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Paul Merrell

Disclosing Classified Info to the Press - With Permission | - 0 views

fas.org/...authorized-disclosure

surveillance state NSA authorized-disclosures

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Intelligence officials disclosed classified information to members of the press on at least three occasions in 2013, according to a National Security Agency report to Congress that was released last week under the Freedom of Information Act. See Congressional Notification — Authorized Disclosures of Classified Information to Media Personnel, NSA memorandum to the staff director, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, December 13, 2013. The specific information that NSA gave to the unnamed reporters was not declassified. But the disclosures were not “leaks,” or unauthorized disclosures. They were, instead, authorized disclosures. For their part, the reporters agreed not to disseminate the information further. “Noteworthy among the classified topics disclosed were NSA’s use of metadata to locate terrorists, the techniques we use and the processes we follow to assist in locating hostages, [several words deleted] overseas support to the warfighter and U.S. allies in war zones, and NSA support to overall USG efforts to mitigate cyber threats. The [deleted] personnel executed non-disclosure agreements that covered all classified discussions.” In one case, “classified information was disclosed in order to correct inaccurate understandings held by the reporter about the nature and circumstances of [deleted].” On another occasion, “classified information was disclosed in an effort to limit or avoid reporting that could lead to the loss of the capability [deleted].”
  • In all three cases, “the decision to disclose classified information was made in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence pursuant to Executive Order 13526, and in each case the information disclosed remains properly classified.” This seems like a generous interpretation of the Executive Order, which does not mention disclosures to the press at all. It does say, in section 4.2(b) that “In an emergency, when necessary to respond to an imminent threat to life or in defense of the homeland, the agency head or any designee may authorize the disclosure of classified information […] to an individual or individuals who are otherwise not eligible for access.” In an emergency, then, but not just “to correct inaccurate understandings.” Still, the report accurately reflects the true instrumental nature of the classification system. That is, the protection of classified information under all circumstances is not a paramount goal. National security secrecy is a tool to be used if it advances the national interest (and is consistent with law and policy) and to be set aside when it does not. So hypocrisy in the handling of classified information is not an issue here. The concern, rather, is that the power of selective disclosure of classified material can be easily abused to manage and to manipulate public perceptions. The congressional requirement to report on authorized disclosures of classified information to the press may help to mitigate that danger.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 17
     
    This would set up an interesting Freedom of Information Act case aimed at resolving the issue whether the "authorized" disclosures established a waiver of the FOIA exemption for national security information. A waiver, viewed most simplistically, is any conduct that is inconsistent with later assertion of a right. Deliberate disclosure to anyone who lacks a national security clearance would seem to be inconsistent with later assertion of the exemption. That the purpose of the disclosures was to adjust the attitudes of press members seems a very poor justification in that it establishes particular reporters as a class of persons entitled to more disclosure than other members of the public. Yet the Supreme Court has held time and again that journalists have no more right to access government information than any other member of the public. So there is a strong argument that everyone should be entitled to the same disclosures.
Paul Merrell

Congress Repeals Financial Disclosure Requirements For Senior U.S. Officials : The Two-... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ments-for-senior-u-s-officials

corruption financial disclosures legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Joining the Senate, the House of Representatives approved a measure today that repeals a requirement that top government officials post financial disclosures on the Internet. The House, like the Senate, acted quietly without a vote. Instead, they sent the measure to the president's desk by unanimous consent. The provision was part of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (Stock), which became law in March of 2012. The act was intended to stop members of congress from profiting from nonpublic information.
  • : "That law mainly addressed conflict-of-interest policies for members of Congress and their staffs, but it also included a requirement that the financial disclosure forms filed by some 28,000 high-ranking federal employees be posted online. "While those forms are public records, they must be requested individually from employing agencies. The Stock Act envisions online posting first on agency sites and later in a central, searchable database. "The posting requirement was delayed three times out of concerns about the potential for identity theft and other crimes against career employees, as well as security risks to the government."
  • The Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for a more open government, called today's repeal an "epic failure." The foundation explained that instead of addressing specific security concerns, Congress has acted broadly. For instance, they note, the president, vice president, members of Congress, congressional candidates and individuals subject to Senate confirmation are still required to make their financial disclosures public. But the change in law now makes the posting of those disclosures on the Internet optional.
Paul Merrell

Snooper's charter has practically zero chance of becoming law, say senior MPs | UK news... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...oopers-charter-zero-chance-law

surveillance state UK EU NSA-blowback cloud computing

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The chances of Theresa May reintroducing her "snooper's charter" communications data bill are practically zero in the wake of the Guardian's disclosures on the scale of internet surveillance, leading Tory and Labour civil liberties campaigners have said.David Davis, a former contender for Conservative leadership, and Tom Watson, the Labour deputy chair, both said on Thursday they felt there had been a change in the atmosphere at Westminster compared with the "great rush" to legislate in the immediate aftermath of the Woolwich murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.Both MPs said the disclosure of the mass harvesting of personal communications, including internet data, by the American National Security Agency and Britain's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, had shown that the existing UK regulatory framework was completely ineffective.Davis said in particular that GCHQ's Tempora operation, which harvests global phone and internet traffic by tapping into the transatlantic fibre-optic cables, had "put up a big red flag" indicating it was time to think again from scratch about the legal oversight arrangements.
  • He said it was necessary to look at ways of rewriting the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which sets out the legal oversight arrangements for the interception and surveillance of communications.But the former shadow home secretary and staunch Eurosceptic also praised the efforts of Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, who wrote to the foreign secretary, William Hague, on Wednesday giving him until the end of the week to answer the charge that the fundamental rights of citizens across Europe were being flouted."I hope that Viviane Reding keeps up the pressure. This is the only time you will hear me say that the European Union might be the answer," said Davis.Watson said he shared Davis's analysis of the poor prospects for the reintroduction of May's communications data bill, which would require internet and phone companies to store for up to 12 months data tracking everyone's use of email, phone and internet.
  • The meeting heard from surveillance experts Casper Bowden, a former chief privacy adviser to Microsoft, and solicitor/advocate, Simon McKay. Bowden said a huge debt was owed to Snowden, who had made the most important disclosures about surveillance for more than 25 years.He said the disclosures had serious implications for the corporate and individual stampede towards the use of "cloud computing" storage, much of which was housed in the US. He said that there was a real danger now that Britain would be left in an exposed position, with the rest of Europe not willing to allow their data to be stored through the UK. "Keep your cloudbase close and local and keep it in your jurisdiction," he said, adding that encryption was very limited as a defence.Bowden, who has worked as an adviser to the EU on its new data protection directive, which has yet to come into force principally because of British opposition, said he had secured an amendment giving protection for whistleblowers.He had also argued for a warning "pop-up" to be required when data was being transferred outside the EU's borders.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Jun 13
     
    Finally, acknowledgement that the growth of the cloud computing industry will likely be affected greatly by disclosures of widespread US and UK storage and surveillance of digital data. But will this be enough to turn cloud computing companies into staunch advocates of reining in the NSA and GCHQ? Note that the emerging E.U. position creates an economic advantage for cloud computing companies with their server farms located in the E.U. (likely excluding the UK). 
Paul Merrell

Mozilla Wants Heads-Up From FBI on Tor Browser Hack - 0 views

theintercept.com/...p-from-fbi-on-tor-browser-hack

surveillance state Firefox Tor zero-day-exploits FBI

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 May 16 - No Cached
  • The maker of the Firefox browser is wading into an increasingly contentious court battle over an undisclosed security vulnerability the FBI used to track down anonymous users of a child-porn site. The FBI took over a dark web child-pornography site called Playpen last year and, rather than shut it down, used a secret, still-undisclosed vulnerability in the Tor Browser to install malware on the computers of more than 1,000 users that allowed the FBI to determine their locations. But in Tacoma, Washington, lawyers for a school administrator caught in the dragnet have successfully demanded the right to review the malware in order to pursue their argument that it, rather than he, was responsible for the illicit material ending up on his computer. The Tor Browser is a free browser that shields a user’s identity. It is also based on code from the Firefox browser. Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, has long worried that the Tor Browser vulnerability might still be out there, could be exploited by bad actors, and could exist in Firefox, which is much more widely used than the Tor Browser.
  • So while it seems likely that the FBI will go to great lengths not to turn over the code – possibly dropping the case altogether – Mozilla’s top lawyer, Denelle Dixon-Thayer, is now arguing “that the government must disclose the vulnerability to us before it is disclosed to any other party.” She explained: “Court ordered disclosure of vulnerabilities should follow the best practice of advance disclosure that is standard in the security research community. In this instance, the judge should require the government to disclose the vulnerability to the affected technology companies first, so it can be patched quickly.” Dixon-Thayer noted that Mozilla isn’t taking sides, pro- or anti-disclosure. It just wants to make sure that if there is disclosure, Mozilla gets it first. Here is the legal brief Mozilla filed on Wednesday. The issue of when the government should disclose security vulnerabilities is a hotly contested issue outside the courtroom as well.
  • The Obama administration’s policy is that when the government learns of a new flaw, it has to submit the flaw to an interagency group. The White House says that group has a “strong bias” toward disclosure to vendors so that they can fix them, rather than just letting the agencies keep the flaws secret and continue to use them. But the evidence suggests that is not the case.
Paul Merrell

Why AT&T's Surveillance Report Omits 80 Million NSA Targets | Threat Level | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...ma-bell-non-transparency

surveillance state NSA transparency Obama AT&T

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • AT&T this week released for the first time in the phone company’s 140-year history a rough accounting of how often the U.S. government secretly demands records on telephone customers. But to those who’ve been following the National Security Agency leaks, Ma Bell’s numbers come up short by more than 80 million spied-upon Americans. AT&T’s transparency report counts 301,816 total requests for information — spread between subpoenas, court orders and search warrants — in 2013. That includes between 2,000 and 4,000 under the category “national security demands,” which collectively gathered information on about 39,000 to 42,000 different accounts. There was a time when that number would have seemed high. Today, it’s suspiciously low, given the disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the NSA’s bulk metadata program. We now know that the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is ordering the major telecoms to provide the NSA a firehose of metadata covering every phone call that crosses their networks. An accurate transparency report should include a line indicating that AT&T has turned over information on each and every one of its more than 80 million-plus customers. It doesn’t.
  • That’s particularly ironic, given that it was Snowden’s revelations about this so-called “Section 215″ metadata spying that paved the way for the transparency report. In Snowden’s wake, technology companies pushed President Barack Obama to craft new rules allowing them to be more transparent about how much customer data they’re forced to provide the NSA and other agencies. In a Jan. 17 globally televised speech, Obama finally agreed. We will also enable communications providers to make public more information than ever before about the orders they have received to provide data to the government. But when the new transparency guidelines came out on Jan. 27, the language left it unclear whether discussing bulk collection was allowed, says Alex Abdo, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney. AT&T on Monday became the first phone company to release a transparency report under the new rules, and the results seem to confirm that the metadata collection is still meant to stay secret. “This transparency report confirmed our fear that the DOJ’s apparent concession was carefully crafted to prevent real transparency,” Abdo says. “If they want real transparency, they would allow the disclosure of the bulk telephone metadata program.”
  • The guidelines allow for the disclosure, in chunks of 1,000, of “the number of customer selectors [phone numbers] targeted under FISA non-content orders.” Since the bulk metadata collection doesn’t “target” any “selectors” it is, by definition, not subject to disclosure. This loophole is no accident of phrasing. In other sections of the guidelines covering National Security Letters — a type of subpoena that doesn’t require a judge’s signature — Obama allows disclosure of the “number of customer accounts affected.” If the guidelines used that same language for the FISA disclosures, AT&T’s transparency report would presumably disclose that more than 80 million customers — that would be all of AT&T’s customers — had been spied upon. The end result, observes Kevin Bankston, the policy director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, is that Obama’s so-called reform has spawned a misleading report that provides false comfort to AT&T customers — and all Americans.
Paul Merrell

Court Rebukes White House Over "Secret Law" - Secrecy News - 1 views

blogs.fas.org/...ppd-secret-law

Obama Obama-administration transparency government secrecy FOIA litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • DC District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle yesterday ordered the Obama Administration to release a copy of an unclassified presidential directive, and she said the attempt to withhold it represented an improper exercise of “secret law.” The Obama White House has a “limitless” view of its authority to withhold presidential communications from the public, she wrote, but that view is wrong. “The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight– to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law’,” Judge Huvelle wrote in her December 17 opinion. “The Court finds equally troubling the government’s complementary suggestion that ‘effective’ governance requires that a President’s substantive and non-classified directives to Executive Branch agencies remain concealed from public scrutiny,” she wrote.
  • The directive in question, Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 6, “is a widely-publicized, non-classified Presidential Policy Directive on issues of foreign aid and development that has been distributed broadly within the Executive Branch and used by recipient agencies to guide decision-making,” the Judge noted. “Even though issued as a directive, the PPD-6 carries the force of law as policy guidance to be implemented by recipient agencies, and it is the functional equivalent of an Executive Order.” “Never before has a court had to consider whether the [presidential communications] privilege protects from disclosure under FOIA a final, non-classified, presidential directive.”
  • Several significant points emerge from this episode. First, President Obama’s declared commitment to “creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government” has not been internalized even by the President’s own staff. This latest case of “unbounded” secrecy cannot be blamed on the CIA or an overzealous Justice Department attorney. It is entirely an Obama White House production, based on a White House policy choice. Second, and relatedly, it has proved to be an error to expect the executive branch to unilaterally impose transparency on itself. To do so is to ignore, or to wish away, the Administration’s own conflicting interests in secrecy and disclosure.  Instead, it is the role of the other branches of government to check the executive and to compel appropriate disclosure.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Significantly, Judge Huvelle insisted on examining the document herself in camera instead of simply relying on the Administration’s characterization of the document.  Having done so, she found that it “is not ‘revelatory of the President’s deliberations’ such that its public disclosure would undermine future decision-making.” She criticized the government for “the unbounded nature” of its claim. “In the government’s view, it can shield from disclosure under FOIA any presidential communication, even those — like the PPD-6 — that carry the force of law, simply because the communication originated with the President…. The Court rejects the government’s limitless approach….”
  • An official Fact Sheet on PPD-6 (which has not yet been released) is available here. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is currently pursuing release of another presidential directive, the Bush Administration’s NSPD-54 on cyber security. In October, Judge Beryl Howell unexpectedly ruled that that directive was exempt from disclosure because, she said, it was not an “agency record” that would be subject to the FOIA.  Her opinion came as a surprise and was not persuasive to everyone. In a footnote in yesterday’s ruling, Judge Huvelle said that the arguments over the two directives were sufficiently distinguishable that “this Court need not decide if it will follow Judge Howell’s rationale”– suggesting that if pressed, she might not have done so.  Yesterday, EPIC filed a notice of its intent to appeal the decision.
  • DC District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle yesterday ordered the Obama Administration to release a copy of an unclassified presidential directive, and she said the attempt to withhold it represented an improper exercise of “secret law.” The Obama White House has a “limitless” view of its authority to withhold presidential communications from the public, she wrote, but that view is wrong. “The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight– to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law’,” Judge Huvelle wrote in her December 17 opinion. “The Court finds equally troubling the government’s complementary suggestion that ‘effective’ governance requires that a President’s substantive and non-classified directives to Executive Branch agencies remain concealed from public scrutiny,” she wrote.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 13
     
    Outrageous. I read the court's opinion. This happened only because: [i] federal judges are reluctant to impose sanctions on government attorneys; and [ii] government attorneys know that. In all my years of legal practice, I read only one court opinion where an assistant U.S. attorney was sanctioned and instead of the normal sanction of paying the other side's attorney fees and expenses of litigation, the judge just awarded a $500 sanction. That is also why litigating against the Feds is such a chore; you spend half your time shooting down blatantly implausible arguments. That's far less of a problem when facing attorneys who are in private practice. But so much for Obama's "transparency" platform; this was the result of the Obama Administration itself asserting a preposterous privilege claim supported only by ridiculous arguments, no more than a delaying action.  
Paul Merrell

FindLaw | Cases and Codes - 0 views

caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/...getcase.pl

surveillance state NSA pen-register 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
  • The telephone company, at police request, installed at its central offices a pen register to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner's home. Prior to his robbery trial, petitioner moved to suppress "all fruits derived from" the pen register. The Maryland trial court denied this motion, holding that the warrantless installation of the pen register did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Petitioner was convicted, and the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: The installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. Pp. 739-746. (a) Application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a "legitimate expectation of privacy" that has been invaded by government action. This inquiry normally embraces two questions: first, whether the individual has exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy; and second, whether his expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 . Pp. 739-741.
  • (b) Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and even if he did, his expectation was not "legitimate." First, it is doubtful that telephone users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities for recording this information and does in fact record it for various legitimate business purposes. And petitioner did not demonstrate an expectation of privacy merely by using his home phone rather than some other phone, since his conduct, although perhaps calculated to keep the contents of his conversation private, was not calculated to preserve the privacy of the number he dialed. Second, even if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." When petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal the information [442 U.S. 735, 736]   to the police, cf. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 . Pp. 741-746. 283 Md. 156, 389 A. 2d 858, affirmed.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 13
     
    The Washington Post has reported that "on July 15 [2001], the secret surveillance court allowed the NSA to resume bulk collection under the court's own authority. The opinion, which remains highly classified, was based on a provision of electronic surveillance law, known as "pen register, trap and trace," that was written to allow law enforcement officers to obtain the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls from a single telephone line." .  The seminal case on pen registers is the Supreme Court's 1979 Smith v. Maryland decision, bookmarked here and the Clerk's syllabus highlighted, with the Court's discussion on the same web page. We will be hearing a lot about this case decision in the weeks and months to come.  Let it suffice for now to record a few points of what my antenna are telling me:  -- Both technology and the law have moved on since then. We are 34 years down the line from the Smith decision. Its pronouncements have been sliced and diced by subsequent decisions. Not a single Justice who sat on the Smith case is still on the High Bench.   -- In Smith, a single pen register was used to obtain calling information from a single telephone number by law enforcement officials. In the present circumstance, we face an Orwellian situation of a secret intelligence agency with no law enforcement authority forbidden by law from conducting domestic surveillance perusing and all digital communications of the entire citizenry. -- The NSA has been gathering not only information analogous to pen register results but also the communications of American citizens themselves. The communications themselves --- the contents --- are subject to the 4th Amendment warrant requirement. Consider the circuitous route of the records ordered to be disclosed in the Verizon FISA order. Verizon was ordered to disclose them to the FBI, not to the NSA. But then the FBI apparently forwards the records to the NSA, who has both the "pen register
Gary Edwards

Bernanke Scolds Congress/Keeps Bailouts Details Secret | Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog - 0 views

usawatchdog.com/keeps-bailout-details-secret-2

Bernanke federal-reserve financial-oligarchs financial-collapse Banksters banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The Fed was sued by financial news network Bloomberg two years ago.  Bloomberg wants the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bloomberg won the case and the Fed appealed.  Bloomberg, also, won the appeal in March 2010!  The precedent setting case would force the Fed to reveal the details of secret bank bailouts–including $500 billion given to foreign financial firms!!    In a Bloomberg story earlier this week, lawyers representing the Federal Reserve (which is made up in part by big U.S. banks) said, “U.S. commercial banks will take their fight against disclosure of Federal Reserve (documents) in 2008 to the Supreme Court if necessary . . .”  Lawyers representing the Fed say they are worried that if details of trillions of dollars in bailouts are revealed, it could cause another financial meltdown.  General Council for the Fed, Paul Saltzman, says, “Our member banks are very concerned about real-time disclosure of information that could cause a run on the banks.”  This is another story, with dire implications, the mainstream media is ignoring.  (Click here for the complete Bloomberg story)
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 10
     
    This article has two parts.  The first is Bernanke's waarnign to Congress that the Federal debt is out of control and they need to raise taxes AND cut spending.  The second part however is far more interesting.  Author Greg Hunter describes the Bloomberg Media court quest to force the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bernanke of course is fighting in the courts to keep this secret.   excerpts:  Earlier this week, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke told Congress to basically raise taxes and cut the federal budget.  The inference was, if Congress doesn't get its financial house in order, it will be their fault if the economy tanks.  Here is how Bernanke actually said it, ". . . Maintaining the confidence of the public and the financial markets requires policy makers more decisively to put the budget on a sustainable fiscal balance."   Bernanke also said the federal debt ". . .is already expected to be greater than 70%" of Gross Domestic Product, ". . . at the end of 2012."  And if that is not bad enough, Bernanke said that by 2020, ". . .federal debt would balloon to more than 100% of GDP," provided  taxes are not raised and budgets are not cut.  The Fed was sued by financial news network Bloomberg two years ago.  Bloomberg wants the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bloomberg won the case and the Fed appealed.  Bloomberg, also, won the appeal in March 2010!  The precedent setting case would force the Fed to reveal the details of secret bank bailouts-including $500 billion given to foreign financial firms!!    In a Bloomberg story earlier this week, lawyers representing the Federal Reserve (which is made up in part by big U.S. banks) said, "U.S. commercial banks will take their fight against disclosure of Federal Reserve (documents) in 2008 to the Supreme Court if necessary . . ."  Lawyers representing the Fed say they are worried that if details of tril
Paul Merrell

As Yemen Crumbled, a Disappeared US Detainee Called Home in Fear for His Life | VICE News - 0 views

news.vice.com/...lled-home-in-fear-for-his-life

war & peace Yemen Obama-renditions Sharif-Mobley cover-up

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • On January 20, as Houthi fighters battled the guards watching the compound of Yemen's president and further expanded their grip on the capital, a US citizen who has been detained in Sana'a since 2010 and hasn't been seen in almost a year called home to say that the Shia rebels had taken over the prison where he is held and that they planned to "kill everyone," according to his wife who resides in the US."Yemen is in complete turmoil as of yesterday," she wrote on a Facebook page advocating for his release. "He was able to make a call and asked for his country, America, to save his life by rescuing him from a sectarian battle between two groups [with] which he has no involvement."Sharif Mobley, a 31-year-old father of three from New Jersey, was snatched by Yemeni security officers 5 years ago and is suspected by the US of having ties to terrorist groups after he made contract with US-born Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a US drone attack in Yemen in 2011. His wife, who lived with him at the time of his capture, said they had traveled to Yemen to study Arabic and the teachings of Islam.
  • On January 20, as Houthi fighters battled the guards watching the compound of Yemen's president and further expanded their grip on the capital, a US citizen who has been detained in Sana'a since 2010 and hasn't been seen in almost a year called home to say that the Shia rebels had taken over the prison where he is held and that they planned to "kill everyone," according to his wife who resides in the US.
  • On January 20, as Houthi fighters battled the guards watching the compound of Yemen's president and further expanded their grip on the capital, a US citizen who has been detained in Sana'a since 2010 and hasn't been seen in almost a year called home to say that the Shia rebels had taken over the prison where he is held and that they planned to "kill everyone," according to his wife who resides in the US."Yemen is in complete turmoil as of yesterday," she wrote on a Facebook page advocating for his release. "He was able to make a call and asked for his country, America, to save his life by rescuing him from a sectarian battle between two groups [with] which he has no involvement."Sharif Mobley, a 31-year-old father of three from New Jersey, was snatched by Yemeni security officers 5 years ago and is suspected by the US of having ties to terrorist groups after he made contract with US-born Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a US drone attack in Yemen in 2011. His wife, who lived with him at the time of his capture, said they had traveled to Yemen to study Arabic and the teachings of Islam.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Mobley was shot in the leg during his abduction, and interrogated by FBI agents and representatives of the US Department of Defense while in hospital on January 30, 2010 — but never charged with terrorism. Instead, Yemeni authorities later charged him with the murder of a guard during a failed escape attempt, for which he now faces the death penalty. His lawyer was never formally notified of the charges against him.While his trial is ongoing, Mobley hasn't been seen in court since February 2014. In sporadic, frantic calls made from the cell phone of the occasional sympathetic guard, he has reportedly told his wife that he is being tortured and threatened. On his last call, two days before Yemen's president resigned, plunging the country into political chaos, Mobley once again told his wife that he fears for his life.
  • Mobley's lawyer, Cori Crider — the legal director of Reprieve, a UK-based legal aid group — told us that Islam is "really, really scared right now." "There is no trial process anymore, it hasn't happened for ages," said Crider, who hasn't been told where her client is and hasn't been able to speak with him in nearly a year. "[The US] really needs to renegotiate with what remains of the Yemeni state to get this guy deported and back to where he's gonna be safe, because he's really at risk right now."Crider and Islam said that US officials know where Mobley is — but that they won't tell them.
  • Mobley's whereabouts over the last year have not been confirmed — including by US officials who claimed to have visited him and found him "in good health and with  no major complaints," as reported by the Guardian. Mobley was believed to be in the hands of Yemen's Specialized Criminal Court — a secretive national security court known for its record of human rights abuse and targeting of political opponents and journalists.At some point last year, Mobley was believed to be detained at a Sana'a military base. A number of Sana'a's official facilities have recently passed under the control of Houthi rebels — including one seized Thursday, where US officials had previously trained Yemeni security forces on counter-terrorism tactics.
  • "They won't tell me and they won't tell his family," she added. "Even though they know, they refuse to tell us where their citizen is held at a time when the country is going into total chaos."Under America's Privacy Act, the state department cannot reveal any information related to a US citizen's "location, welfare, intentions, or problems" to anyone without that person's permission — this includes relatives and members of Congress.But Crider believes the US government may not only know where Sharif is, but she says they may also have had something to do with his disappearance.
  • US agents backed Mobley's initial arrest, Crider said, but they may have also been behind his subsequent disappearance. An unnamed Yemeni security source told NBC News that Mobley had been transferred in coordination with the US and that American officials have participated in his interrogation."We are very disturbed by recent reports that suggest that they are in some way implicated in the second disappearance," Crider said, adding that she has been fighting the government to disclose more information, including through government records requests. "If that's right, that's a problem of a totally different magnitude."
  • A State Department official told VICE News that there are no current plans for the US to directly evacuate Americans and that the US does not evacuate prisoners in a crisis situation, but declined to discuss Mobley's case, citing privacy laws. That's the same reasoning US officials have given to Crider — who has been fighting for months to find her client."I was like, guys, I'm this person's attorney," she said. "He has a right to see his legal representative — that is basic under Yemeni law just like it would be under US law. So you know where he is, you know he has a right to an attorney, what are you doing? Where is he?"
  • In previous calls to his wife, Mobley said that his captors had forced him to drink from bottles that had previously contained urine, and sprayed him with mace when he asked to speak with embassy officials. Lawyers with Reprieve said that during his detention he was beaten, chained to a bed, and dragged down the stairs.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15
     
    The State Department's Privacy Act excuse for withholding the location of Sharif Mobley is a load of bull puckey intended for media consumption, not as a serious legal argument. The Privacy Act has an exception for just such situations: "(b) Conditions of Disclosure.- No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, *unless disclosure of the record would be-* ... (8) to a person pursuant to a showing of compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of an individual if upon such disclosure notification is transmitted to the last known address of such individual;" 5 U.S.C. 552a(b), http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/552a. This is an outrageous cover-up!
Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...nowden-nsa-files-whistleblower

surveillance state NSA Snowden Obama state-secrets must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.
  • I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.
  • I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • 1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.
  • Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.
  • All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped
  • NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.
  • Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content? Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.
  • What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled to lie? Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)? Answer: Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception. They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?
  • Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this: I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email. Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate? Answer: Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with. More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."
  • Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you? Answer: This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.
  • US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM. Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it. Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.
  • Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption? Answer: Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it. 
  • Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response. This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency. 
  • What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
  • This country is worth dying for.
  • My question: given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you absolutely were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now feels like to be living in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of moments that culminated in action? I think it might help other people contemplating becoming whistleblowers if they knew what the ah-ha moment was like. Again, thanks for your courage and heroism. Answer: I imagine everyone's experience is different, but for me, there was no single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress - and therefore the American people - and the realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.
  • Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no? Answer: No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.
  • So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate? – tikkamasala Answer: Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.
  • Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Jun 13
     
    I particularly liked this Snowden observation as an idea for a constitutional amendment: "This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency. " Repeal of the State Secrets privilege would require a constitutional amendment because the Supreme Court decided back when that it is inherent in the President's power as commander in chief of the military forces. In other words, neither Congress nor the courts can second-guess such claims, a huge contributing factor in the over-classification of government records when the real reason is to protect bureaucrats from embarrassment, civil rights suits, and criminal prosecution. It is no accident that we have an Executive Branch that is out-of-control, waging dictatorial powers under the protection of the State Secrets privilege. 
Gary Edwards

The Empire Takes a Hit: NSA Update - 2 views

........................................................................................ NSA Conversation with retired lawyer and Open Source legal expert, "Marbux". ...........................

Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel NSA

started by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 13 no follow-up yet
Paul Merrell

IC ON THE RECORD * ODNI STATEMENT on the Unauthorized Disclosure of... - 1 views

icontherecord.tumblr.com/...the-unauthorized-disclosure-of

surveillance state NSA DNI-Clapper Clapper NSA-capabilities

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • September 6, 2013 It should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract our adversaries’ use of encryption.  Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their secrets, and today, terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide their activities.  Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that.  While the specifics of how our intelligence agencies carry out this cryptanalytic mission have been kept secret, the fact that NSA’s mission includes deciphering enciphered communications is not a secret, and is not news. Indeed, NSA’s public website states that its mission includes leading “the U.S. Government in cryptology … in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies.” The stories published yesterday, however, reveal specific and classified details about how we conduct this critical intelligence activity. Anything that yesterday’s disclosures add to the ongoing public debate is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and critical national security decisions.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13
     
    Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is displeased by the disclosures of its decryption capabilities revealed by the New York Times, based on Edward Snowden-leaked documents.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Noticeably absent from DNI Clapper's reaction is the slightest hint of respect for privacy rights of American citizens. Isn't it past time that this gentleman lose his job, to be replaced by a strong civil libertarian? 
Paul Merrell

Disclosure of FISA Court Opinions: Legal Issues (CRS) - Secrecy News - 0 views

blogs.fas.org/...disclosure-fisa-crs

surveillance state NSA classification-authority Constitution legal-research

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Could Congress legally compel the executive branch to disclose classified opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?  Maybe not, a new analysis from the Congressional Research Service concludes. The CRS report — entitled “Disclosure of FISA Court Opinions: Select Legal Issues” — has little to do with FISA Court opinions in particular. It is an analysis of the overlapping authorities of the three branches of government to classify or disclose national security information. “The central issue is the extent to which Congress may regulate control over access to national security information, including mandating that the executive branch disclose specific materials — a question not definitively resolved by the courts,” the report says. This is not a new question, but it is usefully reviewed and summarized by the CRS report.
  • The issue arises because “The executive branch has argued that the Commander-in-Chief clause bestows the President with independent power to control access to national security information. As such, according to this line of reasoning, Congress’s generally broad ability to require disclosure of agency documents may be constrained when it implicates national security.” Although no statute regulating classification has ever been ruled unconstitutional, “Congress’s power to compel the release of information held by the executive branch might have limits,” CRS said. “There may be a limited sphere of information that courts will protect from public disclosure,” just as they have exempted properly classified information in FOIA cases, and state secrets in other cases.
  • The new CRS report has a couple of other noteworthy omissions. It does not mention the authority claimed by the congressional intelligence committees to publicly disclose classified information without executive branch approval. (See Section 8 of Senate Resolution 400 of the 94th Congress, 1976.)  Though this authority has never yet been exercised, it remains available in principle. The report also does not mention some recent instances when Congress has successfully compelled executive branch declassification while also navigating around potential constitutional obstacles.
Paul Merrell

2013 mass surveillance disclosures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/..._mass_surveillance_disclosures

surveillance state NSA spy-agencies NSA-records research-resources

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • 1 Historical context 1.1 Origins of clandestine surveillance in the United States (1919–78) 1.2 Mass surveillance in a global context (1988-2000) 1.3 9/11 and its implications on mass surveillance (2001–2009) 1.4 Acceleration of media leaks (2010–present) 2 Summary of NSA surveillance 2.1 Purposes 2.2 Targets 2.3 International cooperation 3 2013 Disclosures by category 3.1 Court Orders, Memos and Policy Documents 3.2 Reports 3.3 Collection and Analysis Programs or Hardware 3.4 Relationships with Corporate Partners 3.5 NSA Databases 3.6 Signals Intelligence Directorates (SIDs) 3.7 Technical Directorates 3.8 Names associated with specific targets 3.9 Uncategorized or insufficiently described codenames. 3.10 GCHQ Operations 3.11 NSA Operations 3.12 NSA Relationships with Foreign Intelligence services 3.13 Unrelated to Edward Snowden 4 Media reports 4.1 Chronology 4.2 Disclosures 4.3 Violation of civil liberties and international law 5 Fallout 5.1 Counter-terrorism and national security 5.2 Impact on foreign relations 5.3 Amash/Conyers Amendment 5.4 Public reaction 5.4.1 Petitions 5.4.2 Protests 6 Media related to the disclosures 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13
     
    Wikipedia begins pulling its act together on coverage of the NSA scandal. This article is, at least for the time being, a major NSA scandal research resource. But wait to see how soon NSA sock puppets bowdlerize it. The occasional snapshot downloaded or stored in e.g., Zotero, is advisable.   
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 13
     
    Wow. Diigo handled the markup just fine in My Library but decided to display the raw HTML here. That's got to be a bug. Click through to Wikipedia and look at the table of contents. That's what buried in the markup above.
Paul Merrell

Obama ordered to divulge legal basis for killing Americans with drones | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...-killing-americans-with-drones

war & peace drone attacks Obama FOIA litigation targeted-killing Due-Process

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration must disclose the legal basis for targeting Americans with drones, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in overturning a lower court decision likened to "Alice in Wonderland." The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) claim by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the administration must disclose the legal rationale behind its claims that it may kill enemies who are Americans overseas.
  • The Obama administration must disclose the legal basis for targeting Americans with drones, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in overturning a lower court decision likened to "Alice in Wonderland." The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) claim by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the administration must disclose the legal rationale behind its claims that it may kill enemies who are Americans overseas. "This is a resounding rejection of the government's effort to use secrecy and selective disclosure to manipulate public opinion about the targeted killing program," ACLU Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in an e-mail. The so-called targeted-killing program—in which drones from afar shoot missiles at buildings, cars, and people overseas—began under the George W. Bush administration. The program, which sometimes kills innocent civilians, was broadened under Obama to include the killing of Americans.
  • Government officials from Obama on down have publicly commented on the program, but they claimed the Office of Legal Counsel's memo outlining the legal rationale about it was a national security secret. The appeals court, however, said on Monday that officials' comments about overseas drone attacks means the government has waived its secrecy argument. "After senior Government officials have assured the public that targeted killings are 'lawful' and that OLC advice 'establishes the legal boundaries within which we can operate,'" the appeals court said, "waiver of secrecy and privilege as to the legal analysis in the Memorandum has occurred" (PDF). The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which in a friend-of-the court brief urged the three-judge appeals court to rule as it did, said the decision was a boon for citizen FOIA requests. "It's very helpful. We have a number of cases, including one of our oldest FOIA cases, that involves the warrantless wiretapping memos. The basic premise is when OLC writes a legal memo and when that becomes the known basis for a program, that's the law of the executive branch and cannot be withheld," Alan Butler, EPIC's appellate counsel, said in a telephone interview.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The appeals court said the memo may be redacted from revealing which government agencies are behind the attacks, although former CIA Director Leon Panetta has essentially acknowledged that agency's role. Last year, a federal judge blocked the disclosure of the memo. Judge Colleen McMahon of New York said she was ensnared in a "paradoxical situation" in which the law forbade her from ordering the memo's release: The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules—a veritable catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 14
     
    Unless the Feds successfully seek en banc review or review by the Supreme Court, we will apparently be able to read the infamous DoJ Office of Legal Counsel explaining the legal arguments why Obama may lawfully order drone strikes on U.S. citizens inside nations with which the U.S. is not at war. Let's keep in mind that DoJ claimed that Obama has the power to do that in the U.S. too. According to the Second Circuit's opinion, the ordered disclosure includes a somewhat lengthy section arguing that 18 U.S.C. 1119 and 956 do not apply to Obama. Section 1119 provides, inter alia: "(b) Offense.- A person who, being a national of the United States, kills or attempts to kill a national of the United States while such national is outside the United States but within the jurisdiction of another country shall be punished as provided under sections 1111, 1112, and 1113." Section 956 provides in part: "(a)(1) Whoever, within the jurisdiction of the United States, conspires with one or more other persons, regardless of where such other person or persons are located, to commit at any place outside the United States an act that would constitute the offense of murder, kidnapping, or maiming if committed in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States shall, if any of the conspirators commits an act within the jurisdiction of the United States to effect any object of the conspiracy, be punished as provided in subsection (a)(2). "(2) The punishment for an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this section is- (A) imprisonment for any term of years or for life if the offense is conspiracy to murder or kidnap; and (B) imprisonment for not more than 35 years if the offense is conspiracy to maim." There should also be a section explaining away the Constitution's Due Process Clause (protecting life, liberty, and property) and Right to Trial by Jury, as well as exempting the President from international law establishing human rights and l
Paul Merrell

Deutsche Telekom to follow Vodafone in revealing surveillance | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-also-reveal-surveillance-data

surveillance state NSA-reform Deutsche-Delekom Vodafone

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Germany's biggest telecoms company is to follow Vodafone in disclosing for the first time the number of surveillance requests it receives from governments around the world.Deutsche Telekom, which owns half of Britain's EE mobile network and operates in 14 countries including the US, Spain and Poland, has already published surveillance data for its home nation – one of the countries that have reacted most angrily to the Edward Snowden revelations. In the wake of Vodafone's disclosures, first published in the Guardian on Friday, it announced that it would extend its disclosures to every other market where it operates and where it is legal.A spokeswoman for Deutsche Telekom, which has 140 million customers worldwide, said: "Deutsche Telekom has initially focused on Germany when it comes to disclosure of government requests. We are currently checking if and to what extent our national companies can disclose information. We intend to publish something similar to Vodafone."
  • Bosses of the world's biggest mobile networks, many of which have headquarters in Europe, are gathering for an industry conference in Shanghai this weekend, and the debate is expected to centre on whether they should join Deutsche and Vodafone in using transparency to push back against the use of their technology for government surveillance.Mobile companies, unlike social networks, cannot operate without a government-issued licence, and have previously been reluctant to discuss the extent of their cooperation with national security and law enforcement agencies.But Vodafone broke cover on Friday by confirming that in around half a dozen of the markets in which it operates, governments in Europe and outside have installed their own secret listening equipment on its network and those of other operators.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jun 14
     
    Looks like Vodafone broke a government transparency logjam on government surveillance via digital communications, as to disclosure of raw totals of search warrants by nations other than the U.S. 
Paul Merrell

Keeping Dark Money in the Shadows - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...ping-dark-money-in-the-shadows

Auction 2016 dark-money legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • With the Supreme Court knocking down regulations with a wrecking ball, the FEC out of commission, and an election heating up that will likely redefine the term “big money,” there are few avenues left for regulation of American elections. And now, Congress is set to close one off.On June 17, the House Appropriations Committee passed 2016 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill including a collection of provisions that ensure that the so-called “dark money” of elections—money that passes through supposedly non-political social welfare nonprofits, such as the Koch Brothers’ Crossroads GPS or the League of Conservation Voters, and is therefore free from disclosure—remains very much dark.Section 129 of the bill prevents the IRS from taking any action to investigate whether these social welfare groups are acting exclusively for social welfare; Section 625 prevents the SEC from requiring disclosure of political donations for publicly traded companies; Section 735 prevents a rule requiring that government contractors disclose their contributions to political groups, nonprofits, and trade unions.
  • Rules like these are aimed at preventing what some campaign watchdog groups refer to as the dark money system. Though Federal Election Commission regulations require disclosure of all donations to political candidates, 501(c)(4) groups—groups determined by the IRS to be for social welfare, not political campaigning, and exempt from taxes and donor disclosure—can be used as a workaround. Corporations and individuals do not have to disclose their donations to these groups, meaning that these groups can make donations to political campaigns using money donated by others without those original donors revealing it.An executive order requiring disclosure rules of this sort had been one of the last hopes for election watchdogs looking for a way to keep campaign finance under control in the coming election. This action by the House Appropriations—part of a large government funding bill for which passage will likely not hinge on such small sections—has left them even more enraged at the state of current campaign finance regulations.
Paul Merrell

Revealed: How DOJ Gagged Google over Surveillance of WikiLeaks Volunteer - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...appelbaum-google-investigation

surveillance state DoJ Appelbaum-email Wikileaks

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration fought a legal battle against Google to secretly obtain the email records of a security researcher and journalist associated with WikiLeaks. Newly unsealed court documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Justice Department won an order forcing Google to turn over more than one year’s worth of data from the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum (pictured above), a developer for the Tor online anonymity project who has worked with WikiLeaks as a volunteer. The order also gagged Google, preventing it from notifying Appelbaum that his records had been provided to the government. The surveillance of Appelbaum’s Gmail account was tied to the Justice Department’s long-running criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, which began in 2010 following the transparency group’s publication of a large cache of U.S. government diplomatic cables. According to the unsealed documents, the Justice Department first sought details from Google about a Gmail account operated by Appelbaum in January 2011, triggering a three-month dispute between the government and the tech giant. Government investigators demanded metadata records from the account showing email addresses of those with whom Appelbaum had corresponded between the period of November 2009 and early 2011; they also wanted to obtain information showing the unique IP addresses of the computers he had used to log in to the account.
  • The Justice Department argued in the case that Appelbaum had “no reasonable expectation of privacy” over his email records under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Rather than seeking a search warrant that would require it to show probable cause that he had committed a crime, the government instead sought and received an order to obtain the data under a lesser standard, requiring only “reasonable grounds” to believe that the records were “relevant and material” to an ongoing criminal investigation. Google repeatedly attempted to challenge the demand, and wanted to immediately notify Appelbaum that his records were being sought so he could have an opportunity to launch his own legal defense. Attorneys for the tech giant argued in a series of court filings that the government’s case raised “serious First Amendment concerns.” They noted that Appelbaum’s records “may implicate journalistic and academic freedom” because they could “reveal confidential sources or information about WikiLeaks’ purported journalistic or academic activities.” However, the Justice Department asserted that “journalists have no special privilege to resist compelled disclosure of their records, absent evidence that the government is acting in bad faith,” and refused to concede Appelbaum was in fact a journalist. It claimed it had acted in “good faith throughout this criminal investigation, and there is no evidence that either the investigation or the order is intended to harass the … subscriber or anyone else.” Google’s attempts to fight the surveillance gag order angered the government, with the Justice Department stating that the company’s “resistance to providing the records” had “frustrated the government’s ability to efficiently conduct a lawful criminal investigation.”
  • The Justice Department wanted to keep the surveillance secret largely because of an earlier public backlash over its WikiLeaks investigation. In January 2011, Appelbaum and other WikiLeaks volunteers’ – including Icelandic parlimentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir – were notified by Twitter that the Justice Department had obtained data about their accounts. This disclosure generated widepread news coverage and controversy; the government says in the unsealed court records that it “failed to anticipate the degree of  damage that would be caused” by the Twitter disclosure and did not want to “exacerbate this problem” when it went after Appelbaum’s Gmail data. The court documents show the Justice Department said the disclosure of its Twitter data grab “seriously jeopardized the [WikiLeaks] investigation” because it resulted in efforts to “conceal evidence” and put public pressure on other companies to resist similar surveillance orders. It also claimed that officials named in the subpeona ordering Twitter to turn over information were “harassed” after a copy was published by Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald at Salon in 2011. (The only specific evidence of the alleged harassment cited by the government is an email that was sent to an employee of the U.S. Attorney’s office that purportedly said: “You guys are fucking nazis trying to controll [sic] the whole fucking world. Well guess what. WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET. EXPECT US.”)
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Google accused the government of hyperbole and argued that the backlash over the Twitter order did not justify secrecy related to the Gmail surveillance. “Rather than demonstrating how unsealing the order will harm its well-publicized investigation, the government lists a parade of horribles that have allegedly occurred since it unsealed the Twitter order, yet fails to establish how any of these developments could be further exacerbated by unsealing this order,” wrote Google’s attorneys. “The proverbial toothpaste is out of the tube, and continuing to seal a materially identical order will not change it.” But Google’s attempt to overturn the gag order was denied by magistrate judge Ivan D. Davis in February 2011. The company launched an appeal against that decision, but this too was rebuffed, in March 2011, by District Court judge Thomas Selby Ellis, III.
  • The government agreed to unseal some of the court records on Apr. 1 this year, and they were apparently turned over to Appelbaum on May 14 through a notification sent to his Gmail account. The files were released on condition that they would contain some redactions, which are bizarre and inconsistent, in some cases censoring the name of “WikiLeaks” from cited public news reports. Not all of the documents in the case – such as the original surveillance orders contested by Google – were released as part of the latest disclosure. Some contain “specific and sensitive details of the investigation” and “remain properly sealed while the grand jury investigation continues,” according to the court records from April this year. Appelbaum, an American citizen who is based in Berlin, called the case “a travesty that continues at a slow pace” and said he felt it was important to highlight “the absolute madness in these documents.”
  • He told The Intercept: “After five years, receiving such legal documents is neither a shock nor a needed confirmation. … Will we ever see the full documents about our respective cases? Will we even learn the names of those signing so-called legal orders against us in secret sealed documents? Certainly not in a timely manner and certainly not in a transparent, just manner.” The 32-year-old, who has recently collaborated with Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras to report revelations about National Security Agency surveillance for German news magazine Der Spiegel, said he plans to remain in Germany “in exile, rather than returning to the U.S. to experience more harassment of a less than legal kind.”
  • “My presence in Berlin ensures that the cost of physically harassing me or politically harassing me is much higher than when I last lived on U.S. soil,” Appelbaum said. “This allows me to work as a journalist freely from daily U.S. government interference. It also ensures that any further attempts to continue this will be forced into the open through [a Mutal Legal Assistance Treaty] and other international processes. The German goverment is less likely to allow the FBI to behave in Germany as they do on U.S. soil.” The Justice Department’s WikiLeaks investigaton is headed by prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia. Since 2010, the secretive probe has seen activists affiliated with WikiLeaks compelled to appear before a grand jury and the FBI attempting to infiltrate the group with an informant. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the government had obtained the contents of three core WikiLeaks staffers’ Gmail accounts as part of the investigation.
Paul Merrell

Vodafone reveals existence of secret wires that allow state surveillance | Business | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...es-allowing-state-surveillance

surveillance state non-U.S.-spy-agencies Vodafone

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Vodafone, one of the world's largest mobile phone groups, has revealed the existence of secret wires that allow government agencies to listen to all conversations on its networks, saying they are widely used in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe and beyond.The company has broken its silence on government surveillance in order to push back against the increasingly widespread use of phone and broadband networks to spy on citizens, and will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report on Friday. At 40,000 words, it is the most comprehensive survey yet of how governments monitor the conversations and whereabouts of their people.The company said wires had been connected directly to its network and those of other telecoms groups, allowing agencies to listen to or record live conversations and, in certain cases, track the whereabouts of a customer. Privacy campaigners said the revelations were a "nightmare scenario" that confirmed their worst fears on the extent of snooping.
  • Vodafone's group privacy officer, Stephen Deadman, said: "These pipes exist, the direct access model exists."We are making a call to end direct access as a means of government agencies obtaining people's communication data. Without an official warrant, there is no external visibility. If we receive a demand we can push back against the agency. The fact that a government has to issue a piece of paper is an important constraint on how powers are used."Vodafone is calling for all direct-access pipes to be disconnected, and for the laws that make them legal to be amended. It says governments should "discourage agencies and authorities from seeking direct access to an operator's communications infrastructure without a lawful mandate".
  • In America, Verizon and AT&T have published data, but only on their domestic operations. Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Telstra in Australia have also broken ground at home. Vodafone is the first to produce a global survey.
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  • Peter Micek, policy counsel at the campaign group Access, said: "In a sector that has historically been quiet about how it facilitates government access to user data, Vodafone has for the first time shone a bright light on the challenges of a global telecom giant, giving users a greater understanding of the demands governments make of telcos. Vodafone's report also highlights how few governments issue any transparency reports, with little to no information about the number of wiretaps, cell site tower dumps, and other invasive surveillance practices."
  • Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, joined Google, Reddit, Mozilla and other tech firms and privacy groups on Thursday to call for a strengthening of privacy rights online in a "Reset the net" campaign.Twelve months after revelations about the scale of the US government's surveillance programs were first published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, Snowden said: "One year ago, we learned that the internet is under surveillance, and our activities are being monitored to create permanent records of our private lives – no matter how innocent or ordinary those lives might be. Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same."
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14
     
    The Vodafone disclosures will undoubtedly have a very large ripple effect. Note carefully that this is the first major telephone service in the world to break ranks with the others and come out swinging at secret government voyeur agencies. Will others follow. If you follow the links to the Vodafone report, you'll find a very handy big PDF providing an overview of the relevant laws in each of the customer nations. There's a cute Guardian table that shows the aggregate number of warrants for interception of content via Vodafone for each of those nations, broken down by content type. That table has white-on-black cells noting where disclosure of those types of surveillance statistics are prohibited by law. So it is far from a complete picture, but it's a heck of a good start.  But several of those customer nations are members of the E.U., where digital privacy rights are enshrined as human rights under an EU-wide treaty. So expect some heat to roll downhill on those nations from the European treaty organizations, particularly the European Court of Human Rights, staffed with civil libertarian judges, from which there is no appeal.     
Paul Merrell

New Disclosures Highlight Ashton Carter's Ties to Investors - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...carters-ties-to-investors.html

war & peace DoD Secretary-nominee Ashton-Carter banksters conflicts-of-interest

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Ashton Carter, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, received $20,000 last year from one of the top consulting firms offering political intelligence to investors. And his wife’s investments in the defense industry may at times require him to stay on the sidelines while he serves at the Pentagon. Those are among the tidbits revealed in new disclosure reports posted online by the Office of Government Ethics. Last week, the Project On Government Oversight wrote that Carter, “[w]hile working in the private sector...has held plum positions on government advisory boards that called for reforms with potential ramifications for his defense industry clients and other companies that receive [Department of Defense] dollars.” Like many members of Washington’s policy establishment, he has straddled the public and private sectors, keeping a foot in both worlds with the potential to gain inside information on, and influence over, government policy. Carter’s latest ethics disclosures show another way for former government officials to cash in: giving speeches sponsored by companies in the investment world. The new disclosures detail Carter’s consulting and speaking engagements since he stepped down as Deputy Secretary of Defense in late 2013.
  • Several years ago, while serving as the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, he spoke to investors about mergers in the defense industry. “He told the assemblage that the Pentagon would frown on mergers among the five giant military contractors—the so-called primes: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman and Boeing,” according to a 2011 article by New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera. “However, he added, the Defense Department was going to encourage mergers among smaller military contractors. And, he said, ‘we will be attentive’ to innovative smaller companies that provide services (as opposed to weapons systems) to the Pentagon.” “For the last few months, beginning with a secret meeting last October, Defense Department officials have been making the rounds of analysts and investors,” Nocera wrote. “Their main message, to put it bluntly, is that even in an era of tighter budgets, the Pentagon is going to make sure the military industry remains profitable. ‘Taxpayers and shareholders are aligned,’ Mr. Carter intoned” in his remarks.
  • Carter, his wife, the Gerson Lehrman Group, and a Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to POGO’s requests for comment, but we will update this post with any comments they provide. Carter’s confirmation hearing is set to take place in early February, according to Politico.
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