here it is, three days after the SOTU, and already bush has broken two of his promises already… so bush lied. who is surprised? what surprises me is that we’re not in the middle of an impeachment already. don’t any of you remember NIXON? what is so different about bush?
Feb, 02, 2006
By Ryan Singel
President Bush has moved slowly to fill top civil liberty and privacy posts.
The powerful Office of the Director of National Intelligence, created by the Intelligence Reform Act, must have a civil liberties protection officer who is charged with ensuring that the "use of technologies sustain, and do not erode, privacy protections," according to the law. But it took the Bush administration a full year after passage of the bill to fill the position last Dec. 7.
The current DNI is former U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. His deputy is ex-National Security Agency chief Gen. Michael Hayden, who, for the last month, has been vigorously defending the NSA eavesdropping program that circumvented federal wiretapping laws. Alexander W. Joel was appointed to the civil liberties post days before The New York Times revealed that the NSA was spying on Americans’ overseas communications.
Bush mentioned the spy plan in his State of the Union address Tuesday, calling it a "terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America."
The White House has also failed to nominate a replacement chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security, a post that’s been vacant since September when Nuala O’Connor Kelly left the administration to become General Electric’s privacy officer. The office is currently being run by O’Connor Kelly’s former deputy, Maureen Cooney.
Congress, too, has been slacking in the privacy arena. A five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board mandated by law in 2004 remains in limbo as board members await congressional confirmation. The board is supposed to report to Congress yearly and oversee antiterrorism policies.
The privacy board was also created by the Reform Act, which translated the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations into law. According to the 9/11 Commission report, the board should make sure that antiterrorism powers "actually materially enhance security and that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers."
"The civil liberties board is supposed to be the first contact for the president to talk about privacy and intelligence matters," says Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We didn’t know about the NSA piece when the intelligence-reform bill was put forward, but it would have been helpful to have the experts at the civil liberties board involved at the beginning."
Bush named the board’s members in June, but did not forward the nominations to the Senate until late September.
Carol E. Dinkins, a former deputy attorney general under President Reagan and a partner at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ former law firm, is slated to head the commission, while Alan Charles Raul, who served under President George H.W. Bush, will be the vice chairman.
Both had confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 8, but the committee will not likely vote on their nominations until at least early February, according to a commission staffer.
The Senate should move quickly, according to Peter Swire, an Ohio State University law professor and former chief counselor for privacy in the Clinton administration.
"Recent revelations show even more clearly why the board is needed," Swire said. "The White House has had no privacy officials, and having privacy expertise in the White House will reduce the chance of mistakes going forward."
The White House did not return a call for comment.
hmmm… this is odd… why do you suppose that nobody noticed this when it was happening back in july and august of last year!!
and while we’re at it, somebody needs to remind those people in china and iran that…
There is no such thing as a dirty word, nor is there a word so powerful that it’s going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
–Frank ZappaInformation doesn’t kill you.
–Frank Zappa
August 01, 2005
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON – The Department of Defense has developed a new strategy in counterterrorism that would increase military activities on American soil, particularly in the area of intelligence gathering.
The move is sparking concern among civil liberties advocates and those who fear an encroaching military role in domestic law enforcement.
In an argument that eerily foreshadowed the July London terror attacks, the Pentagon in late June announced its "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Support," which would expand its reach domestically to prevent "enemy attacks aimed at Americans here at home."
The strategy, approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on June 24, argues that the government needs a multi-layered, preventive approach to national defense in order to combat an unconventional enemy that will attack from anywhere, anytime and by any conceivable means.
"Transnational terrorist groups view the world as an integrated, global battlespace in which to exploit perceived U.S vulnerabilities, wherever they may be," reads the 40-page document that outlines the new plans.
"Terrorists seek to attack the United States and its centers of gravity at home and abroad and will use asymmetric means to achieve their ends, such as simultaneous mass casualty attacks," it said.
Critics say the fears raised by the Pentagon are being used as a justification for the military to conduct wider, more intrusive surveillance on American citizens.
"Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian.
"This document provides a blueprint for doing just that."
Barr said the new strategy is a back-door means of following through with a 2002 plan to create a massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals, called "Total Information Awareness." Congress killed TIA in 2003 because of civil liberties and privacy concerns.
Critics say they believe much of TIA lives on in some form through smaller, undisclosed military contracts. This latest plan, they say, is one way of jump-starting TIA’s initial goals.
"This is TIA back with a vengeance," said Barr. "What they have come up with here is a much vaguer and much broader concept that sounds more innocuous. [The Pentagon] is getting much smarter in how to sell these things."
The Defense Department report says its increased surveillance capabilities at home will adhere to constitutional and privacy protections, even though it emphasizes enhancing current "data mining" capabilities.
"Specifically, the department will develop automated tools to improve data fusion, analysis, and management, to track systematically large amounts of data and to detect, fuse and analyze aberrant patterns of activity, consistent with U.S. privacy protections," the report reads.
It will also develop "a cadre of specialized terrorism intelligence analysts within the defense intelligence community and deploy a number of these analysts to interagency centers for homeland defense and counter-terrorism analysis and operations," states the report.
Some national security experts agree that emboldened surveillance on domestic soil is necessary in the global War on Terror, and that such intelligence could prevent the kind of attacks perpetuated by homegrown terrorists in England on July 7 and 21.
"The Defense Department has always done intelligence operations in the United States. They have the legal right to do that. There is nothing new here," James Carafano, a homeland security analyst with The Heritage Foundation, told FOXNews.com. "There are no new threats to privacy or constitutionality. I just think it’s about doing [intelligence] more efficiently and effectively."
But John Pike, founder of GlobalSecurity.org , a clearinghouse of available intelligence and national security information, says it’s not so clear how much data the Pentagon will be collecting on citizens and whether it will be retaining, sharing and building individual dossiers. So far, the lack of detail leaves as many question as answers, he said.
"The bad news is there is certainly the possibility of a return to the sort of domestic surveillance that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s," Pike said.
Pentagon officials declined to comment on the variety of data it would gather and share, or how long it would retain files on individuals under the new homeland defense plan.
The Washington Post reported recently that among the databases being built by the Pentagon is a military recruitment list of individual high school and college students culled from commercial data brokers and other sources. The military is planning to share the database with federal and state law enforcement agencies if necessary, the Post reports.
A Defense Department spokesman said the military’s domestic role in homeland security will remain a supportive one, and the Pentagon will only provide resources when local, state and federal resources and capabilities "have been exceeded or do not exist."
"We have expanded activities in order to better execute support missions, but we are extremely sensitive to the historically restricted, limited role of the Defense Department," the spokesman told FOXNews.com in an e-mailed response to questions.
The Pentagon’s new strategy appears to dovetail with a recent report by The New York Times, that said the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, which outlines the future vision of the military and is due to Congress in February, will reflect a new approach in which the Defense Department will prepare to fight in one war theater at a time while putting the bulk of its resources into homeland defense.
The strategy approved by military officials in June also increases joint training exercises with first responders and other agencies as well as the creation of National Guard-staffed teams in case of a catastrophic attack.
The president would have to authorize the actual use of troops on military soil in order to adhere to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Pentagon officials say the new strategy won’t require that authorization.
But the strategy does includes more collaboration with law enforcement in "support" roles on all levels of counter-terrorism efforts as well as the monitoring of terrorist threats along the borders, in the air and on water.
"If they find information in the course of their business that might help other agencies, then they can share it. If other agencies in their own intelligence gathering find information that can help the Defense Department, they can share that," said Carafano. "I really don’t see any legal or constitutional issues here."
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON – Free speech advocates are frustrated with a host of American companies they say have been collaborating with oppressive regimes in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to help them filter and monitor the Internet activity of their citizens.
Big technology names like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco Systems have been criticized roundly in recent years for providing foreign governments with the tools they need to crack down on Internet use, but critics say they have not been able to do much more than complain.
"These companies’ lack of ethics is extremely worrisome," said Lucie Morillon, the Washington representative of Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group for journalists that monitors government repression of the Internet worldwide, documenting dissidents charged with breaking their country’s Internet laws. For instance, the organization reports that an estimated 60 "cyber-dissidents" are in Chinese jails today.
"It’s the role of watchdog organizations like ours — and any citizen who is willing — to let these companies know that this is a matter of human rights," Morillon said. "Write to these companies and make them feel bad."
Critics last month blasted Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, when it acknowledged that it was working with the Chinese government to censor its new Chinese-language Web portal and new free Web log tool, MSN Spaces.
In addition to the vigilant filtering of content transmitted through Web sites, e-mail, message boards, chat rooms and blogs, the Communist government in Beijing announced in June that everyone in China publishing a blog would have to register it with the government by the end of the month.
Already, anyone who opens a Web account in China must register it with police, according to the Open Net Initiative, a collaborative effort by the University of Toronto, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.
"China’s Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world," ONI authors declared in a recent report on China. "The implications of this distorted online information environment for China’s users are profound, and disturbing."
According to the ONI, about 15 to 20 nations across the globe are actively filtering their citizens’ Internet access. In June, the group announced that Iran’s filtering efforts are reaching the sophisticated status of China.
"Iran is also one of a growing number of countries, particularly in the Middle East region, that rely upon commercial software developed by for-profit United States companies to carry out the core of its filtering regime," ONI’s report on Iran reads. "In effect, Iran outsources many of the decisions for what its citizens can access on the Internet to a United States company, which in turn profits from its complicity in such a regime."
ONI reported that Iran relies on filtering software designed by U.S.-based Secure Computing, called "SmartFilter." It helps block a range of banned words, topics and images — most of which Tehran says contradict the country’s strict Muslim beliefs.
Unlike China, selling technology to Iran is illegal because of U.S. sanctions. David Burt, spokesman for Secure Computing, said that the big Iranian Internet service providers, which are controlled by the government, are using SmartFilter illegally.
"We have no contracts with any ISPs in Iran. A couple of the biggest ones are illegally using our software," said Burt. "I think our options of going after these foreign companies are limited."
But Secure Computing legally provides its software to other countries that filter Internet content, including Saudi Arabia. "We sell to ISPs all over the world," acknowledged Burt. "It’s really up to the customer on how they use the product."
Representatives from Nortel and Cisco said they do not specifically design their technology for regimes like China to repress Internet access. They say they cannot control the use of the technology once it is enabled. For instance, the firewall that Cisco designed to combat viruses can also be used to block political content that the government does not like.
"Cisco has been and will continue to be a key driver of Internet growth worldwide," said spokesman John Earnhardt. "Cisco Systems has not specially designed any products for any government, or any regional market, to block or filter content. The products that Cisco Systems sells in the U.S., China, India, Pakistan, France, Mexico, etc. are the same products that we sell worldwide."
The fact that U.S. companies like Nortel Networks and Cisco Systems have been silent on what they consider the misuse of their technology by governments creating back doors into monitoring Internet use and filtering capabilities, has angered many.
"I think that companies chartered in free countries ought to ask the question, ‘What is our technology being used for in authoritarian [countries], and is it a purpose that we want to be behind?’" said Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and assistant professor of law at Harvard University.
Dick D’Amato, chairman of the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which has held hearings on the Chinese Internet filtering issue, called the companies’ explanations a "copout."
"They know what’s being done with [the technology]," he said. "They need to be held accountable for what they are doing."
Western companies providing technology to authoritarian governments say that playing by the rules of the host country is the price they pay for doing business there.
"MSN (Microsoft Network) abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates," an MSN spokesperson told FOXNews.com.
Yahoo! made a similar argument two years ago, and continues to do so as critics complain that the regime censors its Yahoo! China portal.
"Just like any other global company, Yahoo! must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based," Yahoo! said in a statement to FOXNews.com.
But the watchdogs don’t buy it — especially, they say, when the Chinese government prohibits any political dissent, even to the point of blocking out searches that include words like "democracy," as well as international news sites of which the government does not approve.
D’Amato said the commission, which reports to Congress, hopes to put pressure on these companies by bringing them in for hearings, soon.
"I’m not so sure they’ll come," he said. "They’re running for cover."