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Gary Edwards

Intelligence Warnings On Benghazi Were Loud And Clear - Investors.com - 0 views

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    excerpt: "Months before the murder of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, American intelligence analysts documented a massive al-Qaida rally a few miles from the ambassador's residence. At that rally, terror leaders called for the murder of American diplomats. Three U.S. intelligence reports, unearthed by the American Media Institute and detailed here for the first time, offer vivid descriptions of the al-Qaida meeting. Flying the black flag of al-Qaida, some 300 armed men gathered in Benghazi's Al-Tahrir Square on June 7 and 8, 2012. They brandished machine guns, rocket launchers and a truck mounted with an anti-aircraft cannon. The two-day meeting, which included outdoor prayers and a parade of armed vehicles, was attended by a baker's dozen of North African al-Qaida affiliates. "It was like a team pep rally before the game, only for jihad," said a U.S. intelligence analyst who monitors North Africa. "Organized and deadly. You saw what followed. People died." In the face of these three reports, the State Department continued to deny requests for additional security for the U.S. ambassador in Libya. At the same time, the State Department issued a travel advisory warning Americans against going to Libya in August 2012. Obama administration officials have long denied any warning before the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks. On the campaign trail, the president insisted that al-Qaida was "decimated" and "on the run," while intelligence reports prepared for the president's advisers told a different story - that al-Qaida's menace was growing in Libya and elsewhere. Al-Qaida itself publicly displayed its strength. Al-Qaida posted pictures of the June 2012 Benghazi meeting on its Arabic-language Facebook page and invited the Arabic-language media to cover the event, which many did. The three U.S. intelligence reports documenting the al-Qaida gathering in Benghazi were circulated in August 2012 and earlier among Defense and State Department officials, as well as Americ
Paul Merrell

Senators discuss revising 9/11 resolution - John Bresnahan - POLITICO.com - 0 views

  • Top senators in both parties have begun talks to revise the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to lawmakers and aides involved in the discussions.Though in its early stages, such a debate could cause serious heartburn for the White House and party leaders seeking to push through any revised use-of-force resolution. A Senate floor fight over replacing the 9/11 resolution could lead to broader political battles on critical areas of President Barack Obama’s national security policy, including the war in Afghanistan, the use of armed drone attacks against suspected terrorists, treatment of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, and the scope of the president’s authority as commander-in-chief to combat terrorism worldwide.
  • The bipartisan Senate talks also come at a time when Obama is catching flak for his aggressive drone policy, and Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) 13-hour filibuster on the issue struck a chord with some members of both parties. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich.), and Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) met recently to discuss the issue, the senators and their aides said.
  • Other senators involved in the talks include Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Corker is the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Levin has scheduled a May 16 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the matter.
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  • At stake is whether the 9/11 resolution is still relevant more than 12 years after it was adopted by Congress in the wake of the attacks by al Qaeda terrorists on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Those attacks prompted an American-led invasion of Afghanistan, a military campaign that is still ongoing and could last for years longer, even after U.S. combat forces leave the troubled country in 2014. “We need to sit down among ourselves as senators and ask a very timely question. And that is whether the AUMF [authorization of use of military force] that we voted for in 2001 — every senator did who was serving at the time — whether that still serves America’s defense needs today,” Durbin told POLITICO in an interview.
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    The chicken hawks are at it again, trying to get a new Authorization for Use of Military Forces ("AUMF") that would authorize perpetual war. So much for fiscal conservatism.
Paul Merrell

James Clapper must go - Salon.com - 0 views

  • When introducing James Clapper as his director of national intelligence in 2010, President Obama specifically justified the appointment by saying Clapper is someone who “understands the importance of working with our partners in Congress (and) not merely to appear when summoned, but to keep Congress informed.” At the time, it seemed like a wholly uncontroversial statement; it was simply a president making a sacrosanct promise to keep the legislative branch informed, with the insinuation that previous administrations hadn’t.Three years later, of course, James Clapper is now the embodiment of perjury before Congress. Indeed, when you couple Edward Snowden’s disclosures with this video of Clapper’s Senate testimony denying that the National Security Administration collects “any type of data on millions (of Americans),” Clapper has become American history’s most explicit and verifiable example of an executive branch deliberately lying to the legislative branch that is supposed to be overseeing it.Incredibly (or, alas, maybe not so incredibly anymore), despite the president’s original explicit promises about Clapper, transparency and Congress, the White House is nonetheless responding to this humiliating situation by proudly expressing its full support for Clapper. Meanwhile, as of today’s announcement by U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., the demands for Clapper’s resignation are finally being aired on Capitol Hill.
Paul Merrell

New email shows DNC boss giving Clinton camp debate question in advance | Fox News - 0 views

  • Another leaked email has emerged showing Democratic National Committee boss and former CNN contributor Donna Brazile sharing a debate question in advance with the Hillary Clinton campaign -- despite Brazile's persistent claims to the contrary. CNN announced in a statement soon after the email became public Monday that Brazile had tendered her resignation and the network accepted it on Oct. 14, days after the controversy over Brazile tipping off the Clinton campaign initially broke. According to documents released Monday by WikiLeaks, Brazile sent Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri an email titled, “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” the night before the March 6 CNN primary debate in Flint, Mich.  “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.
  • The following night, Lee-Anne Walters, a mom whose twin boys stopped growing and whose daughter lost her hair during the Flint water contamination crisis, posed a question to both Clinton, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, and her primary opponent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. 
  • After my family, the city of Flint and the children in D.C. were poisoned by lead, will you make a personal promise to me right now that, as president, in your first 100 days in office, you will make it a requirement that all public water systems must remove all lead service lines throughout the entire United States, and notification made to the — the citizens that have said service lines?” Walters asked. Clinton responded with a lengthy answer that moderator Anderson Cooper had to twice interrupt in an attempt to keep to the agreed-upon time limit. Clinton’s remarks drew applause from the crowd, though she wound up ultimately losing the state’s primary to Sanders two days later.  The apparent email tip-off was included in the latest trove of messages hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks. Brazile had been under fire over an earlier email chain appearing to show her tipping off the campaign before a town hall event later that same month. That exchange began with Brazile sending Palmieri the text of a question about the death penalty in an email with the subject line: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.” After Palmieri responded, Brazile wrote back: “I’ll send a few more.” Roland Martin asked the death penalty question verbatim the next night during a CNN town hall.  Brazile's role as a CNN contributor was suspended when she took over as interim DNC head in July, but on Oct. 14, in light of the email revelations, CNN said it accepted her full resignation.
Paul Merrell

Homeland Battlefield Act Portion Found Unconstitutional By New York Judge - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON -- A day before Congress weighs an amendment to end indefinite military detentions in the U.S., a federal judge Wednesday ruled the law that allows the practice unconstitutional. Saying the measure has "chilling impact on First Amendment rights," U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, of New York's Eastern District, found that a group of reporters and activists who brought the lawsuit had no way of knowing whether they could be subjected to it. That makes it an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment's free speech right and the Fifth Amendment's right to due process, Forrest said in a written opinion.
  • Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) are offering an amendment on Thursday to the 2013 Defense Authorization Act that would end the law. Amash sent an appeal to fellow lawmakers soon after the ruling, asking them to pass it. "The amendment I’m offering with Rep. Adam Smith is the ONLY amendment that ensures that persons arrested on U.S. soil aren’t detained indefinitely without charge or trial," Amash wrote. "Voting against the Smith-Amash amendment allows the government to retain the power to detain persons, picked up in the U.S., for life, on the suspicion that they 'substantially supported' forces 'associated' with our enemies." "If our constituents haven’t sent a clear enough message, tonight’s ruling surely does: Congress must act now to guarantee the constitutional right to a charge and a trial," Amash wrote.
Paul Merrell

Rep. Mike Rogers: Russia May Be Behind Snowden Leak - 0 views

  • The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has questioned whether Edward Snowden acted alone in leaking details of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs to U.S. and British newspapers last year. In a prerecorded interview due to air on NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., describes the former NSA contractor as "a thief whom we believe had some help. "Let me just say this. I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow," Rogers said, according to an early transcript provided by the program. "I don’t think that’s a coincidence."
  • Reuters, today (11 days later) - reporting on "a rare interview at NSA's heavily guarded Fort Meade headquarters" from "Richard Ledgett, who leads a task force responding to the leaks":   The NSA's internal review has determined about 98 percent of the scope of the material that Snowden had accessed, and officials have found no evidence that he had help either within the NSA or from adversary spy agencies.
  • New York Times, today: According to senior government officials, F.B.I. agents from the bureau’s Washington field office, who are leading the investigation, believe that Mr. Snowden methodically downloaded the files over several months while working as a government contractor at the Hawaii facility. They also believe that he worked alone, the officials said.
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    Head of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers makes some pretty strange accusations against Edward Snowden and gets ratification from Diane Feinstein, head of the corresponding Senate Committee. Nicely done page combining portions of articles and the video of the Rogers-Feinstein interview. Also an added note from Glenn Greenwald. It bears remembering that Snowden was on layover in Moscow waiting for a flight to South America when the U.S. pulled his passport; i.e., the reason he is in Russia is because of U.S. government action.  
Paul Merrell

Privacy board report last straw on NSA surveillance program, lawmakers say | TheHill - 0 views

  • Lawmakers are renewing their calls for an end to a controversial surveillance program that collects data about virtually all American phone calls, citing the newest recommendations from a government privacy board.This newest set of recommendations “spells the final end of the government's bulk collection” of phone call data, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement.The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board — tasked with overseeing the country’s surveillance activities — released its first report on the controversial surveillance programs made public by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year.
  • The board recommended that the government end the phone data program, questioning its efficacy and saying that it “lacks a viable legal foundation” and “raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value.”Last week, President Obama outlined changes he plans to make to the surveillance program, including requiring intelligence agencies to get court approval before accessing the phone data.Critics of the NSA and its phone data program say Obama didn’t go far enough in his speech and are now pointing to the privacy board’s report as evidence that more needs to be done.“The president's recommendations last week did not go far enough to rein in the out-of-control National Security Agency,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — who has questioned the intelligence community on whether it spies on officials — said in a statement.
  • “This report underscores that the collection of records on virtually every phone call made in the United States is an unconstitutional violation of the privacy rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment,” he said, calling on Congress to “pass strong legislation to protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.”Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), co-author of the USA Freedom Act, which would end bulk surveillance programs, said the report highlights the need for congressional action.“The report appropriately calls into question the legality and constitutionality of the program, and underscores the need to change the law to rein in the government’s overbroad interpretation” of its surveillance authority, he said in a statement.Schiff called for congressional action before next year’s sunset of a surveillance-enabling national security law.“Congress will not re-authorize bulk collection of this data when it expires next year, but Congress should not wait for the program to expire on its own,” he said. “Rather we should work to restructure the program now.”
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  • House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) vowed to consider the report as his committee looks at the phone data program, which “is in need of significant reform.”In his statement, Goodlatte said he plans to hold a hearing “soon” to examine Obama’s announced plans to rein in surveillance, as well as the recommendations from the privacy board and a White House-convened group of privacy and intelligence experts.Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and an ardent defender of the NSA, slammed the report, accusing the privacy board of overstepping its boundaries. 
  • Rogers pointed to the 17 federal judges who, in 38 cases, “examined this issue and found the telephone metadata program to be legal, concluding this program complies with both the statutory text and with the U.S. Constitution.”The privacy board should “advise policymakers on civil liberties and privacy aspects of national security programs, and not partake in unwarranted legal analysis” or “go outside its expertise to opine on the effectiveness of counterterrorism programs,” Rogers said in a statement. 
Paul Merrell

It's WWIII between CIA and Senate | TheHill - 0 views

  • Senators on Wednesday expressed alarm at explosive allegations that the CIA might have spied on their computers to keep tabs on their controversial review of Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques.ADVERTISEMENTLawmakers from both parties said that if the allegations against the CIA prove true, intelligence officials might have violated the law — and certainly violated the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.“I’m assuming that’s it’s not true, but if it is true, it should be World War III in terms of Congress standing up for itself against the CIA, ” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill.Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) confirmed Wednesday that the CIA inspector general was investigating accusations that the covert agency had peered into the panel’s computers. But she didn’t comment on reports that the investigator has referred the matter to the Justice Department.Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), an ex officio member of the Intelligence panel, said the charge of spying is “extremely serious.”“There are laws against intruding and tampering, hacking into, accessing computers without permission. And that law applies to everybody,” he said.Brennan in a statement said he was "dismayed" by the “spurious allegations,” which he said were "wholly unsupported by the facts."
  • His statement was released Wednesday evening as McClatchy reported that the computer spying was allegedly discovered when the CIA confronted the Senate Intelligence panel about documents removed from the agency’s headquarters."I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the Executive Branch or Legislative Branch," Brennan said.“Until then, I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers."The allegations escalated a long-simmering feud between Democrats on the Intelligence panel and the CIA over the committee’s classified interrogation report, which provides an exhaustive look at the treatment of detainees in the years after Sept. 11.Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.) and two other Democrats on the Intelligence panel have criticized the CIA and its director, John Brennan, for blocking their efforts to declassify the 6,300-page investigation.“The CIA tried to intimidate the Intelligence Committee, plain and simple,” Udall said. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make sure the CIA never dodges congressional oversight again.”
  • Senators have said their review, which was completed in December 2012, is harshly critical of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, concluding that they were ineffective and did not contribute to the capture of Osama bin Laden.Udall and other Democrats say the report needs to be released because it will "set the record straight" about the use of techniques that critics say amount to torture.While Democrats on the panel backed the report’s findings, most of the Intelligence Committee Republicans dissented.The CIA has objected to some of the report’s conclusions as well, though Udall says its internal review contradicts the agency’s public statements.Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who has joined Udall in pressing for the release of the report, said the allegations about CIA spying show the lengths that the agency will go to protect itself.“I think it’s been pretty clear that the CIA will do just about anything to make sure that this detention and interrogation report doesn’t come out,” Heinrich told The Hill.
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  • Other Republicans on the Intelligence panel said the spying charges should be investigated, but they expressed concerns about the leak of the inspector general investigation.“I have no comment. You should talk to those folks that are giving away classified information and get their opinion,” Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said when asked about the alleged intrusions.Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) appeared to allude to the CIA snooping at an Intelligence Committee hearing last month when he asked Brennan whether the Computer Crimes and Abuse Act applied to the agency.Wyden said Wednesday that Brennan responded in a letter the law did apply.“The Act, however, expressly ‘does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity … of an intelligence agency of the United States,’ ” Brennan wrote in the letter that Wyden released.McClatchy news service reported that the Intelligence Committee determined earlier this year the CIA had monitored computers it provided to the panel to review top-secret reports, cables and other documents.It’s still unclear whether the alleged monitoring would have violated the law.
  • Udall sent a letter to President Obama on Tuesday calling for declassification of the committee’s report, where he alleged the CIA’s “unprecedented action against the committee” was tied to agency's internal review of the interrogation policies.Udall first raised issues with the internal review of the interrogation techniques at the confirmation hearing of Caroline Krass's nomination as CIA general counsel, which took place in December.He said that the review, conducted under former CIA Director Leon Panetta, corroborated the findings of the Senate Intelligence report and contradicted the public statements from the agency.Udall has placed a procedural hold on Krass’s nomination and told reporters Wednesday that it would remain in place until the CIA meets his requests for more information about the internal review.White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the spying allegations Wednesday, referring questions to the CIA and Department of Justice.Carney said that "as a general matter," the White House was in touch with the Intelligence Committee."For some time, the White House has made clear to the chairmen of the Senate Select committee on intelligence that the summary and conclusions of the final RDI report should be declassified with any redactions necessary to protect national security," he said.
  • Heinrich said he hoped the CIA intrusions, if confirmed, would push the White House to get involved in the dispute between the agency and the committee over the report.“It would be easy for me to get very upset about these allegations, but I think we need to keep our eye on that ball, because that is a really important historical issue, and people need to understand who made what decisions and why,” he said.
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    Jack Kennedy had the right idea: abolish the CIA.
Paul Merrell

Rep. Mike Rogers Angrily Defends Bathroom Spycam | Popehat - 0 views

  • Representative Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) was defiant today in the face of accusations that he had installed a small digital camera in the women's bathroom in his office at the Capitol. "This is just politics," said the ten-term Congressman. "I would argue the fact that we haven't had any women come forward with any specificity arguing that their privacy has been violated, clearly indicates, in ten years, clearly indicates that something must be doing right. Somebody must be doing something exactly right." When reporters asked how women would know to complain — the spycam, funded by the government, was expertly hidden — Rogers asserted that was the point. "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated," said Rogers.
  • Rogers went on to explain that the nation's Capitol — which has housed figures like former Congressman Bob Filner and former Senator Bob Packwood — presents known dangers to women, and that the spycam is calculated to make certain they are protected from those dangers. “If the women knew exactly what that spycam was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks. It’s a good thing. it keeps the women safe. It keeps the Capitol safe," Rogers asserted. Rogers then abruptly concluded the interview, threatening to sue reporters if they wrote about it.
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    Ken White of Popehat gives a great satirical take on the statement by Rep. Mike Rogers's statement that this week during a hearing on the NSA scandal that: "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated." (Put that one in your memorable quotes file, quick.) Worse, Rogers seemed to be sincere. And even worse yet, he is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The CSPAN footage is in one of the links from White's masterful satire. 
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    Oops! Chairman Rogers apparently has a double standard on what constitutes "privacy" that distinguishes between victims of NSA snooping and victims of an insecure Affordable Care Act web site: "Continuing with the issue of privacy, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., ridiculed the program as unsafe for private information, stating that functionality concerns are indicative of a lack of privacy. "If it's not functioning, you know it's not secure," said Rogers. "You have exposed millions of Americans because you said it was "an acceptable risk." http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/30/obamacare-website-down-while-sebelius-testifies/ So actual NSA privacy violations: not a problem. Potential ACA privacy violations: huge problem. Somehow, I strongly favor accidental privacy violations over intentional and secret government snooping. But maybe I'm just weird.
Paul Merrell

U.S. officials scrambled to nab Snowden, hoping he would take a wrong step. He didn't. ... - 0 views

  • While Edward Snowden was trapped in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport last year, U.S. officials were confronting their own dearth of options in the White House Situation Room. For weeks, senior officials from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and other agencies assembled nearly every day in a desperate search for a way to apprehend the former intelligence contractor who had exposed the inner workings of American espionage then fled to Hong Kong before ending up in Moscow.
  • “The best play for us is him landing in a third country,” Monaco said, according to an official who met with her at the White House. The official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity, added, “We were hoping he was going to be stupid enough to get on some kind of airplane, and then have an ally say: ‘You’re in our airspace. Land.’ ” U.S. officials thought they saw such an opening on July 2 when Bolivian President Evo Morales, who expressed support for Snowden, left Moscow aboard his presidential aircraft. The decision to divert that plane ended in embarrassment when it was searched in Vienna and Snowden was not aboard.
  • Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an “agent of a foreign power,” a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas. If true, it means that the former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor, who leaked thousands of classified files to expose what he considered rampant and illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, is shielded at least to some extent from spying by his former employers.
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  • In interviews, U.S. officials acknowledged that they had no specific intelligence that Snowden would be on Morales’s plane. But the Bolivian leader’s remark was enough to set in motion a plan to enlist France, Spain, Italy and Portugal to block the Bolivian president’s flight home.
  • State Department and CIA officials pressured countries seen as potential destinations to turn Snowden away, reducing his options to a handful hostile toward the United States. Among them was Bolivia, whose president had signaled publicly that he would consider giving Snowden asylum.
  • The lack of a warrant deeming Snowden a foreign agent would also cast doubt on the claims of some of his critics. U.S. officials, including Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have speculated that Snowden had Russian help in stealing U.S. secrets and probably works with the FSB now. Snowden has acknowledged that he was approached by Russian intelligence upon his arrival, but he has said he rejected the pitch and did not bring any classified files with him. He insisted in a recent NBC television interview that he has “no relationship” with the Russian government.
  • As it crossed Austria, the aircraft made a sudden U-turn and landed in Vienna, where authorities searched the cabin — with Morales’s permission, officials said — but saw no sign of Snowden.
  • Austrian officials said they were skeptical of the plan from the outset and noted that Morales’s plane had taken off from a different airport in Moscow than where Snowden was held. “Unless the Russians had carted him across the city,” one official said, it was unlikely he was on board. Even if Snowden had been a passenger, officials said, it is unclear how he could have been removed from a Bolivian air force jet whose cabin would ordinarily be regarded as that country’s sovereign domain — especially in Austria, a country that considers itself diplomatically neutral. “We would have looked foolish if Snowden had been on that plane sitting there grinning,” said a senior Austrian official. “There would have been nothing we could have done.”
  • Wizner declined to discuss where Snowden lives, or how he secured an apartment in a city where such transactions require government involvement — except to indicate that Snowden’s Russian attorney, Anatoly Kucherena, has helped with such arrangements. Snowden’s relationship with Kucherena, who has close ties to Putin and serves on an FSB advisory board, has fueled speculation that he is working with the Russian government.
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    Lots of detail on the Feds' efforts to capture Snowden and to persuade the Russians to extradite him.
Paul Merrell

USA Freedom Act Passes House, Codifying Bulk Collection For First Time, Critics Say - T... - 0 views

  • After only one hour of floor debate, and no allowed amendments, the House of Representatives today passed legislation that opponents believe may give brand new authorization to the U.S. government to conduct domestic dragnets. The USA Freedom Act was approved in a 338-88 vote, with approximately equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans voting against. The bill’s supporters say it will disallow bulk collection of domestic telephone metadata, in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has regularly ordered phone companies to turn over such data. The Obama administration claims such collection is authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which is set to expire June 1. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held that Section 215 does not provide such authorization. Today’s legislation would prevent the government from issuing such orders for bulk collection and instead rely on telephone companies to store all their metadata — some of which the government could then demand using a “specific selection term” related to foreign terrorism. Bill supporters maintain this would prevent indiscriminate collection.
  • However, the legislation may not end bulk surveillance and in fact could codify the ability of the government to conduct dragnet data collection. “We’re taking something that was not permitted under regular section 215 … and now we’re creating a whole apparatus to provide for it,” Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., said on Tuesday night during a House Rules Committee proceeding. “The language does limit the amount of bulk collection, it doesn’t end bulk collection,” Rep. Amash said, arguing that the problematic “specific selection term” allows for “very large data collection, potentially in the hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions.” In a statement posted to Facebook ahead of the vote, Rep. Amash said the legislation “falls woefully short of reining in the mass collection of Americans’ data, and it takes us a step in the wrong direction by specifically authorizing such collection in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.”
  • “While I appreciate a number of the reforms in the bill and understand the need for secure counter-espionage and terrorism investigations, I believe our nation is better served by allowing Section 215 to expire completely and replacing it with a measure that finds a better balance between national security interests and protecting the civil liberties of Americans,” Congressman Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said in a statement explaining his vote against the bill.
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  • Not addressed in the bill, however, are a slew of other spying authorities in use by the NSA that either directly or inadvertently target the communications of American citizens. Lawmakers offered several amendments in the days leading up to the vote that would have tackled surveillance activities laid out in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Executive Order 12333 — two authorities intended for foreign surveillance that have been used to collect Americans’ internet data, including online address books and buddy lists. The House Rules Committee, however, prohibited consideration of any amendment to the USA Freedom Act, claiming that any changes to the legislation would have weakened its chances of passage.
  • The measure now goes to the Senate where its future is uncertain. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declined to schedule the bill for consideration, and is instead pushing for a clean reauthorization of expiring Patriot Act provisions that includes no surveillance reforms. Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have threated to filibuster any bill that extends the Patriot Act without also reforming the NSA.
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    Surprise, surprise. U.S. "progressive" groups are waging an all-out email lobbying effort to sunset the Patriot Act. https://www.sunsetthepatriotact.com/ Same with civil liberties groups. e.g., https://action.aclu.org/secure/Section215 And a coalition of libertarian organizations. http://docs.techfreedom.org/Coalition_Letter_McConnell_215Reauth_4.27.15.pdf
Paul Merrell

Anti-Muslim protests span US: How mosques are responding - CSMonitor.com - 0 views

  • Muslim leaders of mosques in more than 30 cities nationwide are preparing for anti-Muslim marches planned for today.A Facebook group called Global Rally for Humanity has put out a call for anti-Muslim demonstrations "in every country at every Mosque." One spin-off group, organizing a rally in Dearborn, Mich., encouraged demonstrators to show up armed, noting that Michigan is "an open carry state." Earlier this week, the Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, released a statement urging Muslim leaders around the country to take extra precautions ahead of the planned demonstrations.
  • In recent weeks, Republican presidential candidates have added their own anti-Islam rhetoric to the public discourse. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson came under fire for saying he didn't believe a Muslim would be fit to serve as President. Weeks before, front-runner Donald Trump was criticized for refusing to correct a questioner who said President Obama was Muslim and "not even an American."This weekend's protests are far from the first round of violent demonstrations at Muslim religious and cultural facilities. In May, armed protesters surrounded a mosque in Phoenix.
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    Zionist propaganda fronts continue to fan the flames of Islamaphobia in the U.S.
Paul Merrell

White House: Al Qaeda in Iraq now 'transnational threat' | TheHill - 0 views

  • Al Qaeda's violent resurgence in Iraq and expansion into Syria now represents a "transnational threat network" that could possibly reach from the Mideast to the United States, according to the White House. The teaming of al Qaeda's Iraqi cell and affiliated Islamic militant groups in Syria into the new Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has developed into "a major emerging threat to Iraqi stability . . . and to us," a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday. "It is a fact now that al Qaeda has a presence in Western Iraq" extending into Syria, "that Iraqi forces are unable to target," the official said. That growing presence "that has accelerated in the past six to eight months" has been accompanied by waves of bombings and attacks that threaten to throw Iraq into a full-blown civil war. 
  • Keeping ISIS from destabilizing the Iraqi government and expanding into other areas in the region is a "major focus" of this week's visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to Washington. The Iraqi delegation met with Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday morning, and will meet with congressional leaders later in the day. Top defense lawmakers are already sounding the alarm on ISIS growth in the region and the threat posed by the al Qaeda faction to Iraq, Syria and ultimately the United States. "As the situation in both countries grows worse . . . we are deeply concerned that Al-Qaeda could use its new safe haven in Iraq and Syria to launch attacks against U.S. interests and those of our friends and allies," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) along with Senate Armed Services Committee chief Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote in a letter to President Obama. Senate Foreign Relations heads Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also co-signed the letter, sent to the White House on Tuesday. 
  • "We urge you to press [al-Maliki] to formulate a comprehensive political and security strategy that can stabilize the country, enable Iraq to realize its vast potential, and help to safeguard our nation’s enduring national security interests in Iraq," they wrote. One area lawmakers are pressing the White House and Iraqi government on is increased U.S. assistance for counterterrorism operations in the country, backed by supplies of American military weapons and intelligence. 
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  • Iraqi officials reportedly reached out to U.S. intelligence officials to see if American drones could begin conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets in Western Iraq. When asked whether the White House was considering expediting those weapon sales to Iraq, the official replied: "I will leave it up to the Iraqis to make that case." That said, the administration "is working closely with Congress" to facilitate the kind of military and intelligence aid being sought by al-Maliki from the United States. Counterterrorism support is evaluated "country by country and in Iraq that is [especially] complicated," the official said, noting the long-standing tribal and sectarian ties woven into the country's makeup. 
  • That said, the White House official ruled out the possibility of putting U.S. boots back on the ground in Iraq, in the form of military trainers, as part of any counterterrorism strategy. The White House and Pentagon failed to reach a bilateral security deal with Baghdad that would allow a handful of American troops to remain in the country after the U.S. pullout in 2011. That lack of a deal prevented Washington from fielding a postwar force in Iraq after the final withdrawal in December of that year. White House critics claim Obama's inability to lock in a postwar deal with Iraq opened the door for al Qaeda's return to power in the country. 
  •  
    Let's see if I've got this straight. Our previous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in massive recruitment by "terrorists" who now threat our shores once again. Therefore, we should launch a third war in Iraq or at least raining Hellfire missiles on Iraq from drones. This logic seems to ignore the immutable fact that it is U.S. violence in the region that converts peaceful Arab citizens into "terrorists." The message is clear: end our military involvement in the Mideast and northern Africa. But that message seems to fall on deaf ears in Washington, D.C. That is because this is not about terrorists at all. It is about control of Pipelinestan and profits in the military-industrial complex.   
Joseph Skues

http://www.cafrman.com/Articles/Art-MI-S1.htm - 0 views

  • $1,009 for every man, woman and child
  • This does not include all the additional surpluses that exist in the school districts, cities, or counties in Michigan.
  • funds that are not required or needed
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • But what we have found is that most governments have huge amounts of cash and investments on hand at the end of the fiscal yea
  • not being recycled back through the budget process the next year,
  • The budget only covers a small portion of the State's financial condition
  • The CAFR usually has four categories. Governmental FundsProprietary FundsFiduciary FundsComponent Units
  • Enterprise Funds, a component of proprietary funds,
  • charges for services or goods, assessments, fines, licenses, etc
  • are legally separated organizations for which the government is financially accountable.
  • The remainder of the Funds shown above are not part of the budget and are commonly called "off-budget" items
  • but should be
  • Although taxation is legitimate, running a government surplus isn't.
  • it exceeds the government's contract with the community
  • Excess taxation isn't what the people bargained for.
  • This system is covered in the CAFR Budget System. This system needs to be implemented in all governments. If the State holds the excesses/surplus, it will earn 4% to 5% on that money. If the State returns the money to the people it will receive 20% in revenue because of the increased economic activity. This is elementary economics.
  • Total Benefits...   2,282 9,129  
  • In FY 2002 there were 310,000 unemployed in Michigan, If the $10.13 billion is returned to the people 203,395 jobs are created. This is why it is disastrous for governments to hold excesses/reserves of the taxpayers money.
  • The business community suffers the most.
  • That is 5 times the amount the Federal government used to stimulate the U.S. economy
  • That represents 4 years of reserves.
  • Bottle Deposits Fund, another Special Revenue Fund had net expenditures of $3.3 million. But it also had cash and investment reserves of $125 million. The reserves represent almost 37 years of expenditures.
  • Michigan Unemployment Compensation Fund, an Enterprise Fund, had net expenses of $665 million. It also had reserves of $1.7 billion. That represents 3 years of reserves.
  • These only represent four of the 81 funds shown below that had cash and investment reserves not being used.
  • The following items are not included in the amount of surplus shown:
  • -Retirement/Pension Funds - only included are 1/2 of the actuarially determined excesses, the taxpayers portion. The other 1/2 is the government employees portion.
Paul Merrell

Libertarians to Chris Christie: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet? | Washington Times ... - 0 views

  • Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill that would have defunded the NSA’s blanket collection of metadata and limited the government’s collection of records to those “relevant to a national security investigation.” It terrified New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who lashed out at those who supported the bill and libertarianism in general.
  • “As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought,” Christie said.
  • The real question that the American people will have to answer is this: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
  •  
    Let's remember in 2016 that Chris Christie believes support for civil liberties is thought crime. 
Paul Merrell

Spy Chief James Clapper Wins Rosemary Award - 0 views

  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has won the infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance in 2013, according to the citation published today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org. Despite heavy competition, Clapper's "No, sir" lie to Senator Ron Wyden's question: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" sealed his receipt of the dubious achievement award, which cites the vastly excessive secrecy of the entire U.S. surveillance establishment. The Rosemary Award citation leads with what Clapper later called the "least untruthful" answer possible to congressional questions about the secret bulk collection of Americans' phone call data. It further cites other Clapper claims later proved false, such as his 2012 statement that "we don't hold data on U.S. citizens." But the Award also recognizes Clapper's fellow secrecy fetishists and enablers, including:
  • Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, for multiple Rose Mary Woods-type stretches, such as (1) claiming that the secret bulk collection prevented 54 terrorist plots against the U.S. when the actual number, according to the congressionally-established Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) investigation (pp. 145-153), is zero; (2) his 2009 declaration to the wiretap court that multiple NSA violations of the court's orders arose from differences over "terminology," an explanation which the chief judge said "strains credulity;" and (3) public statements by the NSA about its programs that had to be taken down from its website for inaccuracies (see Documents 78, 85, 87 in The Snowden Affair), along with public statements by other top NSA officials now known to be untrue (see "Remarks of Rajesh De," NSA General Counsel, Document 53 in The Snowden Affair).
  • Robert Mueller, former FBI director, for suggesting (as have Gen. Alexander and many others) that the secret bulk collection program might have been able to prevent the 9/11 attacks, when the 9/11 Commission found explicitly the problem was not lack of data points, but failing to connect the many dots the intelligence community already had about the would-be hijackers living in San Diego. The National Security Division lawyers at the Justice Department, for misleading their own Solicitor General (Donald Verrilli) who then misled (inadvertently) the U.S. Supreme Court over whether Justice let defendants know that bulk collection had contributed to their prosecutions. The same National Security Division lawyers who swore under oath in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for a key wiretap court opinion that the entire text of the opinion was appropriately classified Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (release of which would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to U.S. national security). Only after the Edward Snowden leaks and the embarrassed governmental declassification of the opinion did we find that one key part of the opinion's text simply reproduced the actual language of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the only "grave damage" was to the government's false claims.
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  • President Obama for his repeated misrepresentations about the bulk collection program (calling the wiretap court "transparent" and saying "all of Congress" knew "exactly how this program works") while in effect acknowledging the public value of the Edward Snowden leaks by ordering the long-overdue declassification of key documents about the NSA's activities, and investigations both by a special panel and by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The PCLOB directly contradicted the President, pointing out that "when the only means through which legislators can try to understand a prior interpretation of the law is to read a short description of an operational program, prepared by executive branch officials, made available only at certain times and locations, which cannot be discussed with others except in classified briefings conducted by those same executive branch officials, legislators are denied a meaningful opportunity to gauge the legitimacy and implications of the legal interpretation in question. Under such circumstances, it is not a legitimate method of statutory construction to presume that these legislators, when reenacting the statute, intended to adopt a prior interpretation that they had no fair means of evaluating." (p. 101)
  • Even an author of the Patriot Act, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), was broadsided by the revelation of the telephone metadata dragnet. After learning of the extent of spying on Americans that his Act unleashed, he wrote that the National Security Agency "ignored restrictions painstakingly crafted by lawmakers and assumed plenary authority never imagined by Congress" by cloaking its actions behind the "thick cloud of secrecy" that even our elected representatives could not breech. Clapper recently conceded to the Daily Beast, "I probably shouldn't say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this [phone metadata collection] from the outset … we wouldn't have had the problem we had." The NSA's former deputy director, John "Chris" Inglis, said the same when NPR asked him if he thought the metadata dragnet should have been disclosed before Snowden. "In hindsight, yes. In hindsight, yes." Speaking about potential (relatively minimal) changes to the National Security Agency even the president acknowledged, "And all too often new authorities were instituted without adequate public debate," and "Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us. We won't abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached." (Exhibit A, of course, is the NSA "watchlist" in the 1960's and 1970's that targeted not only antiwar and civil rights activists, but also journalists and even members of Congress.)
  • The Archive established the not-so-coveted Rosemary Award in 2005, named after President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who testified she had erased 18-and-a-half minutes of a crucial Watergate tape — stretching, as she showed photographers, to answer the phone with her foot still on the transcription pedal. Bestowed annually to highlight the lowlights of government secrecy, the Rosemary Award has recognized a rogue's gallery of open government scofflaws, including the CIA, the Treasury Department, the Air Force, the FBI, the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council, and the career Rosemary leader — the Justice Department — for the last two years. Rosemary-winner James Clapper has offered several explanations for his untruthful disavowal of the National Security Agency's phone metadata dragnet. After his lie was exposed by the Edward Snowden revelations, Clapper first complained to NBC's Andrea Mitchell that the question about the NSA's surveillance of Americans was unfair, a — in his words — "When are you going to stop beating your wife kind of question." So, he responded "in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no.'"
  • The Emmy and George Polk Award-winning National Security Archive, based at the George Washington University, has carried out thirteen government-wide audits of FOIA performance, filed more than 50,000 Freedom of Information Act requests over the past 28 years, opened historic government secrets ranging from the CIA's "Family Jewels" to documents about the testing of stealth aircraft at Area 51, and won a series of historic lawsuits that saved hundreds of millions of White House e-mails from the Reagan through Obama presidencies, among many other achievements.
  • After continuing criticism for his lie, Clapper wrote a letter to Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dianne Feinstein, now explaining that he misunderstood Wyden's question and thought it was about the PRISM program (under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) rather than the telephone metadata collection program (under Section 215 of the Patriot Act). Clapper wrote that his staff "acknowledged the error" to Senator Wyden soon after — yet he chose to reject Wyden's offer to amend his answer. Former NSA senior counsel Joel Brenner blamed Congress for even asking the question, claiming that Wyden "sandbagged" Clapper by the "vicious tactic" of asking "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Meanwhile, Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists countered that "it is of course wrong for officials to make false statements, as DNI Clapper did," and that in fact the Senate Intelligence Committee "became complicit in public deception" for failing to rebut or correct Clapper's statement, which they knew to be untruthful. Clapper described his unclassified testimony as a game of "stump the chump." But when it came to oversight of the National Security Agency, it appears that senators and representatives were the chumps being stumped. According to Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich), the House Intelligence Committee "decided it wasn't worthwhile to share this information" about telephone metadata surveillance with other members of Congress. Classified briefings open to the whole House were a "farce," Amash contended, often consisting of information found in newspapers and public statutes.
  • Director Clapper joins an undistinguished list of previous Rosemary Award winners: 2012 - the Justice Department (in a repeat performance, for failure to update FOIA regulations for compliance with the law, undermining congressional intent, and hyping its open government statistics) 2011- the Justice Department (for doing more than any other agency to eviscerate President Obama's Day One transparency pledge, through pit-bull whistleblower prosecutions, recycled secrecy arguments in court cases, retrograde FOIA regulations, and mixed FOIA responsiveness) 2010 - the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council (for "lifetime failure" to address the crisis in government e-mail preservation) 2009 - the FBI (for having a record-setting rate of "no records" responses to FOIA requests) 2008 - the Treasury Department (for shredding FOIA requests and delaying responses for decades) 2007 - the Air Force (for disappearing its FOIA requests and having "failed miserably" to meet its FOIA obligations, according to a federal court ruling) 2006 - the Central Intelligence Agency (for the biggest one-year drop-off in responsiveness to FOIA requests yet recorded).   ALSO-RANS The Rosemary Award competition in 2013 was fierce, with a host of government contenders threatening to surpass the Clapper "least untruthful" standard. These secrecy over-achievers included the following FOI delinquents:
  • Admiral William McRaven, head of the Special Operations Command for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, who purged his command's computers and file cabinets of all records on the raid, sent any remaining copies over to CIA where they would be effectively immune from the FOIA, and then masterminded a "no records" response to the Associated Press when the AP reporters filed FOIA requests for raid-related materials and photos. If not for a one-sentence mention in a leaked draft inspector general report — which the IG deleted for the final version — no one would have been the wiser about McRaven's shell game. Subsequently, a FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch uncovered the sole remaining e-mail from McRaven ordering the evidence destruction, in apparent violation of federal records laws, a felony for which the Admiral seems to have paid no price. Department of Defense classification reviewers who censored from a 1962 document on the Cuban Missile Crisis direct quotes from public statements by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The quotes referred to the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey that would ultimately (and secretly) be pulled out in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of its missiles in Cuba. The denials even occurred after an appeal by the National Security Archive, which provided as supporting material the text of the Khrushchev statements and multiple other officially declassified documents (and photographs!) describing the Jupiters in Turkey. Such absurd classification decisions call into question all of the standards used by the Pentagon and the National Declassification Center to review historical documents.
  • Admiral William McRaven memo from May 13, 2011, ordering the destruction of evidence relating to the Osama bin Laden raid. (From Judicial Watch)
  • The Department of Justice Office of Information Policy, which continues to misrepresent to Congress the government's FOIA performance, while enabling dramatic increases in the number of times government agencies invoke the purely discretionary "deliberative process" exemption. Five years after President Obama declared a "presumption of openness" for FOIA requests, Justice lawyers still cannot show a single case of FOIA litigation in which the purported new standards (including orders from their own boss, Attorney General Eric Holder) have caused the Department to change its position in favor of disclosure.
Paul Merrell

United States v. United States Dist. Court for Eastern Dist. of Mich., 407 US 297 - Sup... - 0 views

  • But a recognition of these elementary truths does not make the employment by Government of electronic surveillance a welcome development—even when employed with restraint and under judicial supervision. There is, understandably, a deep-seated uneasiness and apprehension that this capability will be used to intrude upon cherished privacy of law-abiding citizens.[13] We 313*313 look to the Bill of Rights to safeguard this privacy. Though physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed, its broader spirit now shields private speech from unreasonable surveillance. Katz v. United States, supra; Berger v. New York, supra; Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961). Our decision in Katz refused to lock the Fourth Amendment into instances of actual physical trespass. Rather, the Amendment governs "not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements . . . without any `technical trespass under . . . local property law.'" Katz, supra, at 353. That decision implicitly recognized that the broad and unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy which electronic surveillance entails[14] necessitate the application of Fourth Amendment safeguards.
  • National security cases, moreover, often reflect a convergence of First and Fourth Amendment values not present in cases of "ordinary" crime. Though the investigative duty of the executive may be stronger in such cases, so also is there greater jeopardy to constitutionally protected speech. "Historically the struggle for freedom of speech and press in England was bound up with the issue of the scope of the search and seizure 314*314 power," Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U. S. 717, 724 (1961). History abundantly documents the tendency of Government—however benevolent and benign its motives —to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. Senator Hart addressed this dilemma in the floor debate on § 2511 (3):
  • "As I read it—and this is my fear—we are saying that the President, on his motion, could declare— name your favorite poison—draft dodgers, Black Muslims, the Ku Klux Klan, or civil rights activists to be a clear and present danger to the structure or existence of the Government."[15] The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.
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  • As the Fourth Amendment is not absolute in its terms, our task is to examine and balance the basic values at stake in this case: the duty of Government 315*315 to protect the domestic security, and the potential danger posed by unreasonable surveillance to individual privacy and free expression. If the legitimate need of Government to safeguard domestic security requires the use of electronic surveillance, the question is whether the needs of citizens for privacy and free expression may not be better protected by requiring a warrant before such surveillance is undertaken. We must also ask whether a warrant requirement would unduly frustrate the efforts of Government to protect itself from acts of subversion and overthrow directed against it. Though the Fourth Amendment speaks broadly of "unreasonable searches and seizures," the definition of "reasonableness" turns, at least in part, on the more specific commands of the warrant clause. Some have argued that "[t]he relevant test is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable," United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 66 (1950).[16] This view, however, overlooks the second clause of the Amendment. The warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment is not dead language. Rather, it has been
  • "a valued part of our constitutional law for decades, and it has determined the result in scores and scores of cases in courts all over this country. It is not an inconvenience to be somehow `weighed' against the claims of police efficiency. It is, or should 316*316 be, an important working part of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the `well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous executive officers' who are a part of any system of law enforcement." Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S., at 481. See also United States v. Rabinowitz, supra, at 68 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting); Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, 604 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). Over two centuries ago, Lord Mansfield held that common-law principles prohibited warrants that ordered the arrest of unnamed individuals who the officer might conclude were guilty of seditious libel. "It is not fit," said Mansfield, "that the receiving or judging of the information should be left to the discretion of the officer. The magistrate ought to judge; and should give certain directions to the officer." Leach v. Three of the King's Messengers, 19 How. St. Tr. 1001, 1027 (1765).
  • Lord Mansfield's formulation touches the very heart of the Fourth Amendment directive: that, where practical, a governmental search and seizure should represent both the efforts of the officer to gather evidence of wrongful acts and the judgment of the magistrate that the collected evidence is sufficient to justify invasion of a citizen's private premises or conversation. Inherent in the concept of a warrant is its issuance by a "neutral and detached magistrate." Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, at 453; Katz v. United States, supra, at 356. The further requirement of "probable cause" instructs the magistrate that baseless searches shall not proceed. These Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive 317*317 Branch. The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates. Their duty and responsibility are to enforce the laws, to investigate, and to prosecute. Katz v. United States, supra, at 359-360 (DOUGLAS, J., concurring). But those charged with this investigative and prosecutorial duty should not be the sole judges of when to utilize constitutionally sensitive means in pursuing their tasks. The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech.[17]
  • It may well be that, in the instant case, the Government's surveillance of Plamondon's conversations was a reasonable one which readily would have gained prior judicial approval. But this Court "has never sustained a search upon the sole ground that officers reasonably expected to find evidence of a particular crime and voluntarily confined their activities to the least intrusive means consistent with that end." Katz, supra, at 356-357. The Fourth Amendment contemplates a prior judicial judgment,[18] not the risk that executive discretion may be reasonably exercised. This judicial role accords with our basic constitutional doctrine that individual freedoms will best be preserved through a separation of powers and division of functions among the different branches and levels of Government. Harlan, Thoughts at a Dedication: Keeping the Judicial Function in Balance, 49 A. B. A. J. 943-944 (1963). The independent check upon executive discretion is not 318*318 satisfied, as the Government argues, by "extremely limited" post-surveillance judicial review.[19] Indeed, post-surveillance review would never reach the surveillances which failed to result in prosecutions. Prior review by a neutral and detached magistrate is the time-tested means of effectuating Fourth Amendment rights. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 96 (1964).
  • But we do not think a case has been made for the requested departure from Fourth Amendment standards. The circumstances described do not justify complete exemption of domestic security surveillance from prior judicial scrutiny. Official surveillance, whether its purpose be criminal investigation or ongoing intelligence gathering, risks infringement of constitutionally protected privacy of speech. Security surveillances are especially sensitive because of the inherent vagueness of the domestic security concept, the necessarily broad and continuing nature of intelligence gathering, and the temptation to utilize such surveillances to oversee political dissent. We recognize, as we have before, the constitutional basis of the President's domestic security role, but we think it must be exercised in a manner compatible with the Fourth Amendment. In this case we hold that this requires an appropriate prior warrant procedure. We cannot accept the Government's argument that internal security matters are too subtle and complex for judicial evaluation. Courts regularly deal with the most difficult issues of our society. There is no reason to believe that federal judges will be insensitive to or uncomprehending of the issues involved in domestic security cases. Certainly courts can recognize that domestic security surveillance involves different considerations from the surveillance of "ordinary crime." If the threat is too subtle or complex for our senior law enforcement officers to convey its significance to a court, one may question whether there is probable cause for surveillance.
  • Nor do we believe prior judicial approval will fracture the secrecy essential to official intelligence gathering. The investigation of criminal activity has long 321*321 involved imparting sensitive information to judicial officers who have respected the confidentialities involved. Judges may be counted upon to be especially conscious of security requirements in national security cases. Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act already has imposed this responsibility on the judiciary in connection with such crimes as espionage, sabotage, and treason, §§ 2516 (1) (a) and (c), each of which may involve domestic as well as foreign security threats. Moreover, a warrant application involves no public or adversary proceedings: it is an ex parte request before a magistrate or judge. Whatever security dangers clerical and secretarial personnel may pose can be minimized by proper administrative measures, possibly to the point of allowing the Government itself to provide the necessary clerical assistance.
  • Thus, we conclude that the Government's concerns do not justify departure in this case from the customary Fourth Amendment requirement of judicial approval prior to initiation of a search or surveillance. Although some added burden will be imposed upon the Attorney General, this inconvenience is justified in a free society to protect constitutional values. Nor do we think the Government's domestic surveillance powers will be impaired to any significant degree. A prior warrant establishes presumptive validity of the surveillance and will minimize the burden of justification in post-surveillance judicial review. By no means of least importance will be the reassurance of the public generally that indiscriminate wiretapping and bugging of law-abiding citizens cannot occur.
  • As the surveillance of Plamondon's conversations was unlawful, because conducted without prior judicial approval, the courts below correctly held that Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165 (1969), is controlling and that it requires disclosure to the accused of his own impermissibly intercepted conversations. As stated in Alderman, "the trial court can and should, where appropriate, place a defendant and his counsel under enforceable orders against unwarranted disclosure of the materials which they may be entitled to inspect." 394 U. S., at 185.[21]
Paul Merrell

Ex-NSA chief jokes about putting Edward Snowden on kill list | TheHill - 0 views

  • Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden joked Thursday about putting Edward Snowden on a kill list.Hayden noted that Snowden has been nominated for a European human rights award.ADVERTISEMENT"I must admit, in my darker moments over the past several months, I'd also thought of nominating Mr. Snowden, but it was for a different list," Hayden said during a panel discussion on cybersecurity hosted by The Washington Post. The audience laughed, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was also on the panel, responded, "I can help you with that."Both officials argued that Snowden's leaks about the scope of the NSA's surveillance programs have done serious damage to U.S. national security.
  •  
    Two psychopaths in desperate need of heavy medication in the confinement to a locked mental ward.  Real sickos. 
Paul Merrell

Intel chief quits House for talk radio | TheHill - 0 views

  • The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is leaving Congress for a career in talk radio.Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Friday he will not seek reelection in 2014, and will instead take a job as a syndicated talk radio host with Cumulus Radio.
  •  
    FBI's bribery investigation getting too close?
Paul Merrell

WASHINGTON: Not just torture: Senator says CIA stalling over bogus intelligence that le... - 0 views

  • CIA Director John Brennan, under fire over the Senate report on the CIA’s use of torture, is facing new heat over his role in what a senior lawmaker calls an apparent coverup involving bogus intelligence used by the George W. Bush administration to help justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Carl Levin, D-Mich., who’s ending 36 years in the Senate, plans to press Brennan one last time to fulfill a pledge to support the full declassification of a CIA cable debunking the claim that the leader of the 9/11 hijackers met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech capital of Prague just months before the attacks.“Director Brennan’s apparent refusal to do what he has committed to do – to ask the Czech government if it objects to release of the cable – now takes on the character of a continuing coverup,” Levin plans to tell the Senate on Thursday, according to a draft of his speech obtained by McClatchy.
  • At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters on Wednesday, Levin said he’s been told by Czech officials that “they have no objection” to the release of the cable.Levin also pointed out that the former chief of the Czech counterintelligence service, who was in the post at the time of the alleged meeting, published a memoir this year in which he asserted that the CIA pressured him to confirm the encounter and that U.S. officials pressured the Czech government when he couldn’t do so.“Without any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion and use it as an excuse for military action,” wrote Jiri Ruzek. “We were to play the role of useful idiot.”The CIA declined to comment. But a U.S. intelligence official said that Levin had been told that releasing the full cable couldn’t be done without damaging intelligence sources.
  • The March 13, 2003, cable was sent by CIA field officers in response to a request for more information on a single-source intelligence report of a meeting in a Prague park between Atta and al Ani. The cable warned that U.S. government officials shouldn’t cite the unverified report.Even so, Cheney continued to give the report credibility in media interviews, telling CNN in June 2004 that the truth of the report hadn’t been resolved.“Those statements were simply not true,” Levin said in the draft. “The vice president was recklessly disregarding the truth, and he did so in a way calculated to maintain support for the administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq.”During his February 2013 hearing to be confirmed as CIA director, Brennan was urged by Levin to ask the Czech government if it would object to the release of the cable. “Absolutely, Senator, I will,” Brennan replied.
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  • The alleged meeting between Mohammad Atta and Ahmad Samir al Ani was repeatedly cited by former Vice President Dick Cheney before and after the invasion to bolster the Bush administration’s assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with al Qaida and could pass Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – which didn’t exist – to the terrorist group.“The notion of such a meeting was a centerpiece of the administration’s campaign to create an impression in the public mind that Saddam was in league with the al Qaida terrorists who attacked us on 9/11,” Levin planned to tell the Senate, according to the speech draft.“Now why am I bringing up a CIA cable from more than a decade ago?” the draft said. “This is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. It is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable.”
  • After receiving no response from Brennan, Levin earlier this year blocked the nomination of Caroline Krass to be the CIA general counsel. He agreed to lift his hold on Krass after receiving a March 13 letter from Brennan that summarized the cable, saying that it cast “serious doubt” that the alleged meeting occurred.Brennan added, “Investigative records subsequently placed Atta in the United States just before and after the date on which the single-source report said the meeting was to have occurred,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by McClatchy.Brennan declassified a single line from the cable that said, “There is not one USG (U.S. government counterterrorism) or FBI expert that . . . has said they have evidence or ‘know’ that (Atta) was indeed (in Prague). In fact, the analysis has been quite the opposite.”
  • In the draft of his remarks, Levin asserted that there was other “critically relevant information” in the cable that had been “denied to the public in order to protect those in the Bush White House who are responsible” for “playing games with intelligence.”“I believe decision-makers should have to face the full, unadulterated, unredacted truth about their decisions,” said Levin. “The American people should know the full story . . . as a warning to future leaders against the misuse of intelligence and the abuse of power.”
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