Eideard

“The direct number to the CEO of AT&T is in the top righthand drawer of your desk”

A U.S. appeals panel on Thursday upheld the constitutionality of a federal law that grants immunity to telecommunications companies that assist the U.S. government in conducting surveillance of American citizens. However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also revived a separate lawsuit against the government over its surveillance activities.

Several lawsuits filed in the wake of revelations about warrantless wiretapping alleged that telecom companies provided authorities with direct access to nearly all communications passing through their domestic facilities. Besides the government itself, defendants included AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon.

In 2008, Congress granted telecoms immunity for cooperating with the government’s intelligence-gathering activities. A district judge in San Francisco upheld the law as constitutional, and dismissed the claims against the companies.

In a ruling on Thursday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit agreed…

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading plaintiff in both cases, said they had not yet decided whether to appeal the telecom ruling…

Cohn said it has been nearly six years since warrantless wiretapping was revealed. “I think the American people deserve a little faster justice than that,” she said.

Some of us – foolish as it has turned out to be – expected that the Obama Administration would come down on the side of Liberty for All and the rest of that good stuff and reverse the crap spying and censorship brought upon this land by the Bush/Cheney cabal.

Wrong.

Think about all the data — photos, videos, text messages, calendar items, apps, call log, voice mail, and e-mail — on your cell phone right now. If you’re arrested, could the police search your cell phone? And would they need a warrant?

That depends on which state you’re in.

In California, it is legal for police to search an arrestee’s cell phone without a warrant — ever since a January decision by the California Supreme Court. California civil rights advocates are pushing back. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is supporting California Assembly Bill SB 914, which would require police in that state to get a warrant before searching an arrestee’s cell phone…

Meanwhile, in Florida, an appellate court decision upheld warrantless cell phone searches, defining the phone as a kind of “container.” This case may be considered by the Florida Supreme Court.

A similar Georgia appellate court decision upheld a warrantless search of a cell phone found in an arrestee’s car (not on her person).

In contrast, the Ohio Supreme Court has barred warrantless cell phone searches…

The pattern appears to be that around the U.S., some state and local police officers are taking the initiative to search arrestees’ cell phones. In some cases this yields information relevant to the alleged crime, which has contributed to indictments and convictions.

Only then do some of these cases wind up in appellate or state supreme courts in a process that often takes years.

If you’re concerned about police or anyone else getting into your cell phone, a basic precaution is to configure your phone’s security settings to always require a passcode or pattern to access any of the phone’s data or functions.

According to Catherine Crump of the American Civil Liberties Union, “The police can ask you to unlock the phone — which many people will do — but they almost certainly cannot compel you to unlock your phone without the involvement of a judge.”

Police are supposed to protect and serve within the definitions of law and Constitution. Snooping without oversight from a court – as gutless as many judges may be – is outside the mandate of American law and order.

Yes, this isn’t the first time that fear and whimpering leads to police-state solutions. Cops have been portable gangs used to suppress unions from organizing, people from protest and dissent. But, the eventual reaction from the people of this land is rejection of Big Brother as judge and jury on the street.

Google Earth: 31º18’31.50″ N x 34º32’35.31 E

Israel has one of the largest signals intelligence bases in the world in the western Negev, Le Monde Diplomatique reported. The base, near Kibbutz Urim, is central to the activities of the main Israel Defense Forces signals intelligence unit, 8200, the report says.

According to the report, the base has 30 antennas and satellite dishes of different sizes and types, capable of eavesdropping on telephone calls and accessing the e-mail of “governments, international organizations, foreign companies, political groups and individuals.”

One of the base’s main purposes is to listen to transmissions from ships passing in the Mediterranean, the report says. The base is also the center of intelligence activity that “taps underwater communication cables, mostly in the Mediterranean, connecting Israel with Europe…”

The report quotes a former soldier in 8200 who said her job was to intercept telephone calls and e-mails in English and French.

“It was very interesting work, which centered on locating and identifying the ‘gems’ out of routine communications,” she said.

The report says that the base’s antennas can be identified if you go to the right websites. The antennas there are lined up in rows, it says.

The author of the article, Nick Hager, is a New Zealand investigative reporter specializing in intelligence and technology related stories involving signals intelligence…Hager compares the Urim base’s capabilities to those of the U.S. National Security Agency, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters and a similar organization in France.

“However, there is one difference,” he says at the end of the report. While those units were uncovered long ago, “the unit at Urim remained unknown until this report.”

I suppose we now have to worry about Israel bombing Paris and Auckland as well as the usual cities they threaten in the Middle East.

It gets to be a chuckle, you know, when Liberals and Libertarians both blather about eavesdropping and snooping being the sole province of undemocratic governments – and, then, they spend the rest of their time defending purportedly democratic governments that do the same damned thing.

The Justice Department is investigating whether hundreds of FBI agents cheated on a test of new rules allowing the bureau to conduct surveillance and open cases without evidence that a crime has been committed.

In some instances, agents took the open-book test together, violating rules that they take it alone. Others finished the lengthy exam unusually quickly, current and former officials said.

In Columbia, S.C., agents printed the test in advance to use as a study guide, according to a letter to the inspector general from the FBI Agents Association that summarized the investigation. The inspector general investigation also was confirmed by current and former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

“There are similar stories for practically every office, demonstrating the pervasive confusion and miscommunication that existed,” Konrad Motyka, the association’s president, wrote May 13 in the letter obtained by The Associated Press.

“Confusion and miscommunication” is almost as good an excuse as “the dog ate my homework”.

Depending on the outcome of the investigation, agents could be disciplined or even fired…

Read the rest of this entry »

A team of amateur sky watchers has pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the debut flight of the nation’s first robotic spaceplane, finding clues that suggest the military craft is engaged in the development of spy satellites rather than space weapons, which some experts have suspected but the Pentagon strongly denies.

Last month, the unmanned successor to the space shuttle blasted off from Florida on its debut mission but attracted little public notice because no one knew where it was going or what it was doing. The spaceship, known as the X-37B, was shrouded in operational secrecy, even as civilian specialists reported that it might go on mysterious errands for as long as nine months before zooming back to earth and touching down on a California runway…

Now, the amateur sky watchers have succeeded in tracking the stealthy object for the first time and uncovering clues that could back up the surveillance theory. Ted Molczan, a team member in Toronto, said the military spacecraft was passing over the same region on the ground once every four days, a pattern he called “a common feature of U.S. imaging reconnaissance satellites.”

In six sightings, the team has found that the craft orbits as far north as 40 degrees latitude, just below New York City. In theory, on a clear night, an observer in the suburbs might see the X-37B as a bright star moving across the southern sky…

Mr. Molczan said team members in Canada and South Africa made independent observations of the X-37B on Thursday and, as it turned out, caught an earlier glimpse of the orbiting spaceship late last month from the United States. Weeks of sky surveys paid off when the team members Kevin Fetter and Greg Roberts managed to observe the craft from Brockville, Ontario, and Cape Town.

Mr. Molczan said the X-37B was orbiting about 255 miles up — standard for a space shuttle — and circling the planet once every 90 minutes or so…

The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office leads the X-37B program for what it calls the “development and fielding of select Defense Department combat support and weapons systems…”

Brian Weedon of the Secure World Foundation…questioned the current mission’s secrecy.

“If a bunch of amateurs can find it,” Mr. Weedon said, “so can our adversaries.”

Har!

The European Parliament has strongly rejected a deal that would have allowed U.S. authorities continued access to data on European bank transfers, striking a blow to the Obama administration’s effort to continue a controversial global terrorist finance tracking program begun under the George W. Bush administration.

The lawmakers’ 378 to 196 vote is sure to spark a transatlantic tussle over what the United States has said is a significant tool in tracking and disrupting terrorist plots aimed at the U.S. and Europe.

The vote came despite intense lobbying in recent days by top U.S. officials including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The U.S. mission to the European Union said it was “disappointed” with the EU move, calling it “a setback for U.S.-EU counterterror cooperation…”

“There’s a whole list of concerns that have to do with insufficient redress for EU citizens, no sufficient clarity about whom the data will be shared with and the fact that it is bulk data that are shared,” said Sophie in’t Veld, a Dutch member of parliament opposed to the deal. “The data handed over is a huge pile, not targeted at all. So that was a huge issue.”

Craven beancounters needn’t cower too far under the covers, though. American banks are still forced upon pain of death, doom and destruction to comply with Bush-era rules.

Our government’s preferred email filter

The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged.

The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, officials said.

Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation…

Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, has been investigating the incidents and said he had become increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communications.

In an interview, Mr. Holt disputed assertions by Justice Department and national security officials that the overcollection was inadvertent.

RTFA. Creeps and spooks will hate this. They hate to admit this crap is still going on.

Former Justice official, James Comey, tried to halt collection of “meta-data” of American e-mail messages – the details of e-mail traffic listed by identifying who, when and where, is e-mailing whom. Of course, it’s a violation of Constitutional law – and our president, the Constitution expert, should take time to back up the few people in Congress who are standing up to the N.S.A..

Why aren’t you a Manchester United supporter anymore?

Rules forcing internet companies to keep details of every e-mail sent in the UK are a waste of money and an attack on civil liberties, say critics. From March all internet service providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.

The Home Office insists the data, which does not include e-mails’ content, is vital for crime and terror inquiries. There’s a new excuse. Didn’t Herr Himmler say the same?

“The thing we have to worry about is what happens next because the government is already mooting plans not just to leave this stuff with the providers but to create a central government database where they hold all the information.

“I’m afraid we just don’t trust any government or any organisation to keep that much very sensitive information about us all and to keep it safe.”

The firms will have to store the information and make it available to any public body which makes a lawful request, which could include police, local councils and health authorities.

Who gets to determine what is a lawful request? It appears as if the bodies making the request – will determine if it’s lawful or not.

We just fought and won an election in the U.S. – in part to regain the civil liberties stolen by populist right-wingers. Brits are still stuck with the Blair/Brown/Bush mentality that says the government knows best – and will rule on what they should know about your private life.

A longtime television newscaster has been charged with illegally accessing the e-mail of his glamorous former co-anchor, who suspected details of her social life were being leaked to gossip columnists. Larry Mendte and Alycia Lane co-anchored the TV news in Philadelphia. Both got fired; he got charged.

Federal prosecutors say fired KYW-TV anchor Larry Mendte accessed Alycia Lane’s e-mail accounts hundreds of times and leaked her personal information to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter.

Lane’s personal life had routinely become tabloid fodder and eventually led to her own dismissal from the station.

“The mere accessing and reading of privileged information is criminal,” acting U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid said. “This case, however, went well beyond just reading someone’s e-mail.”

Mendte was charged with a felony count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. A conviction could bring a six-month prison term under federal sentencing guidelines.

What a creep! Jealous over popularity, bucks, whatever – his rationale for privacy invasion.

Who does he think he is? Richard Nixon?