talk about whatever the hell they want to talk about, whenever and however they want to talk about it, as long as it serves their purpose... but, ask 'em a question and suddenly it's national security, executive privilege, state secrets, classified, or whatever other bullshit reason they want to cite...

highlowpoints from mcconnell's interview with the el paso times...

• McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are being sued for their cooperation. "Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.

• He provided new details on court rulings handed down by the 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves classified eavesdropping operations and whose proceedings are almost always entirely secret. McConnell said a ruling that went into effect May 31 required the government to get court warrants to monitor communications between two foreigners if the conversation travels on a wire in the U.S. network. Millions of calls each day do, because of the robust nature of the U.S. systems.

• McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. "We're going backwards," he said. "We couldn't keep up."

• Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.

and what possible use would this information be if it wasn't used to inspire fear in the populace...?

Even as he shed new light on the classified operations, McConnell asserted that the current debate in Congress about whether to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will cost American lives because of all the information it revealed to terrorists.

"Part of this is a classified world. The fact that we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die," he said.

message: "stop trying to find out what your government is doing in your name cuz it might cost you your life..."

uh, 'scuse me... who's doing the threatening here...? oops... i forgot... i'm not supposed to ask questions... ok, then... here's an observation...

terrorists (the REAL ones, that is, as opposed to the pathetic wannabes that were set-up by our government to LOOK like terrorists so the government could LOOK like it was protecting the "homeland") are not stupid... they probably know more about our government's surveillance programs and supporting technology than mcconnell does... pick up the quasi-cyberpunk, sci-fi thriller, The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks, if you want to get a good picture of how things are REALLY going down... you'll never see a store security camera or your supermarket discount card the same way again... seriously, check it out...

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You GO, ACLU...!

we should get down on our knees and kiss the shoes of folks at places like the aclu and crew... they're busting their humps to look after our civil liberties which, if the criminals in the white house had their way, would have been completely wiped without anybody saying a damn thing... are you listening, congress...?

In an unprecedented order, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the Bush Administration to respond to a request it received last week by the American Civil Liberties Union for orders and legal papers discussing the scope of the government's authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans, according to an ACLU press release late Friday.

[...]

According to the FISC’s order, the ACLU’s request “warrants further briefing,” and the government must respond to it by August 31. The court has said that any reply by the ACLU must be filed by September 14.

"Disclosure of these court orders and legal papers is essential to the ongoing debate about government surveillance," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "We desperately need greater transparency and public scrutiny. We're extremely encouraged by today's development because it means that, at long last, the government will be required to defend its contention that the orders should not be released."

The ACLU filed the request with the FISC following Congress' recent passage of the so-called "Protect America Act," a law that vastly expands the Bush administration's authority to conduct warrantless wiretapping of Americans' international phone calls and e-mails. In their aggressive push to justify passing this ill-advised legislation, the administration and members of Congress made repeated and veiled references to orders issued by the FISC earlier this year. The legislation is set to expire in six months unless it is renewed.

at least there's SOMEBODY out there looking out for the constitution...

(thanks to raw story...)

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