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Paul Merrell

Victory! Federal Court Recognizes Constitutional Rights of Americans on the No-Fly List... - 0 views

www.aclu.org/...ctory-federal-court-recognizes

war on terror™ no-fly-list Due Process litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • A federal court took a critically important step late yesterday towards placing a check on the government's secretive No-Fly List. In a 38-page ruling in Latif v. Holder, the ACLU's challenge to the No-Fly List, U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown recognized that the Constitution applies when the government bans Americans from the skies. She also asked for more information about the current process for getting off the list, to inform her decision on whether that procedure violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process. We represent 13 Americans, including four military veterans, who are blacklisted from flying. At oral argument in June on motions for partial summary judgment, we asked the court to find that the government violated our clients' Fifth Amendment right to due process by barring them from flying over U.S. airspace – and smearing them as suspected terrorists – without giving them any after-the-fact explanation or a hearing at which to clear their names. The court's opinion recognizes – for the first time – that inclusion on the No-Fly List is a draconian sanction that severely impacts peoples' constitutionally-protected liberties. It rejected the government's argument that No-Fly list placement was merely a restriction on the most "convenient" means of international travel.
  • Such an argument ignores the numerous reasons an individual may have for wanting or needing to travel overseas quickly such as for the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a business opportunity, or a religious obligation. According to the court, placement on the No-Fly List is like the revocation of a passport because both actions severely burden the right to international travel and give rise to a constitutional right to procedural due process: Here it is undisputed that inclusion on the No-Fly List completely bans listed persons from boarding commercial flights to or from the United States or over United States air space.  Thus, Plaintiffs have shown their placement on the No-Fly List has in the past and will in the future severely restrict Plaintiffs' ability to travel internationally. Moreover, the realistic implications of being on the No-Fly List are potentially far-reaching. For example, TSC [the Terrorist Screening Center] shares watchlist information with 22 foreign governments and United States Customs and Boarder [sic] Protection makes recommendations to ship captains as to whether a passenger poses a risk to transportation security, which can result in further interference with an individual's ability to travel as evidenced by some Plaintiffs' experiences as they attempted to travel abroad by boat and land and were either turned away or completed their journey only after an extraordinary amount of time, expense, and difficulty. Accordingly, the Court concludes on this record that Plaintiffs have a constitutionally-protected liberty interest in traveling internationally by air, which is affected by being placed on the list. The court also found that the government's inclusion of our clients on the No-Fly List smeared them as suspected terrorists and altered their ability to lawfully board planes, resulting in injury to another constitutionally-protected right: freedom from reputational harm.
  • The importance of these rulings is clear. Because inclusion on the No-Fly List harms our clients' liberty interests in travel and reputation, due process requires the government to provide them an explanation and a hearing to correct the mistakes that led to their inclusion. But under the government's "Glomar" policy, it refuses to provide any information confirming or denying that our clients are on the list, let alone an after-the-fact explanation and hearing. The court has asked the ACLU and the government for more information about the No-Fly List redress procedure to help it decide the ultimate question of whether that system violates the Fifth Amendment right to due process. We are confident the court will recognize that the government's "Glomar" policy of refusing even to confirm or deny our clients' No-Fly List status (much less actually providing the reasons for their inclusion in the list) is fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    A case decision in August that I had missed, right here in Oregon. One of our Oregon federal judges gets it right after being reversed the first time by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. I've read the opinion. Looks quite solid. Plaintiffs were carefully chosen for this test case, 13 citizens placed on the no-fly list, all with compelling stories of winding up stranded, some overseas. Several are U.S. military veterans. All were told by government officials that the reason they could not board was because they were on the TSA no-fly list. At issue is whether they have a right to be informed of the information that resulted in them being placed on the no-fly list and a right to a hearing to seek correction of the information. Their constitutional interest in their reputations is also in play, since they have been classified by their government as too dangerous to allow to travel by commercial airline.   The district court case is not done; the judge has ordered further briefing on some issues. But the government is trying to defend a process in which no one is ever formally notified that they are on the no-fly list and is never advised of the reasons they are on the no-fly list. The number of Americans on the no-fly list is now over 700,000. But the judge has recognized that there is a constitutional right to travel and that it extends to international travel. From the opinion: "Plaintiffs contend the government has deprived them of their protected liberty interest in travel. In Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (1958), the Supreme Court held "[t]he right to travel is part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment."  Id. at 125. As noted by the Ninth Circuit, "the [Supreme] Court has consistently treated the right to international travel as a liberty interest that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment." DeNieva v. Reyes, 966 F.2d 480, 485 (9th Cir. 1992)(emp
Paul Merrell

Fisa court oversight: a look inside a secret and empty process | Glenn Greenwald | Comm... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ourt-oversight-process-secrecy

surveillance state NSA lies FISA FISA Court Obama procedures must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Since we began began publishing stories about the NSA's massive domestic spying apparatus, various NSA defenders – beginning with President Obama - have sought to assure the public that this is all done under robust judicial oversight. "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he proclaimed on June 7 when responding to our story about the bulk collection of telephone records, adding that the program is "fully overseen" by "the Fisa court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them". Obama told Charlie Rose last night:"What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls … by law and by rule, and unless they … go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it's always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause."The GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, told CNN that the NSA "is not listening to Americans' phone calls. If it did, it is illegal. It is breaking the law." Talking points issued by the House GOP in defense of the NSA claimed that surveillance law only "allows the Government to acquire foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S.-persons (foreign, non-Americans) located outside the United States."
  • The decisions about who has their emails and telephone calls intercepted by the NSA is made by the NSA itself, not by the Fisa court, except where the NSA itself concludes the person is a US citizen and/or the communication is exclusively domestic. But even in such cases, the NSA often ends up intercepting those communications of Americans without individualized warrants, and all of this is left to the discretion of the NSA analysts with no real judicial oversight.
  • The NSA's media defenders have similarly stressed that the NSA's eavesdropping and internet snooping requires warrants when it involves Americans. The Washington Post's Charles Lane told his readers: "the government needs a court-issued warrant, based on probable cause, to listen in on phone calls." The Post's David Ignatius told Post readers that NSA internet surveillance "is overseen by judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" and is "lawful and controlled". Tom Friedman told New York Times readers that before NSA analysts can invade the content of calls and emails, they "have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress."This has become the most common theme for those defending NSA surveillance. But these claim are highly misleading, and in some cases outright false.
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  • What is vital to recognize is that the NSA is collecting and storing staggering sums of communications every day. Back in 2010, the Washington Post reported that "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." Documents published by the Guardian last week detail that, in March 2013, the NSA collected three billions of pieces of intelligence just from US communications networks alone.In sum, the NSA is vacuuming up enormous amounts of communications involving ordinary Americans and people around the world who are guilty of nothing. There are some legal constraints governing their power to examine the content of those communications, but there are no technical limits on the ability either of the agency or its analysts to do so. The fact that there is so little external oversight is what makes this sweeping, suspicion-less surveillance system so dangerous. It's also what makes the assurances from government officials and their media allies so dubious.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13
     
    Glenn Greenwald strikes again with hard proof from NSA documents, dissecting procedures used throughout the intelligence establishment from the NSA to the President to Congress, casting severe doubt on what we have been told by those defending the NSA surveillance program. I have highlighted only a few points from this lengthy article. As to Greenwald's discussion of the FISA Court's weaknesses, he omitted one that I believe is incredibly, the lack of an adversarial system with a lawyer opposing what the government asks the Court to authorize. True, search warrants are normally issued in the U.S. with only the government represented in the process. But there is a crucial difference: once someone is charged with a crime, the warrant must be disclosed to the defendant who can ask the court to suppress all evidence unlawfully obtained not only through the warrant but also the fruits of any unlawfully obtained evidence, meaning subsequently discovered evidence that would not have been found absent the unlawfully obtained evidence. The same result can happen if the warrant is found to be invalid for any of a variety of reasons, or the officers exceeded the scope of the search authorized.  So in the normal search warrant process, the participation of an adversary attorney is only delayed; it is not virtually eliminated as it is in the FISA Court. Thus far, only those ordered to disclose records to the NSA have been granted standing to oppose disclosure, not those who have been surveilled. The entire U.S. judicial system is built around the principle of an adversarial process. Judges are expected to be neutral arbiters between two or more sides to a dispute. We do not have an inquisitorial system, as is used for example in some European nations, where the judge is also the investigator. The FISA court is presently composed of 11 federal district court judges who also preside over normal cases in their individual districts. Steeped in the adversarial system and th
Gary Edwards

Of Bailouts, Bonuses, and Generational Responsibility from The Daily Bail - 0 views

www.google.com/...view

obammunism baby-boomers john-gallo financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • When one transfers the learned behavior of selfishness to the world of economics, it is east to see how we got to the world of adjustable rate mortgages, thirty-to-one leverage, credit default swaps, and thirty year hedge fund workers acting as is million dollar paychecks was an otherwise normal entitlement.  If it felt good, it was therefore right – and by all means, don’t rock the boat.  And what we are witnessing today in Washington and Wall Street in response to our economic crisis is nothing but a conscious and willing decision to pass off to the next generation the cost of our mistakes.
  • the fundamental principles of capitalism – namely that bad actors need to fail.
  • First and most foremost, the Congress needs to institute a modernized version of Glass-Stegall and separate commercial banking from investment banking activities. What we have seen in the abolishment Glass-Stegall (please thank Mr. Rubin formerly of Goldman Sachs) is the creation of federally subsidize casinos masquerading as publicly traded financial institutions.  They kept profits from over-leveraged bets and were kind enough to pass their losses onto the taxpayers.  Second, Congress needs to repeal legislation (Gramm-Leach) that allowed financial institutions not only to leverage in ways previously not permitted, but which also granted banks and financial situations exemption from federal gambling laws. Third, and this is where moral outrage hits home to those on Wall Street, we cannot live in a country in which any company is allowed to manipulate the levers of government in such a way as to make itself obscenely rich at the expense of the public.
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  • We saw as we proceeded through life that pursuing one’s self-interest was rewarded just as often than doing what was right, that morals were relative, and that there would be no consequences to bad behavior. It became de rigueur to assume that our parents (and their lawyers) would save us from our bad behavior.
  • no consequences to irresponsible behavior.
  • it is hard to avoid the reality that my generation, the baby boomers who are now approaching retirement, have caused the greatest collapse of the world economy since the 1930s, and in the process damaged this country in ways we are now only beginning to understand.
  • Goldman is only the largest corporate contributor to the Obama administration
  • he nation will not die; to the contrary, it would become stronger if we permit free markets to work, and allow the next-generation to live unburdened by our mistakes and arrogance.
  • Capitalism remains the best economic system on the planet, but when those who have profited handsomely seek to socialize losses caused by their errors, then those in power in Washington have a moral responsibility to demand an accounting.  Our anger comes from the fact that our leaders have failed in their public obligations at the expense of the interests on Wall Street, and in the process created the greatest social divide that this country has seen in the past 40 years.
  • our nation has one of the highest ratios of debt to GDP on the globe
  • Finally, the administration should demand (I know it won’t) that Goldman Sachs return the approximately $13 billion it received in backdoor payments through AIG when AIG received $180 billion in bailout money. That $13 billion belongs to the taxpayers of this country, and the decision to allow Goldman to receive that money perhaps stands as the greatest moral outrage of this entire sordid affair.  
  • Looking back more eighteen months after the first signs of distress in our economy appeared, it seems that leaders in Congress and Wall Street have erred in a manner never before witnessed in this nation.  In the process, they have conspired through their collective arrogance, greed, and ignorance to damage the economy of the country (if not the world), make many themselves rich beyond the imaginations of most Americans, and in the process commit the greatest financial rape of the American public in the history of the country.  And if that does resonate, then either you have not been paying attention for the past two years, or you have received your paycheck form Goldman Sachs.
  • The proposal in question was Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future," a sweeping plan to stave off the nation's looming economic and fiscal collapse by changing the tax code, overhauling the health care system, and reforming the nation's major entitlement programs. Its debt-reducing claims aren't based on mere fantasy -- the Congressional Budget Office has determined that the plan would boost economic growth while making Medicare and Social Security solvent. And it accomplishes these aims without raising taxes or affecting the benefits of current retirees.
  • There's no doubt where the Treasury will turn for finance. We are about to see the greatest stuffing of banks with government securities the world has ever seen. American banks will be forced to gorge on Treasury securities, and disgorge bank reserves. Where else can the government get the next trillion to spend on things like wars, unemployment benefits, and food stamps?There are a few obvious things to think about here. At the rate of $120 billion a month, it will only take about nine months to blow through over a trillion dollars in free bank reserves. Each Treasury auction will find it more difficult to sell all of the treasury securities, and it will take rising interest rates to coax out even more reserves from the banks. (When you need to borrow over $4 billion a day, even a trillion dollars doesn't last long.)
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 10
     
    Wow!  This is the best response to the financial collapse i have read to date.  Exceptional in clarity, but written with a tone of mixed sorrow and shame.  Mr. Gallow places the blame exactly where it should be placed.  It's a generational thing with one exception Mr. Gallow overlooks - the Obama margin of victory was very much due to the massive turnout and votes of post baby boomer generations.  We boomers may have created and caused the financial collapse and destruction of America, but they were dumb enough to put the decline of capitalism and ordered liberty on marxist steroids. excerpt:  .... this is the first time that I have been so angered by incompetence and greed in government and Wall Street to express publicly my own thoughts.  In simple terms, what has dawned on me is that my generation, the "Baby Boomers" between the ages of 45 and 65, has emerged not as not the most significant or talented generation in our history (as we thought we were), but rather as the most self-absorbed and reckless. Because ours will be the first generation in the history of this country to leave to its successors a nation in worse shape than that which it inherited; put differently, we will be the first generation in this nation to have taken from our parents and stolen from our children. .. it is hard to avoid the reality that my generation, the baby boomers who are now approaching retirement, have caused the greatest collapse of the world economy since the 1930s, and in the process damaged this country in ways we are now only beginning to understand. ... Looking back more eighteen months after the first signs of distress in our economy appeared, it seems that leaders in Congress and Wall Street have erred in a manner never before witnessed in this nation.  In the process, they have conspired through their collective arrogance, greed, and ignorance to damage the economy of the country (if not the world), make many themselves rich beyond the imaginations of mo
Paul Merrell

Biden suggests 'military solution' to Syrian conflict - 0 views

www.politico.com/...talks-military-solution-218139

war & peace Syria ISIL Al-Nusrah Biden Kerry pace-negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Joe Biden signaled a possible new direction for U.S. policy toward Syria in remarks in Turkey on Saturday, where the vice president was meeting with Turkish leaders to discuss the bloody civil war next door. Biden was speaking at Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace, where he held meetings with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Story Continued Below The U.S. is “neither optimistic nor pessimistic,” but “determined” to reach a political solution to the Syrian conflict, he said. But Biden also seemed to go past Obama administration statements in suggesting the U.S. would be willing to use military means if necessary. “We do know that it would be better if we can reach a political solution, but we are prepared — we are prepared if that’s not possible to make — to have a military solution to this operation in taking out Daesh,” the vice president said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State in the Levant, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Turkey and the U.S. have had intense differences over which of the witches’ brew of militant groups in the region to characterize as terrorist groups, and the meeting seemed intended to close those gaps.
  • Davutoglu said they had agreed on “a united front against terrorism,” mentioning the Islamic State, the PKK and Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “We believe we should be acting against all these terrorist organizations in harmony,” the Turkish prime minister said. “We are on the same page regarding this as well.” Biden reassured Turkey, which is dealing with a flare-up in its long-running conflict with Kurdish separatist groups led by the PKK. The PKK, Biden said, “is a terrorist group plain and simple” – one he said has defied the Turkish government efforts to make peace. Until that changes, “you must do what you need to protect your people,” Biden said. But Davutoglu also described a Kurdish militia that is reportedly working with U.S. special forces in Syria, the YPG, as a terrorist group, indicating some remaining disagreement between the two allies. “We believe that YPG is a part of the PKK, and it receives open support from the PKK,” he said. Biden, pointedly, did not mention the YPG in his own list of terrorist groups. According to Al Jazeera, the U.S. recently took over a Syrian air base near the Turkish border with the YPG’s help.
  • Biden’s remarks come days ahead of long-anticipated Syria peace talks, which have been in limbo amid a bitter feud between the Middle East’s longtime rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Riyadh, where he held talks with top Saudi officials — discussions Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir described as “clear and transparent and frank.” Kerry did not announce a date for the Syria talks, which were originally slated for Jan. 25 in Geneva but were delayed amid disagreements over who would represent the Syrian opposition. The discussions will convene “very shortly,” Kerry said, “because we want to keep the process moving and put to full test the readiness and willingness of people to live up to the two communiques and U.N. resolution, and begin the process of bringing the transition council — transition governing process of Syria into a reality.” The National Security Council declined to say whether Biden’s remarks signaled a shift in U.S. strategy, and directed questions to the vice president’s office. But Kerry, in Riyadh, said the goals of the U.S. and its allies hadn’t changed: “a transition governance process, for a new constitution, for elections, and for a ceasefire.” "The vice president was making the point that even as we search for a political solution to the broader Syrian civil war, we are simultaneously pursuing a military solution against Daesh," Biden's office said. "There is no change in U.S. policy."
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 16
     
    But Kerry, in Riyadh, said the goals of the U.S. and its allies hadn't changed: "a transition governance process, for a new constitution, for elections, and for a ceasefire." The key phrase is "a transition governance process." In other words, the U.S. still insists that Bashar al Assad, who polls show would win any election in Syria, must step down as head of government before a new constitution is adopted, and new elections are held." The Syrian opposition, funded and led by Saudi Arabia, has just vetoed participating in the peace process unless Assad agrees to step down as a negotiation pre-condition.  But Assad, Russia, and Iran are adamant that Assad will not step down unless first defeated in an election, in other words, the only transition will be made by elected officials, that the will of the Syrian people runs Syria, not invading mercenaries.    
Gary Edwards

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens - Tea Party - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/ssassination-us-citizens-34330

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens
  • The president’s partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize (The Guardian) – The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike inYemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.
  • a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president’s power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title “disposition matrix”.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind – but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president’s underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president – at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as “Terror Tuesday” – then chooses from “baseball cards” and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.
  • The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power.
  • During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama’s first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that “the Bush Administration’s excessive reliance on ‘secret law’ threatens the effective functioning of American democracy” and “the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government.”
  • But when it comes to Obama’s assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He’s maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.
  • Last night, NBC News’ Michael Isikoff released a 16-page “white paper”prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama’s power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama’s kill list – that is still concealed – but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.
  • there are numerous points that should be emphasized about the fundamentally misleading nature of this new memo:
  • 1. Equating government accusations with guilt
  • 2. Creating a ceiling, not a floor
  • 3. Relies on the core Bush/Cheney theory of a global battlefield
  • 4. Expanding the concept of “imminence” beyond recognition
  • The memo is authorizing assassinations against citizens in circumstances far beyond this understanding of “imminence”. Indeed, the memo expressly states that it is inventing “a broader concept of imminence” than is typically used in domestic law. Specifically, the president’s assassination power “does not require that the US have clear evidence that a specific attack . . . will take place in the immediate future”. The US routinely assassinates its targets not when they are engaged in or plotting attacks but when they are at home, with family members, riding in a car, at work, at funerals, rescuing other drone victims, etc.
  • “This is a chilling document” because “it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen” and the purported limits “are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.”
  • 6. Making a mockery of “due process”
  • Stephen Colbert perfectly mocked this theory when Eric Holder first unveiled it to defend the president’s assassination program. At the time, Holder actually said: “due process and judicial process are not one and the same.” Colbert interpreted that claim as follows: “Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares?Due process just means that there is a process that you do. The current process is apparently, first the president meets with his advisers and decides who he can kill. Then he kills them.”
  • here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed – and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight.
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

news.google.com/?ar=1375391426

Libertarians freedom-liberty freedom-tyranny authoritarianism-individual-liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13
     
    WOW!!! Incredible presentation concerning the history of Freedom vs. Tyranny. WOW!! If ever there's a MUST Watch, this is it. Very impressive and sweeping comparison of how authoritarian collectivist seize power in a free society and establish their tyrannies. My notes are listed below: How to recognize potential tyrants and keep them from seizing power. The urge to save humanity is always used to justify those who want to rule humanity. - ML Menken Daniel Webster on the Constitution Obstacles to Tyranny : Limited powers of government .... Due Process .... Presumption of Innocence .... Freedom to Dissent .... Armed Populace: The right to be Armed! Due Process .... 5th Amendment .... Emergency powers. there is no authorization in the US Constitution to suspend Due Process or any aspect of the Bill of Rights .... Asset Seizure Laws for criminal activities (alleged - without warrant or court order) .... Eminent Domain: seizure of private property for government uses: 2005 Kelo vs New London seizure based on jobs (economy) and tax revenue possibilities. .... 6th Amendment - right to trial by jury : plea bargaining admonition based on facing the awesome power of the government to prosecute no matter what - intimidation and threat of personal destruction. .... Forced confessions through plea bargaining. .... Indefinite detention without trial or charges: President has power to kill or issue orders without warrant, charges or trial .... Presumption of Innocence: Probable Cause .... Random stops at Border check points. 5th Amendment protections violated .... Sobriety Check Points: 4th and 5th Amendments violated - no presumption of innocence .... Random detention and questioning: airport security pat downs, housing projects, bus transportation .... The Right to Privacy: financial transactions and the IRS audit (without warrant or accusation) .... Warrant-less Spying .... Agents writing their own search warrants .... Snatch and Peek Freedom to Disse
Paul Merrell

Most Agencies Falling Short on Mandate for Online Records - 0 views

www2.gwu.edu/...NSAEBB505

eFOIA FOIA audit National-Security-Archives agency-compliance

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Nearly 20 years after Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), only 40 percent of agencies have followed the law's instruction for systematic posting of records released through FOIA in their electronic reading rooms, according to a new FOIA Audit released today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org to mark Sunshine Week. The Archive team audited all federal agencies with Chief FOIA Officers as well as agency components that handle more than 500 FOIA requests a year — 165 federal offices in all — and found only 67 with online libraries populated with significant numbers of released FOIA documents and regularly updated.
  • Congress called on agencies to embrace disclosure and the digital era nearly two decades ago, with the passage of the 1996 "E-FOIA" amendments. The law mandated that agencies post key sets of records online, provide citizens with detailed guidance on making FOIA requests, and use new information technology to post online proactively records of significant public interest, including those already processed in response to FOIA requests and "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests." Congress believed then, and openness advocates know now, that this kind of proactive disclosure, publishing online the results of FOIA requests as well as agency records that might be requested in the future, is the only tenable solution to FOIA backlogs and delays. Thus the National Security Archive chose to focus on the e-reading rooms of agencies in its latest audit. Even though the majority of federal agencies have not yet embraced proactive disclosure of their FOIA releases, the Archive E-FOIA Audit did find that some real "E-Stars" exist within the federal government, serving as examples to lagging agencies that technology can be harnessed to create state-of-the art FOIA platforms. Unfortunately, our audit also found "E-Delinquents" whose abysmal web performance recalls the teletype era.
  • E-Delinquents include the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, which, despite being mandated to advise the President on technology policy, does not embrace 21st century practices by posting any frequently requested records online. Another E-Delinquent, the Drug Enforcement Administration, insults its website's viewers by claiming that it "does not maintain records appropriate for FOIA Library at this time."
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  • "The presumption of openness requires the presumption of posting," said Archive director Tom Blanton. "For the new generation, if it's not online, it does not exist." The National Security Archive has conducted fourteen FOIA Audits since 2002. Modeled after the California Sunshine Survey and subsequent state "FOI Audits," the Archive's FOIA Audits use open-government laws to test whether or not agencies are obeying those same laws. Recommendations from previous Archive FOIA Audits have led directly to laws and executive orders which have: set explicit customer service guidelines, mandated FOIA backlog reduction, assigned individualized FOIA tracking numbers, forced agencies to report the average number of days needed to process requests, and revealed the (often embarrassing) ages of the oldest pending FOIA requests. The surveys include:
  • The federal government has made some progress moving into the digital era. The National Security Archive's last E-FOIA Audit in 2007, " File Not Found," reported that only one in five federal agencies had put online all of the specific requirements mentioned in the E-FOIA amendments, such as guidance on making requests, contact information, and processing regulations. The new E-FOIA Audit finds the number of agencies that have checked those boxes is now much higher — 100 out of 165 — though many (66 in 165) have posted just the bare minimum, especially when posting FOIA responses. An additional 33 agencies even now do not post these types of records at all, clearly thwarting the law's intent.
  • The FOIAonline Members (Department of Commerce, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Labor Relations Authority, Merit Systems Protection Board, National Archives and Records Administration, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Department of the Navy, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Federal Communications Commission) won their "E-Star" by making past requests and releases searchable via FOIAonline. FOIAonline also allows users to submit their FOIA requests digitally.
  • THE E-DELINQUENTS: WORST OVERALL AGENCIES In alphabetical order
  • Key Findings
  • Excuses Agencies Give for Poor E-Performance
  • Justice Department guidance undermines the statute. Currently, the FOIA stipulates that documents "likely to become the subject of subsequent requests" must be posted by agencies somewhere in their electronic reading rooms. The Department of Justice's Office of Information Policy defines these records as "frequently requested records… or those which have been released three or more times to FOIA requesters." Of course, it is time-consuming for agencies to develop a system that keeps track of how often a record has been released, which is in part why agencies rarely do so and are often in breach of the law. Troublingly, both the current House and Senate FOIA bills include language that codifies the instructions from the Department of Justice. The National Security Archive believes the addition of this "three or more times" language actually harms the intent of the Freedom of Information Act as it will give agencies an easy excuse ("not requested three times yet!") not to proactively post documents that agency FOIA offices have already spent time, money, and energy processing. We have formally suggested alternate language requiring that agencies generally post "all records, regardless of form or format that have been released in response to a FOIA request."
  • Disabilities Compliance. Despite the E-FOIA Act, many government agencies do not embrace the idea of posting their FOIA responses online. The most common reason agencies give is that it is difficult to post documents in a format that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, also referred to as being "508 compliant," and the 1998 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act that require federal agencies "to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities." E-Star agencies, however, have proven that 508 compliance is no barrier when the agency has a will to post. All documents posted on FOIAonline are 508 compliant, as are the documents posted by the Department of Defense and the Department of State. In fact, every document created electronically by the US government after 1998 should already be 508 compliant. Even old paper records that are scanned to be processed through FOIA can be made 508 compliant with just a few clicks in Adobe Acrobat, according to this Department of Homeland Security guide (essentially OCRing the text, and including information about where non-textual fields appear). Even if agencies are insistent it is too difficult to OCR older documents that were scanned from paper, they cannot use that excuse with digital records.
  • Privacy. Another commonly articulated concern about posting FOIA releases online is that doing so could inadvertently disclose private information from "first person" FOIA requests. This is a valid concern, and this subset of FOIA requests should not be posted online. (The Justice Department identified "first party" requester rights in 1989. Essentially agencies cannot use the b(6) privacy exemption to redact information if a person requests it for him or herself. An example of a "first person" FOIA would be a person's request for his own immigration file.) Cost and Waste of Resources. There is also a belief that there is little public interest in the majority of FOIA requests processed, and hence it is a waste of resources to post them. This thinking runs counter to the governing principle of the Freedom of Information Act: that government information belongs to US citizens, not US agencies. As such, the reason that a person requests information is immaterial as the agency processes the request; the "interest factor" of a document should also be immaterial when an agency is required to post it online. Some think that posting FOIA releases online is not cost effective. In fact, the opposite is true. It's not cost effective to spend tens (or hundreds) of person hours to search for, review, and redact FOIA requests only to mail it to the requester and have them slip it into their desk drawer and forget about it. That is a waste of resources. The released document should be posted online for any interested party to utilize. This will only become easier as FOIA processing systems evolve to automatically post the documents they track. The State Department earned its "E-Star" status demonstrating this very principle, and spent no new funds and did not hire contractors to build its Electronic Reading Room, instead it built a self-sustaining platform that will save the agency time and money going forward.
Paul Merrell

CURIA - Documents - 0 views

curia.europa.eu/...document.jsf

surveillance state EU Court-of-Justice data-retention data privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • 37      It must be stated that the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 with the fundamental rights laid down in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter is, as the Advocate General has also pointed out, in particular, in paragraphs 77 and 80 of his Opinion, wide-ranging, and it must be considered to be particularly serious. Furthermore, as the Advocate General has pointed out in paragraphs 52 and 72 of his Opinion, the fact that data are retained and subsequently used without the subscriber or registered user being informed is likely to generate in the minds of the persons concerned the feeling that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance.
  • 43      In this respect, it is apparent from recital 7 in the preamble to Directive 2006/24 that, because of the significant growth in the possibilities afforded by electronic communications, the Justice and Home Affairs Council of 19 December 2002 concluded that data relating to the use of electronic communications are particularly important and therefore a valuable tool in the prevention of offences and the fight against crime, in particular organised crime. 44      It must therefore be held that the retention of data for the purpose of allowing the competent national authorities to have possible access to those data, as required by Directive 2006/24, genuinely satisfies an objective of general interest.45      In those circumstances, it is necessary to verify the proportionality of the interference found to exist.46      In that regard, according to the settled case-law of the Court, the principle of proportionality requires that acts of the EU institutions be appropriate for attaining the legitimate objectives pursued by the legislation at issue and do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to achieve those objectives (see, to that effect, Case C‑343/09 Afton Chemical EU:C:2010:419, paragraph 45; Volker und Markus Schecke and Eifert EU:C:2010:662, paragraph 74; Cases C‑581/10 and C‑629/10 Nelson and Others EU:C:2012:657, paragraph 71; Case C‑283/11 Sky Österreich EU:C:2013:28, paragraph 50; and Case C‑101/12 Schaible EU:C:2013:661, paragraph 29).
  • 67      Article 7 of Directive 2006/24, read in conjunction with Article 4(1) of Directive 2002/58 and the second subparagraph of Article 17(1) of Directive 95/46, does not ensure that a particularly high level of protection and security is applied by those providers by means of technical and organisational measures, but permits those providers in particular to have regard to economic considerations when determining the level of security which they apply, as regards the costs of implementing security measures. In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not ensure the irreversible destruction of the data at the end of the data retention period.68      In the second place, it should be added that that directive does not require the data in question to be retained within the European Union, with the result that it cannot be held that the control, explicitly required by Article 8(3) of the Charter, by an independent authority of compliance with the requirements of protection and security, as referred to in the two previous paragraphs, is fully ensured. Such a control, carried out on the basis of EU law, is an essential component of the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (see, to that effect, Case C‑614/10 Commission v Austria EU:C:2012:631, paragraph 37).69      Having regard to all the foregoing considerations, it must be held that, by adopting Directive 2006/24, the EU legislature has exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 52(1) of the Charter.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • 58      Directive 2006/24 affects, in a comprehensive manner, all persons using electronic communications services, but without the persons whose data are retained being, even indirectly, in a situation which is liable to give rise to criminal prosecutions. It therefore applies even to persons for whom there is no evidence capable of suggesting that their conduct might have a link, even an indirect or remote one, with serious crime. Furthermore, it does not provide for any exception, with the result that it applies even to persons whose communications are subject, according to rules of national law, to the obligation of professional secrecy. 59      Moreover, whilst seeking to contribute to the fight against serious crime, Directive 2006/24 does not require any relationship between the data whose retention is provided for and a threat to public security and, in particular, it is not restricted to a retention in relation (i) to data pertaining to a particular time period and/or a particular geographical zone and/or to a circle of particular persons likely to be involved, in one way or another, in a serious crime, or (ii) to persons who could, for other reasons, contribute, by the retention of their data, to the prevention, detection or prosecution of serious offences.
  • 1        These requests for a preliminary ruling concern the validity of Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC (OJ 2006 L 105, p. 54).
  • Digital Rights Ireland Ltd (C‑293/12)vMinister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources,Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform,Commissioner of the Garda Síochána,Ireland,The Attorney General,intervener:Irish Human Rights Commission, andKärntner Landesregierung (C‑594/12),Michael Seitlinger,Christof Tschohl and others,
  • JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Grand Chamber)8 April 2014 (*)(Electronic communications — Directive 2006/24/EC — Publicly available electronic communications services or public communications networks services — Retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of such services — Validity — Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union)In Joined Cases C‑293/12 and C‑594/12,
  • 34      As a result, the obligation imposed by Articles 3 and 6 of Directive 2006/24 on providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks to retain, for a certain period, data relating to a person’s private life and to his communications, such as those referred to in Article 5 of the directive, constitutes in itself an interference with the rights guaranteed by Article 7 of the Charter. 35      Furthermore, the access of the competent national authorities to the data constitutes a further interference with that fundamental right (see, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, Eur. Court H.R., Leander v. Sweden, 26 March 1987, § 48, Series A no 116; Rotaru v. Romania [GC], no. 28341/95, § 46, ECHR 2000-V; and Weber and Saravia v. Germany (dec.), no. 54934/00, § 79, ECHR 2006-XI). Accordingly, Articles 4 and 8 of Directive 2006/24 laying down rules relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data also constitute an interference with the rights guaranteed by Article 7 of the Charter. 36      Likewise, Directive 2006/24 constitutes an interference with the fundamental right to the protection of personal data guaranteed by Article 8 of the Charter because it provides for the processing of personal data.
  • 65      It follows from the above that Directive 2006/24 does not lay down clear and precise rules governing the extent of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter. It must therefore be held that Directive 2006/24 entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with those fundamental rights in the legal order of the EU, without such an interference being precisely circumscribed by provisions to ensure that it is actually limited to what is strictly necessary.66      Moreover, as far as concerns the rules relating to the security and protection of data retained by providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks, it must be held that Directive 2006/24 does not provide for sufficient safeguards, as required by Article 8 of the Charter, to ensure effective protection of the data retained against the risk of abuse and against any unlawful access and use of that data. In the first place, Article 7 of Directive 2006/24 does not lay down rules which are specific and adapted to (i) the vast quantity of data whose retention is required by that directive, (ii) the sensitive nature of that data and (iii) the risk of unlawful access to that data, rules which would serve, in particular, to govern the protection and security of the data in question in a clear and strict manner in order to ensure their full integrity and confidentiality. Furthermore, a specific obligation on Member States to establish such rules has also not been laid down.
  • 60      Secondly, not only is there a general absence of limits in Directive 2006/24 but Directive 2006/24 also fails to lay down any objective criterion by which to determine the limits of the access of the competent national authorities to the data and their subsequent use for the purposes of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions concerning offences that, in view of the extent and seriousness of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, may be considered to be sufficiently serious to justify such an interference. On the contrary, Directive 2006/24 simply refers, in Article 1(1), in a general manner to serious crime, as defined by each Member State in its national law.61      Furthermore, Directive 2006/24 does not contain substantive and procedural conditions relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data and to their subsequent use. Article 4 of the directive, which governs the access of those authorities to the data retained, does not expressly provide that that access and the subsequent use of the data in question must be strictly restricted to the purpose of preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal prosecutions relating thereto; it merely provides that each Member State is to define the procedures to be followed and the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain access to the retained data in accordance with necessity and proportionality requirements.
  • 55      The need for such safeguards is all the greater where, as laid down in Directive 2006/24, personal data are subjected to automatic processing and where there is a significant risk of unlawful access to those data (see, by analogy, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom, § 103, and M. K. v. France, 18 April 2013, no. 19522/09, § 35).56      As for the question of whether the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 is limited to what is strictly necessary, it should be observed that, in accordance with Article 3 read in conjunction with Article 5(1) of that directive, the directive requires the retention of all traffic data concerning fixed telephony, mobile telephony, Internet access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony. It therefore applies to all means of electronic communication, the use of which is very widespread and of growing importance in people’s everyday lives. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 3 of Directive 2006/24, the directive covers all subscribers and registered users. It therefore entails an interference with the fundamental rights of practically the entire European population. 57      In this respect, it must be noted, first, that Directive 2006/24 covers, in a generalised manner, all persons and all means of electronic communication as well as all traffic data without any differentiation, limitation or exception being made in the light of the objective of fighting against serious crime.
  • 62      In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not lay down any objective criterion by which the number of persons authorised to access and subsequently use the data retained is limited to what is strictly necessary in the light of the objective pursued. Above all, the access by the competent national authorities to the data retained is not made dependent on a prior review carried out by a court or by an independent administrative body whose decision seeks to limit access to the data and their use to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of attaining the objective pursued and which intervenes following a reasoned request of those authorities submitted within the framework of procedures of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions. Nor does it lay down a specific obligation on Member States designed to establish such limits. 63      Thirdly, so far as concerns the data retention period, Article 6 of Directive 2006/24 requires that those data be retained for a period of at least six months, without any distinction being made between the categories of data set out in Article 5 of that directive on the basis of their possible usefulness for the purposes of the objective pursued or according to the persons concerned.64      Furthermore, that period is set at between a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 24 months, but it is not stated that the determination of the period of retention must be based on objective criteria in order to ensure that it is limited to what is strictly necessary.
  • 52      So far as concerns the right to respect for private life, the protection of that fundamental right requires, according to the Court’s settled case-law, in any event, that derogations and limitations in relation to the protection of personal data must apply only in so far as is strictly necessary (Case C‑473/12 IPI EU:C:2013:715, paragraph 39 and the case-law cited).53      In that regard, it should be noted that the protection of personal data resulting from the explicit obligation laid down in Article 8(1) of the Charter is especially important for the right to respect for private life enshrined in Article 7 of the Charter.54      Consequently, the EU legislation in question must lay down clear and precise rules governing the scope and application of the measure in question and imposing minimum safeguards so that the persons whose data have been retained have sufficient guarantees to effectively protect their personal data against the risk of abuse and against any unlawful access and use of that data (see, by analogy, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, Eur. Court H.R., Liberty and Others v. the United Kingdom, 1 July 2008, no. 58243/00, § 62 and 63; Rotaru v. Romania, § 57 to 59, and S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom, § 99).
  • 26      In that regard, it should be observed that the data which providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks must retain, pursuant to Articles 3 and 5 of Directive 2006/24, include data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication and its destination, to identify the date, time, duration and type of a communication, to identify users’ communication equipment, and to identify the location of mobile communication equipment, data which consist, inter alia, of the name and address of the subscriber or registered user, the calling telephone number, the number called and an IP address for Internet services. Those data make it possible, in particular, to know the identity of the person with whom a subscriber or registered user has communicated and by what means, and to identify the time of the communication as well as the place from which that communication took place. They also make it possible to know the frequency of the communications of the subscriber or registered user with certain persons during a given period. 27      Those data, taken as a whole, may allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained, such as the habits of everyday life, permanent or temporary places of residence, daily or other movements, the activities carried out, the social relationships of those persons and the social environments frequented by them.
  • 32      By requiring the retention of the data listed in Article 5(1) of Directive 2006/24 and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, Directive 2006/24, as the Advocate General has pointed out, in particular, in paragraphs 39 and 40 of his Opinion, derogates from the system of protection of the right to privacy established by Directives 95/46 and 2002/58 with regard to the processing of personal data in the electronic communications sector, directives which provided for the confidentiality of communications and of traffic data as well as the obligation to erase or make those data anonymous where they are no longer needed for the purpose of the transmission of a communication, unless they are necessary for billing purposes and only for as long as so necessary.
  • On those grounds, the Court (Grand Chamber) hereby rules:Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC is invalid.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Jul 14
     
    EU Court of Justice decision in regard to a Directive that required communications data retention by telcos/ISPs, finding the Directive invalid as a violation of the right of privacy in communications. Fairly read, paragraph 59 outlaws bulk collection of such records, i.e., it requires the equivalent of a judge-issued search warrant in the U.S. based on probable cause to believe that the particular individual's communications are a legitimate object of a search.  Note also that paragraph 67 effectively forbids transfer of any retained data outside the E.U. So a barrier for NSA sharing of data with GCHQ derived from communications NSA collects from EU communications traffic. Bye-bye, Big Data for GCHQ in the E.U. 
Paul Merrell

How the NSA is still harvesting your online data | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...nsa-online-metadata-collection

surveillance state NSA Obama lies EvilOlive ShellTrumpet MoonLightPath Spinneret xKeyScore Deep Dive Transient Thurible

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • A review of top-secret NSA documents suggests that the surveillance agency still collects and sifts through large quantities of Americans' online data – despite the Obama administration's insistence that the program that began under Bush ended in 2011.Shawn Turner, the Obama administration's director of communications for National Intelligence, told the Guardian that "the internet metadata collection program authorized by the Fisa court was discontinued in 2011 for operational and resource reasons and has not been restarted."But the documents indicate that the amount of internet metadata harvested, viewed, processed and overseen by the Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate inside the NSA is extensive.While there is no reference to any specific program currently collecting purely domestic internet metadata in bulk, it is clear that the agency collects and analyzes significant amounts of data from US communications systems in the course of monitoring foreign targets.
  • On December 26 2012, SSO announced what it described as a new capability to allow it to collect far more internet traffic and data than ever before. With this new system, the NSA is able to direct more than half of the internet traffic it intercepts from its collection points into its own repositories. One end of the communications collected are inside the United States.The NSA called it the "One-End Foreign (1EF) solution". It intended the program, codenamed EvilOlive, for "broadening the scope" of what it is able to collect. It relied, legally, on "FAA Authority", a reference to the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act that relaxed surveillance restrictions.This new system, SSO stated in December, enables vastly increased collection by the NSA of internet traffic. "The 1EF solution is allowing more than 75% of the traffic to pass through the filter," the SSO December document reads. "This milestone not only opened the aperture of the access but allowed the possibility for more traffic to be identified, selected and forwarded to NSA repositories."
  • It continued: "After the EvilOlive deployment, traffic has literally doubled."The scale of the NSA's metadata collection is highlighted by references in the documents to another NSA program, codenamed ShellTrumpet.On December 31, 2012, an SSO official wrote that ShellTrumpet had just "processed its One Trillionth metadata record".
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • An SSO entry dated September 21, 2012, announced that "Transient Thurible, a new Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) managed XKeyScore (XKS) Deep Dive was declared operational." The entry states that GCHQ "modified" an existing program so the NSA could "benefit" from what GCHQ harvested."Transient Thurible metadata [has been] flowing into NSA repositories since 13 August 2012," the entry states.
  • Another SSO entry, dated February 6, 2013, described ongoing plans to expand metadata collection. A joint surveillance collection operation with an unnamed partner agency yielded a new program "to query metadata" that was "turned on in the Fall 2012". Two others, called MoonLightPath and Spinneret, "are planned to be added by September 2013."A substantial portion of the internet metadata still collected and analyzed by the NSA comes from allied governments, including its British counterpart, GCHQ.
  • Explaining that the five-year old program "began as a near-real-time metadata analyzer … for a classic collection system", the SSO official noted: "In its five year history, numerous other systems from across the Agency have come to use ShellTrumpet's processing capabilities for performance monitoring" and other tasks, such as "direct email tip alerting."Almost half of those trillion pieces of internet metadata were processed in 2012, the document detailed: "though it took five years to get to the one trillion mark, almost half of this volume was processed in this calendar year".
  • A review of top-secret NSA documents suggests that the surveillance agency still collects and sifts through large quantities of Americans' online data – despite the Obama administration's insistence that the program that began under Bush ended in 2011.Shawn Turner, the Obama administration's director of communications for National Intelligence, told the Guardian that "the internet metadata collection program authorized by the Fisa court was discontinued in 2011 for operational and resource reasons and has not been restarted."But the documents indicate that the amount of internet metadata harvested, viewed, processed and overseen by the Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate inside the NSA is extensive.While there is no reference to any specific program currently collecting purely domestic internet metadata in bulk, it is clear that the agency collects and analyzes significant amounts of data from US communications systems in the course of monitoring foreign targets.
Gary Edwards

Tea Party Primary prior to RINO Primary - Tea Party Command Center - 0 views

teapartyorg.ning.com/...-primary-prior-to-rino-primary

Tea-Party-Patriots

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Jul 13
     
    Reply by Gary Edwards to the question:   "Should the TEA Party select their slate of candidates prior to the establishment RiNO primaries?" This question really surprised me.  Of course the Tea Party should enter the establishment RiNO primary with a full slate of previously selected candidates for all levels of elected office. The reasons are obvious.  The establishment RiNOS consistently win by flooding the primary, encouraging multiple conservative and libertarian candidates; all the while knowing exactly who they have hand picked and expect the party to coalesce around. It's divide and conqueror.  The incredible thing is how routinely and with ease the RiNOS can rope-a-dope Rush Limbaugh and the entire cadre of conservative leadership.  And do it year after year. The rope-a-dope maneuver only requires that conservatives and libertarians wait for the establishment primary process to begin before they can begin the drawn out process needed to coalesce and vote as a block. As a block, the Tea Party wins easily.  And, they would actually get candidates ready to stand and fight for the Constitution. Once the game of electoral money ball starts though, it's impossible to select and coalesce based on principles.  Money drives the game.  And that plays right into the hands of the establishment. Think of it this way.  The Tea Party has the "votes" and the "ground game".  The establishment has the "money", and position to make the "rules". The current system of selecting candidates in the establishment primary ALWAYS results in "money" and "rule making" dominating and determining the winners.  The Tea Parties numerical and ground game advantages are quickly diluted, dispersed and split by multiple candidates vying for the same vote.  The RiNO slate wins through the fractional split of their Tea Party opponents, which they encourage and expect, and, the hardball application of their money and rules advantages.  The result is that less than a third of
Gary Edwards

Newt Gingrich: 15 Things You Don't Know About Him - 1 views

www.thefiscaltimes.com/...s-You-Dont-Know-About-Him.aspx

Newt-Gingrich Libertarians Ron-Paul Reagan-Constitutional-Conservative Banksters Liberty-Tryanny

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 11
     
    Good article on Newt; covers the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Personally i don't trust Newt.  As former repubican senator Jim Talent of Missouri says, "He's not a reliable and trusted conservative leader".  Strangely, Talent supports Romney. And there is nothing conservative about Romney.   The one thing i do like about Newt is that he is a bomb thrower extraordinaire.  There isn't a Libertarian (moi), conservative, or Constitutional conservative anywhere that wouldn't love to see Newt in the ring with Obama, hammering his Marxist ass without mercy.  But i'm not so sure that that desire is enough to overcome the serious character flaws and self centered egotistical baggage Newt hauls around.  He proves time and again that he lacks the core values of a true conservative, including dedication to the upholding the Constitution and Rule of Law. Funny though that a valueless establishment repubican "we can manage big government more efficiently and make it work" guy like Romney is attacking Newt as not being a true conservative?  What does that make Romney?  At least Newt can point to the awesome Contract with America repubican take over of Congress - after 40 years in the wilderness. Even though Ron Paul has lost it on foreign policy, i continue to send money.  My switch from Reagan Constitutional Conservative to Libertarian has "nearly" everything to do with the 2008 financial collapse, and the years of research and study that followed.   I say "nearly" because i just couldn't pull the trigger until unexpectedly i found myself in a Bloomberg discussion questioning my support for Herman Cain.  Sadly, Herman supports the Federal Reserve, including full approval of both Greenspan and Bernacke policies that have destroyed the US dollar and enabled the Banksters to run off with over $29 Trillion of our money.  Of course, this is an indefensible and inexcusable position.  The Libertarian's in the discussion pointed out that the problems this country faces cann
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Dec 11
     
    disclosure: I met Cokie and Steve Roberts at an intimate house party in NH. Probably in 1991. Very nice people but they are full blown unionist-socialist-progressives iron bent on the European Socialism model. Not Constitutionalist in any way shape of form. Certainly not Constitutional Capitalist or free market types either.
Gary Edwards

The worst rise to the top - Mises Economic Blog - 0 views

feeds.mises.org/...Z1MQ3qC2Jaw

Hayek Road-toSerfom Politics Mises-Economic-Institute

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Jan 12
     
    Very interesting post from Douglas French concerning the repubican primaries and F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfom" comments on modern politics. Fascinating stuff. Hayek argues that, in politics, "the worst rise to the top", and he outlines three reasons why: .... Choosing is the problem. Informed people are more "nuanced" - they have many divergent opinions and views. Uniformity however drives the group dynamics behind a democratic process. Uniformity of opinion rules, and the less informed a person is, the more uniform and drawn to larger groups they will be. The "lowest common denominator" rule rules the democratic process. Mobocracy at work. .... Those on top, pursuing the political leadership positions, must appeal to the masses and weave together the groups driven by the "lowest common denominator" rule. The docile and gullible "are ready to accept whatever values and ideology drummed into them". Advantage to big media, the socialist assemblage ruling public education, and public workers unions. ..... Third, political leaders "don't promote a positive agenda, but a negative one of hating an enemy and envy of the wealthy. To appeal to the masses, leaders preach an "us" against "them" program." The great unwashed and uninformed being guided and driven "by emotion and passion rather than critical thinking." Not sure i agree with any of this, much as i admire and recognize the importance of Hayek and his seminal, game changing "Road to Serfdom". One reason is that some of the most informed people i know are goose stepping socialist hell bent on ending individual liberty - as in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", in exchange for Marxist social equality. Another reason i would disagree is that the salt of the earth "bitter clingers" Reagan Conservatives that rock the Tea Party movement are exactly what the establishment elites call the "uninformed masses". Not sure if that's what Hayek meant, but his viewpoint does look a
Paul Merrell

NSA Insiders Reveal What Went Wrong | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...nsiders-reveal-what-went-wrong

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback VIPS Obama must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In a memo to President Obama, former National Security Agency insiders explain how NSA leaders botched intelligence collection and analysis before 9/11, covered up the mistakes, and violated the constitutional rights of the American people, all while wasting billions of dollars and misleading the public. January 7, 2014 MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Former NSA Senior Executives/Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Input for Your Decisions on NSA
  • Signed/ William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center. Thomas Drake, former Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service, NSA Edward Loomis, former Chief, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA J. Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA PREPARED UNDER AUSPICES OF AD HOC STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 14
     
    Former NSA officials publish an open memorandum to Obama, seeking a meeting with him to explain how the NSA is drowning in data that it cannot effectively process, how more than $1 billion was wasted on a never-completed system to process it, and how a $3 million system that could and did process it effectively was shot down by former NSA Director Michael Hayden so he could award the contract for the much more expensive version to his buddies. And much, much more
Paul Merrell

Half of Federal Agencies Still Use Outdated Freedom of Information Regulations - 0 views

www2.gwu.edu/...NSAEBB460

transparency Obama FOIA-regulations

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Nearly half (50 out of 101) of all federal agencies have still not updated their Freedom of Information Act regulations to comply with Congress's 2007 FOIA amendments, and even more agencies (55 of 101) have FOIA regulations that predate and ignore President Obama's and Attorney General Holder's 2009 guidance for a "presumption of disclosure," according to the new National Security Archive FOIA Audit released today to mark Sunshine Week. Congress amended the Freedom of Information Act in 2007 to prohibit agencies from charging processing fees if they missed their response deadlines, to include new online journalists in the fee waiver category for the media, to order agencies to cooperate with the new FOIA ombudsman (the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS), and to require reports of specific data on their FOIA output, among other provisions co-authored by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX). But half the government has yet to incorporate these changes in their regulations, according to the latest National Security Archive FOIA Audit. After President Obama's "Day One" commitments to open government, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new FOIA guidance on March 19, 2009, declaring that agencies should adopt a "presumption of disclosure," encourage discretionary releases if there was no foreseeable harm (even if technically covered by an exemption), proactively post the records of greatest public interest online, and remove "unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles" from the FOIA process. But five years later, the Archive found a majority of agencies have old regulations that simply ignore this guidance.
  • The Archive's FOIA Audit also highlights some good news this Sunshine Week: New plans from both the House of Representatives and White House have the potential to compel delinquent agencies to update their regulations. "Both Congress and the White House now recognize the problem of outdated FOIA regulations, and that is something to celebrate," said Archive director Tom Blanton. "But new regs should not follow the Justice Department's terrible lead, they must follow the best practices already identified by the FOIA ombuds office and FOIA experts." "If and when this important FOIA reform occurs, open government watchdogs must be vigilant to ensure that the agencies' updated regulations are progressive, rather than regressive, and embrace best practices to ensure that more documents are released to requesters, more quickly" said Nate Jones, the Archive's FOIA coordinator.
  • In 2011, the back-to-back Rosemary Award-winning Department of Justice proposed FOIA regulations that would have — among many other FOIA setbacks — allowed the Department to lie to FOIA requesters, eliminated online-only publications from receiving media fee status, and made it easier to destroy records. After intense pushback by openness advocates, the DOJ temporarily pulled these regulations, and Pustay claimed, "some people misinterpreted what we were trying to do, misconstrued some of the provisions, and didn't necessarily understand some of the fee guidelines." Pustay also claimed — to an incredulous Senate Judiciary Committee — that updating FOIA regulations to conform with the 2007 OPEN Government Act was merely optional and "not required." National Security Archive director Tom Blanton warned in his own 2013 Senate testimony that these terrible "vampire" regulations were not gone for good. This year, Pustay testified that the Department of Justice has indeed resubmitted its FOIA regulations for OMB approval; their content is unknown to the public.
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  • The House of Representatives recently unanimously passed the bipartisan Freedom of Information Act Implementation Act (H.R. 1211), which includes a provision compelling agencies to update their FOIA regulations. The House bill — which now awaits Senate approval — would require each agency to update its FOIA regulations "not later than 180 days after the enactment of this Act." The White House is also addressing the problem of outdated FOIA regulations, albeit in a different manner. In its latest Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, the White House has committed (on paper, at least) to creating one "core FOIA regulation and common set of practices [that] would make it easier for requesters to understand and navigate the FOIA process and easier for the Government to keep regulations up to date." Transparency watchdogs went on alert this week after the Department of Justice's Director of Information Policy Melanie Pustay announced during her Senate testimony on March 11, 2014 that, "My office is leading that project" to create the White House-backed common regulation which, she estimated will be, "a one or two year project." Despite Pustay's pledge that she would accept input from OGIS and the requester community, her Department's history of crafting FOIA regulations has been anything but stellar.
  • As the Department of Justice and other agencies have demonstrated, new regulations do not necessarily make good regulations. As such, the National Security Archive has recommended that any updated FOIA regulations must: mandate that FOIA officers embrace direct communications with requesters; require agencies to receive requests by e-mail and post all responses and documents online; direct agencies to update their FOIA processing software so documents can be posted to any online repository, including the government-sponsored FOIAonline; encourage agencies to join FOIAonline to make their FOIA processing more cost-effective and efficient; stream-line inter and intra-agency "referral" black holes — and keep requesters abreast of where their requests are if the agency does have to refer them; include language encouraging use of the OGIS, which can help requesters and agencies mediate disputes to avoid animosity and costly litigation; end the practice of using fees to discourage FOIA requesters. The Office of Government Information Services — which reviews and comments on agency regulations as they are proposed — has also compiled a list of best practices for agencies to consider while crafting regulations. These include: "let the Freedom of Information Act itself" — and its presumption for disclosure — "be your guide;" bring attorneys, FOIA processors, records managers and IT pros to the table; include your plan for records management and preservation; and alert requesters of their option to contact OGIS for mediation and dispute resolution services.
  • A useful compilation of current agency FOIA regulation language — already on the books — put together by the Center of Effective Government also includes helpful guidelines on preventing the destruction of requested records; narrowly interpreting claims of confidential business information; and clarifying fee waivers and procedures. FOIA experts are currently working to craft model, pro-transparency, CFR-ready language that agencies — or the drafters of government-wide common regulations — can use to bring agencies' Freedom of Information Act regulations up to standard. Watch this space, and then watch the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). "As the staffer who waded through every single federal agencies' FOIA website and CFR chapter to locate their — sometimes hidden — regulations, I learned FOIA officials often say they view their FOIA requesters as customers," said Archive researcher Lauren Harper, "I think easy to find, updated model FOIA regulations are the best way for agencies to demonstrate they truly value their customer service, and the spirit of the FOIA."
  • The National Security Archive has conducted thirteen FOIA audits since 2002. Modeled after the California Sunshine Survey and subsequent state "FOI Audits," the Archive's FOIA Audits use open-government laws to test whether or not agencies are obeying those same laws. Recommendations from previous Archive FOIA Audits have led directly to laws and executive orders which have: set explicit customer service guidelines, mandated FOIA backlog reduction, assigned individualized FOIA tracking numbers, forced agencies to report the average number of days needed to process requests, and revealed the (often embarrassing) ages of the oldest pending FOIA requests. The surveys include:
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 14
     
    Article includes tables indicating which agencies are out of compliance with which FOIA directives. 
Paul Merrell

Canadian Spies Collect Domestic Emails in Secret Security Sweep - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ony-express-email-surveillance

surveillance state Canada CSE bulk-collection email

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The emails are vacuumed up by the Canadian agency as part of its mandate to defend against hacking attacks and malware targeting government computers. It relies on a system codenamed PONY EXPRESS to analyze the messages in a bid to detect potential cyber threats.
  • Last year, CSE acknowledged it collected some private communications as part of cybersecurity efforts. But it refused to divulge the number of communications being stored or to explain for how long any intercepted messages would be retained. Now, the Snowden documents shine a light for the first time on the huge scope of the operation — exposing the controversial details the government withheld from the public. Under Canada’s criminal code, CSE is not allowed to eavesdrop on Canadians’ communications. But the agency can be granted special ministerial exemptions if its efforts are linked to protecting government infrastructure — a loophole that the Snowden documents show is being used to monitor the emails. The latest revelations will trigger concerns about how Canadians’ private correspondence with government employees are being archived by the spy agency and potentially shared with police or allied surveillance agencies overseas, such as the NSA. Members of the public routinely communicate with government employees when, for instance, filing tax returns, writing a letter to a member of parliament, applying for employment insurance benefits or submitting a passport application.
  • Chris Parsons, an internet security expert with the Toronto-based internet think tank Citizen Lab, told CBC News that “you should be able to communicate with your government without the fear that what you say … could come back to haunt you in unexpected ways.” Parsons said that there are legitimate cybersecurity purposes for the agency to keep tabs on communications with the government, but he added: “When we collect huge volumes, it’s not just used to track bad guys. It goes into data stores for years or months at a time and then it can be used at any point in the future.” In a top-secret CSE document on the security operation, dated from 2010, the agency says it “processes 400,000 emails per day” and admits that it is suffering from “information overload” because it is scooping up “too much data.” The document outlines how CSE built a system to handle a massive 400 terabytes of data from Internet networks each month — including Canadians’ emails — as part of the cyber operation. (A single terabyte of data can hold about a billion pages of text, or about 250,000 average-sized mp3 files.)
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  • The agency notes in the document that it is storing large amounts of “passively tapped network traffic” for “days to months,” encompassing the contents of emails, attachments and other online activity. It adds that it stores some kinds of metadata — data showing who has contacted whom and when, but not the content of the message — for “months to years.” The document says that CSE has “excellent access to full take data” as part of its cyber operations and is receiving policy support on “use of intercepted private communications.” The term “full take” is surveillance-agency jargon that refers to the bulk collection of both content and metadata from Internet traffic. Another top-secret document on the surveillance dated from 2010 suggests the agency may be obtaining at least some of the data by covertly mining it directly from Canadian Internet cables. CSE notes in the document that it is “processing emails off the wire.”
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15
     
    " CANADIAN SPIES COLLECT DOMESTIC EMAILS IN SECRET SECURITY SWEEP BY RYAN GALLAGHER AND GLENN GREENWALD @rj_gallagher@ggreenwald YESTERDAY AT 2:02 AM SHARE TWITTER FACEBOOK GOOGLE EMAIL PRINT POPULAR EXCLUSIVE: TSA ISSUES SECRET WARNING ON 'CATASTROPHIC' THREAT TO AVIATION CHICAGO'S "BLACK SITE" DETAINEES SPEAK OUT WHY DOES THE FBI HAVE TO MANUFACTURE ITS OWN PLOTS IF TERRORISM AND ISIS ARE SUCH GRAVE THREATS? NET NEUTRALITY IS HERE - THANKS TO AN UNPRECEDENTED GUERRILLA ACTIVISM CAMPAIGN HOW SPIES STOLE THE KEYS TO THE ENCRYPTION CASTLE Canada's electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians' emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada's equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The emails are vacuumed up by the Canadian agency as part of its mandate to defend against hacking attacks and malware targeting government computers. It relies on a system codenamed PONY EXPRESS to analyze the messages in a bid to detect potential cyber threats. Last year, CSE acknowledged it collected some private communications as part of cybersecurity efforts. But it refused to divulge the number of communications being stored or to explain for how long any intercepted messages would be retained. Now, the Snowden documents shine a light for the first time on the huge scope of the operation - exposing the controversial details the government withheld from the public. Under Canada's criminal code, CSE is no
clausonlaw22

How Long Does a Disability Appeal Take with a Lawyer? - 0 views

www.clausonlaw.com/...lity-appeal-take-with-a-lawyer

Social Security Disability Lawyers SSD Attorneys Law lawfirm

shared by clausonlaw22 on 02 Sep 24 - No Cached
  • clausonlaw22 on 02 Sep 24
     
    Applying for Social Security Disability benefits can often feel like an overwhelming process, especially after receiving a denial on your initial application. The time required to press a disability appeal varies considerably based on several factors: the stage of the appeal, the complexity of your case, and the processing efficiency of the Social Security Administration (SSA). While having a lawyer handle your appeal can streamline the process, it's essential to have a clear understanding of what each step entails and the time frames involved.
Paul Merrell

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Congress Defers to President On NSA R... - 0 views

ronpaulinstitute.org/...-president-on-nsa-reform-.aspx

surveillance state NSA legislative-oversight

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Written by Ron Paul
  • Congress’s decline from the Founders’ vision as “first among equals” in government to an echo chamber of the unitary executive, has been a slow but steady process. In the process we have seen a steady stream of unconstitutional wars and civil liberties abuses at home. Nowhere is this decline more evident than in the stark contrast between the Congressional response to intelligence agencies’ abuses during the post-Watergate era and its response to the far more serious NSA abuses uncovered in recent years.
  • The parallel to the present NSA scandals cannot be ignored. What is completely different, however, is that Congress is today acting as an advocate for the executive branch’s continuing abuses, and as an opponent to the civil liberties of US citizens. Not only has Congress – with a precious few exceptions – accepted the NSA’s mass spying program on American citizens, it has actually been encouraging the president to continue and expand the program!   Where once there was a Congressional committee to challenge and oppose the president’s abuse of power, today the president himself has been even allowed by a complacent Congress to hand pick his own NSA review commission!   Are we really expected to believe that a commission appointed by the president to look into the activities of the president’s intelligence services will come to anything more than a few superficial changes to give the impression of real reform?  
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  • One of the president’s commission recommendations is that the NSA cease holding our phone records and demand that the private phone companies retain those records instead – for the NSA to access as it wishes. This is supposed to be reform?   The president will make a speech this Friday to tell the rest of us which of the suggestions made by his own commission he will decide to implement. Congress has no problem with that. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) admitted last week that Congress has no intention of asserting itself in the process. “It’s my hope that [Obama will] do as much as he can through the executive process because the legislative process will be difficult, perilous and long.”
  • Senator Church famously said back in 1975: In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air… We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left... There would be no place to hide…. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” Have we reached that point? Let us hope not. Real reform begins with the repeal of the PATRIOT Act and of the 2001 Authorization for the use of military force. If we keep our eye on that goal and not allow ourselves to become distracted with the president’s phony commissions we might force Congress to listen.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Jan 14
     
    Ron Paul gives us a history lesson on Congressional oversight of NSA abuses and contrasts that with today's Congressional obedience to the unitary Executive's wishes.
Gary Edwards

Startup turns carbon dioxide into fuels - 0 views

phys.org/...rtup-carbon-dioxide-fuels.html

syngas synfuels energy Clean-Energy carbon dioxide

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The research has received funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFSOR), the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy (DOE). The collaboration between Liquid Light and the University was supported by the DOE Small Business Innovation Research program and the AFOSR Small Business Technology Transfer program. Princeton's agreement with Liquid Light allowed the company to continue to collaborate with Bocarsly and his research team. Before long, new discoveries were emerging. "They started noticing interesting chemistry that we wouldn't have predicted," said Bocarsly.
  • The Princeton scientists did some additional studies, and made a surprising discovery: They could turn CO2, which contains only one carbon, into a compound with a carbon-carbon bond, which vastly increases the possibilities for creating commercial applications. This was radical because although the reaction is certainly possible, it is highly unlikely to happen because so many other competing reactions are occurring. "Everyone who electrochemically reduces CO2 today makes compounds with only one carbon," said Bocarsly. "Nobody makes things with carbon-carbon bonds." He paused. "But we can." "That was a very 'wow' moment," recalled Cole, "because we thought that our process could only make methanol. But now we were finding that we could make a variety of products, and that is what makes this technology commercially interesting." She said Liquid Light scientists can now make more than 20 different products from CO2.
  • One of the chemicals Liquid Light can make is isopropanol, commonly known as rubbing alcohol and an important industrial chemical. Another is butanol, which could be commercially important as a fuel. Liquid Light's technology offers the potential to make these chemicals at lower cost than today's methods, which involve starting with fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas.
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  • Why does pyridinium work so well as a catalyst for the reaction? Based on its structure, the ring-shaped molecule is an unlikely catalyst for this reaction because it shuttles just one electron at a time. But to convert CO2 to methanol requires six electrons, and to make higher-carbon molecules takes even more electrons. Bocarsly and his team — in collaboration with Steven Bernasek, professor of chemistry — are doing studies to understand the steps in the chemical reaction, and they are making rapid progress. "There are clearly some intermediate products formed during the reaction that do not sit around for a long time and are not there in very high concentrations," said Bocarsly.
  • The Princeton team also is studying the factors that determine which products can be made from CO2. The researchers have found that very subtle changes in the electrode surface can lead to production of different chemicals. For example, CO2 plus a pyridinium catalyst and a platinum electrode make methanol. However, the same catalyst and a different electrode give a different product. The team published its findings on how the reaction is affected by catalyst concentration, temperature and pressure in the journal ChemSusChem last year.
  • Citing government statistics that the United States generates about 5.5 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, Teamey said it will not be hard to obtain the starting materials for this new industry. However, the CO2 needs to be relatively pure, a requirement that rules out gasoline tailpipes and coal-fired power plants. Instead, said Teamey, the CO2 could come from manufacturing facilities, such as fertilizer manufacturers and cement plants, which according to Teamey emit some 100 million tons of high-purity CO2 each year.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Feb 14
     
    "Today, carbon dioxide (CO2) is a hot topic. Scientists around the globe are searching for ways to store, dispose of, or prevent the formation of the greenhouse gas, which is a major driver of global climate change. Liquid Light hopes to take this concept one step further and harness waste CO2 as a source of carbon to make industrial chemicals and fuels. The technology behind the process is simple: Take CO2 and mix it in a water-filled chamber with an electrode and a catalyst. The ensuing chemical reaction converts CO2 into a new molecule, methanol, which can be used as a fuel, an industrial solvent or a starting material for the manufacture of other chemicals. Liquid Light's founders include Bocarsly and his former graduate student Emily Cole, who earned her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2009. Cole helped revive efforts in Bocarsly's lab to study the conversion of CO2 into usable fuels, which led to the launch of Liquid Light and an ongoing collaboration that Bocarsly said has been extremely positive for his research team at the University. "We've made some discoveries that wouldn't have been made in a university setting, and this has really accelerated the research," Bocarsly said. "It is a very productive relationship." Back in the 1990s, a former Ph.D. student of Bocarsly's named Chao Lin conducted some of the earliest experiments on turning CO2 into methanol. He used palladium metal as the electrode and pyridinium, an inexpensive ring-shaped molecule, as the catalyst. By plugging the electrode into an electrical outlet, he could drive an electrochemical reaction that converted CO2 into methanol. As Bocarsly recalled, Lin was quite excited about his success. However, said Bocarsly, "We published that finding in 1994 and there was approximately zero interest in it." The work languished until 2005 when Cole, then a new graduate student, told Bocarsly she wanted to work on a clean-energy project. She took up the challenge of reproducing Lin's results, but this time
Paul Merrell

Secrecy News - from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy - 0 views

blogs.fas.org/secrecy

surveillance state Cybersecurity research-resources Cloud-Computing

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • New or newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.
  • Cybersecurity: Authoritative Reports and Resources, October 25, 2013
  • “The President… recognizes that U.S. citizens and institutions should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from foreign or domestic intercept when using the public telephone system,” according to National Security Decision Memorandum 338 of September 1, 1976 (document 180).
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  • The Central Intelligence Agency today asked a court to allow more time to declassify its response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) activities, which itself is undergoing a time-consuming declassification review. “This complex process requires the careful review of over 500 pages of highly classified material. In addition, sufficient time must be allowed not only for coordination with other agencies, but — after completion of declassification review — for implementation of security measures to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel and facilities overseas,” according to a May 15 motion filed by the government in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU. “Due to the fluid nature of this process, aspects of which are beyond the CIA’s control, the Agency does not yet have a firm date by which it can complete the processing of the CIA Response [to the SSCI report] and the so-called Panetta Report, although it hopes the declassification review and accompanying processing of those documents can be completed this summer.” The CIA therefore requested an extension of time to respond, to which the ACLU plaintiffs did not consent.
  • With respect to the Senate Intelligence Committee report itself, the government promised an “expeditious” declassification review of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions. “While all declassification decisions are guided by the need to protect national security interests, the President has expressed a clear intent to declassify as much of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the SSCI Report as possible, and intends the declassification process to be expeditious,” the government motion said. According to an April 18 letter from then-White House counsel Katherine Ruemmler, appended to the new motion, “The President supports making public the Committee’s important review of the historical RDI program, as he believes that public scrutiny and debate will help to inform the public understanding of the program and to ensure that such a program will not be contemplated by a future administration.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 13
     
    Congress in its wisdom does not publish all Congressional Research Service reports online. The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy fills that gap. The report linked in this bookmark is an amazing compendium of research resources on the topic of cybersecurity, with a heavy emphasis on cloud computing. 
Paul Merrell

Show Us the Drone Memos - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...show-us-the-drone-memos.html

tyranny Obama 5th-Amendment 4th Amendment assassinations Rand Paul drones

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 May 14 - No Cached
  • I BELIEVE that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate. I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens.But President Obama is seeking to do just that. He has nominated David J. Barron, a Harvard law professor and a former acting assistant attorney general, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
  • I believe that all senators should have access to all of these opinions. Furthermore, the American people deserve to see redacted versions of these memos so that they can understand the Obama administration’s legal justification for this extraordinary exercise of executive power. The White House may invoke national security against disclosure, but legal arguments that affect the rights of every American should not have the privilege of secrecy.I agree with the A.C.L.U. that “no senator can meaningfully carry out his or her constitutional obligation to provide ‘advice and consent’ on this nomination to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge without being able to read Mr. Barron’s most important and consequential legal writing.” The A.C.L.U. cites the fact that in modern history, a presidential order to kill an American citizen away from a battlefield is unprecedented.The Bill of Rights is clear. The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment provides that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,” as well as the right to be informed of all charges and have access to legal counsel. These are fundamental rights that cannot be waived with a presidential pen.
  • In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield, however despicable, are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution.
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  • While he was an official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Barron wrote at least two legal memos justifying the execution without a trial of an American citizen abroad. Now Mr. Obama is refusing to share that legal argument with the American people. On April 30, I wrote to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, urging him to delay this nomination, pending a court-ordered disclosure of the first memo I knew about. Since that letter, I have learned more. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to all senators on May 6, noting that in the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, “there are at least eleven OLC opinions on the targeted killing or drone program.” It has not been established whether Mr. Barron wrote all those memos, but we do know that his controversial classified opinions provided the president with a legal argument and justification to target an American citizen for execution without a trial by jury or due process.
  • No one argues that Americans who commit treason shouldn’t be punished. The maximum penalty for treason is death. But the Constitution specifies the process necessary to convict.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story AdvertisementAnwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was subject to a kill order from Mr. Obama, and was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a missile fired from a drone. I don’t doubt that Mr. Awlaki committed treason and deserved the most severe punishment. Under our Constitution, he should have been tried — in absentia, if necessary — and allowed a legal defense. If he had been convicted and sentenced to death, then the execution of that sentence, whether by drone or by injection, would not have been an issue. Continue reading the main story 526 Comments But this new legal standard does not apply merely to a despicable human being who wanted to harm the United States. The Obama administration has established a legal justification that applies to every American citizen, whether in Yemen, Germany or Canada.
  • Defending the rights of all American citizens to a trial by jury is a core value of our Constitution. Those who would make exceptions for killing accused American citizens without trial should give thought to the times in our history when either prejudice or fear allowed us to forget due process. During World War I, our nation convicted and imprisoned Americans who voiced opposition to the war. During World War II, the government interned Japanese-Americans.The rule of law exists to protect those who are minorities by virtue of their skin color or their beliefs. That is why I am fighting this nomination. And I will do so until Mr. Barron frankly discusses his opinions on executing Americans without trial, and until the American people are able to participate in one of the most consequential debates in our history. Rand Paul is a Republican senator from Kentucky.
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