Candidates’ Web Sites Get to Know the Voters

Any two people interested in whether Amanda Beard is dating fellow Olympian Michael Phelps, and who clicked on the Boston Herald tidbit that raced around the Web last week, got the same piece of gossip.

Rumored galpal Amanda Beard on Phelps: No Thanks!

What was different was the political ads that appeared — or didn’t — beside the story.

Readers who had visited Barack Obama’s Web site received as many as three Obama ads alongside the gossip. “Help Elect Barack Obama President of the United States” and “Visit the Barack Obama Website,” the ads said.  Read more 

I’ll just let Diane say it:

Last week I posted on FBI Director Robert Mueller’s attempt to defuse the impact of a pending Inspector General’s report on the agency’s improper use of “national security letters” to obtain records. He pointed out in testimony to Congress that the report covers a period before the FBI instituted reforms to stop the improprieties. Well, the report is now out, and I can see why Mr. Mueller made the effort. From an AP report published in today’s NY Times:

Top-level FBI counterterrorism executives issued improper blanket demands in 2006 for records of 3,860 telephone lines to justify the fact that agents already had obtained the data using an illegal procedure that is now prohibited, the Justice Department inspector general reported Thursday.

Glenn A. Fine also reported that in one case FBI anti-terrorism agents circumvented a federal court which twice had refused a warrant for personal records because the judges believed the agents were investigating conduct protected by the First Amendment. Fine said the agents got the records using national security letters, which do not require a judge’s approval, without altering or re-examining the basis of their suspicions — the target’s association with others under investigation. [Emphasis added]  Read more 

All your social networking belong to us:

DAVOS, Switzerland - AT&T Inc. is still evaluating whether to examine traffic on its Internet lines to stop illegal sharing of copyright material, its chief executive said Wednesday.

CEO Randall Stephenson told a conference at the World Economic Forum that the company is looking at monitoring peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, one of the largest drivers of online traffic but also a common way to illegally exchange copyright files.  Read more 

Missed this the first time round, back in October Slashdot:

“According to a USA Today story, the terror watch list has swollen to 755,000 with 200,000 people per year being added since 2004. Adding about 548 people daily every day of the year does not seem to lend itself to a manual process with careful deliberation given or double checking being done for each person added. It seems to suggests that data is being mined from somewhere to automatically add names to the list.”

Boing Boing adds:

They are quickly galloping towards the million mark — a mark of real distinction because the list is already cumbersome and is approaching absolutely useless,” said Tim Sparapani of the American Civil Liberties Union.

A million potential terrorists? Come on. That’s a lot of beds to look under and chickenhawk panties to wet. Why don’t they make it simple for themselves?  Read more 

Modified rapture.  Read more 

Funny when Pumpkinhead becomes a junkyard dog, isn’t it? Insofar as a wordy vacuous cipher can be called a dog, of course. From CNN transcript, Pumpkinhead recites the authorized version. His recital is useful, because it illustrates the sheer wrongness that dominates discourse in the Village.

MR. RUSSERT: After September 11th, the government went to many of the private telecom companies in our country and asked them for information, data.

Tweety’s first lie: The administration was seeking this power before 9/11.

The government said they were legally justified to it. They wanted to see if there was a nexus between international terrorists and some phone calls made back here to the United States.

Tweety’s second lie: The program is and has always been about voice and data — Tweety even says so just above! — not just wiretapping. (This has been a problem with the press coverage from the very beginning.) And further, Tweety recites what the administration says without qualification. Surely, at this point, skepticism is more than warranted?

You have been very outspoken about [against] giving those companies immunity from any kind of prosecution, even though they were doing what the government asked them to do.

Tweety’s third lie: “The government” has three branches, only one of them is the executive branch.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democratic [sic] on Senate intelligence, has a view much different from yours.

Tweety’s bias just showed. The Democrats are in the majority on the Committee, so Rockefeller is the chair, not the “ranking member.” Dodd could have broken in, and corrected this obvious “error.”

This is what Rockefeller says: “We recognize that private companies who received legal assurances from the highest levels of government should not be dragged through the courts for their help with national security. The onus is on the administration, not the companies, to ensure that the request is on strong legal footing, and if it’s not,” it’s “the administration that should be held accountable.”

Tweety’s fourth lie: The telcos have an independent duty to obey the law, regardless of what the administration says or doesn’t say.

Why you going after these companies for doing what they thought was in the public interest?

Tweety’s fifth lie: FISA provides for criminal penalties; felonies. Intent has nothing to with it.

There you have it. A very compact compendium of Village wisdom on warrantless surveillance, all of it wrong. Wrong on the facts; wrong on the law; and wrong on how the very foundation of our government, the Constitution, works. Tweety’s chatter and clutter and chaff is what passes for discourse these days. Reach me that bucket, wouldja hon?

Now Dodd:  Read more 

Orrin Hatch has this to say on retroactive immunity for the telcos in the FISA [gag] Reform Bill:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), also on the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, said the documents did not change his position that the surveillance activities “were and are” lawful.

Senator, you’re threatening my cranial integrity.

Because if the surveilllance was so lawful, what the Fuck do they need retroactive immunity for???  Read more 

[Welcome, acolytes of the famously lingeried one. But move along! Move along! There’s no story here.]

Gosh, how odd. Or not.

Because you’d think this story has everything: Dodd, alone among the Democrats, stands up to a Bipartisan juggernaut to grant the telcos retroactive immunity for massive lawbreaking—a story the Times itself broke—by saying he’ll put a hold on the bill. Reid, the Senate [cough] leader, says he’ll ignore the hold. Dodd raises the ante, says he’ll [gasp] filibuster. Biden joins in. Hillary and Obama waver on the sidelines.

We’ve got the Jimmy Stewart figure, standing alone against great odds. We’ve got dissension in the Democratic caucus. We’ve got craven politicians. We’ve got bags of corporate cash.

In short, we’ve got a rich, compelling narrative, filled with drama, human failings, and high principle.

And if all that’s not enough, Dodd’s from the Time’s circulation catchment: Connecticut. What, the locals aren’t interested in their Senator?

So, you’d think the Times would be all over this; or at least give it a paragraph in the Week in Review.

But n-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! I wonder why not?  Read more 

Oh, Harry. This is really bad. As FDL points out. Say it’s not so!  Read more 

Fred Hiatt cranks the bogosity knob up to 11. Please, somebody make it stop? My ears are bleeding:

There is one major area of disagreement between the administration and House Democrats where we think the administration has the better of the argument: the question of whether telecommunications companies that provided information to the government without court orders should be given retroactive immunity from being sued. House Democrats are understandably reluctant to grant that wholesale protection without understanding exactly what conduct they are shielding, and the administration has balked at providing such information. But the telecommunications providers seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment.

Fred, it just seems that way to you because you’re the Village whore.  Read more 

That’s all Internet traffic, foreign and domestic, data and voice. And the decision to do this was taken, not because of 9/11, but as soon as Bush took office. As was the decision to ignore the rule of law. So much for the idea that the extremely benevolent and trustworthy Bush administration was reacting to 9/11, and just wants “surgical” surveillance* to keep us safe from terrorists, eh? Could this program be Spencer Ackerman’s “Project X”?

Anyhow, it’s late, so I can’t do this story justice, but according to Wired:

And in May 2006, a lawsuit filed against Verizon for allegedly turning over call records to the NSA alleged that AT&T began building a spying facility for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated. That lawsuit is one of 50 that were consolidated and moved to a San Francisco federal district court, where the suits sit in limbo waiting for the 9th Circuit Appeals court to decide whether the suits can proceed without endangering national security.

According the allegations in the suit (.pdf):

The project was described in the ATT sales division documents as calling for the construction of a facility to store and retain data gathered by the NSA from its domestic and foreign intelligence operations but was to be in actuality a duplicate ATT Network Operations Center for the use and possession of the NSA that would give the NSA direct, unlimited, unrestricted and unfettered access to all call information and internet and digital traffic on ATTÌs long distance network. […]

The NSA program was initially conceived at least one year prior to 2001 but had been called off; it was reinstated within 11 days of the entry into office of defendant George W. Bush.

An ATT Solutions logbook reviewed by counsel confirms the Pioneer-Groundbreaker project start date of February 1, 2001.

The allegations in that case come from unnamed AT&T insiders, who have never stepped forward or provided any documentation to the courts. But Carl Mayer, one of the attorneys in the case, stands by the allegations in the lawsuit.

“All we can say is, we told you so,” Mayer said.

Mayer says the issue of when the call records program started - a program that unlike the admitted warrantless wiretapping, the administration has never confirmed nor denied - should play a role in the upcoming confirmation hearings of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey.

Mukasey will have to “come clean on when this program started,” Mayer said. “The entire rationale was that it was necessitated by 9/11.”

Well, yes, Tooliani operative Mukasey should indeed be asked about all this. Hey, here’s an idea: Leader Nance could write Mukasey a Sternly Worded Letter!

And this does explain why the telcos are lobbying so hard for retroactive immunity, doesn’t it?  Read more 

AP:

A federal judge struck down parts of the revised USA Patriot Act on Thursday, saying investigators must have a court’s approval before they can order Internet providers to turn over records without telling customers.

Excellent.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said the government orders must be subject to meaningful judicial review and that the recently rewritten Patriot Act “offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers.”

Excellent.  Read more 

Coincidence? You be the judge. What’s clear is that, as is typical of Bush’s operations, the program was run without regard to the law. The Christian Science Monitor:

The $42 million cutting-edge [ADVISE] system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS’s own internal watchdog.

Data mining to help fight the war on terror has become an accepted, even mandated, method to provide timely security information. The DHS operates at least a dozen such programs; intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense employ many others.

But ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment) was special. An electronic omnivore conceived in 2003, it was designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources, government documents and researchers say.

How reassuring. (And it would certainly work for domestic politics, too, eh?)

So, what could go wrong?  Read more 

Just a passing fancy. Even though the NSA does bug everyone including Aunt Molly, and ratfucking and blackmail are Republican signature moves.

Following up on Atrios’s post of the CNN transcript:

[MONTGOMERY SIBLEY:] Well, I’m shocked about two things, if I might, Larry. Please understand that this is one escort service out of approximately 60 [including Shirlington Limo] in the Metro D.C. area. And indeed there are more escort services than there are McDonald’s in D.C.

Now what’s happened here is one service by the coincidence of Jeane being in California had all the calls recorded in the telephone records [and in the NSA intercepts?], and therefore were able to track the customers back through the record numbers. As the other escort services may or may not coming forward, we’re going to get a real full picture of what have goes on in the District of Columbia environments.

[DEBORAH PALFREY:] There’s another point that needs to be mentioned as well, perhaps even more important, and that is the susceptibility of blackmail of certain clients having used the service over the years. Most people at the moment for obvious reasons are focusing upon the hypocrisy angle. However, intellectualize a bit, think about it a bit, and you’ll come to the conclusion that we’ve come to, that there are possible people who have used the service who have become subjects and targets of blackmail. And many of these people being in D.C. most likely have security clearances.

So, “intellectualizing” just a little, let’s ask ourselves the question that Jeanne and Montgomery didn’t explicitly ask:  Read more 

I really couldn’t believe it. I know I say that but really! Buzz drones? Come on.

Unveiled in the north of Britain this week, it could be introduced across the country if deemed a success, fuelling an already intense debate over whether the “Big Brother” world George Orwell predicted is now truly upon us, or whether such scrutiny is merely essential for security in the modern era.  Read more 

WaPo:

Chertoff Urges Data-Sharing Deal With EU
VENICE, Italy, May 12, 2007 (AP Online via COMTEX) — Pieces of information gathered about airline passengers arriving in the United States can be crucial when least expected to preventing terror attacks, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Saturday as he pushed for a deal with European countries on sharing data.

European government are trying to ensure the deal will not violate their strict privacy laws, a legacy of the continent’s history with authoritarian regimes.

Well, thank goodness we’ve got no history of authoritarian regimes on this continent!  Read more 

Don’t worry you’re covered. The Minority Report is here.
Seriously. I’d love to see old George Stephanopoulos (his name is in the spell check) ask a candidate – what is your position on the great grandson of CARNIVORE determining who gets rounded up? First carnivore, then TIA, now Tangram – the Air Force’s new strategic data mining program.  Read more 

I’m having a typical Friday the 13th, so forgive the DU link. I’m sure this doesn’t surprise you.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.  Read more 

I promise you, the ones in South Shore and Boystown will always work perfectly, while the ones in certain lily-hued, properly religious neighborhoods will strangely malfunction whenever one of the Good Chicagoans is misled into temptation by a gay, black devil.

Julie Farby - All Headline News Staff Writer
Chicago, IL (AHN)-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says that if Chicago wins the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, security and terrorism won’t be an issue because, by that time, there’ll be a surveillance camera on every corner.

During a meeting with the Sun-Times editorial board, Daley said, “By the time 2016 [rolls around], we’ll have more cameras than Washington, D.C. … Our technology is more advanced than any other city in the world — even compared to London — dealing with our cameras and the sophistication of cameras and retro-fitting all the cameras downtown in new buildings, doing the CTA cameras.”  Read more 

Lovely:

The Hewlett-Packard Co. spying effort that has sparked criminal investigations was wide-ranging and included physical surveillance, photographs and spyware sent via e-mail, and it also targeted wives and other relatives of HP board members and reporters, according to a consultant’s report prepared for the company.

The Feb. 10 report, obtained by The Washington Post, summarized in eight pages how investigators, to identify an internal leak of confidential HP information, surreptitiously followed HP board member George A. Keyworth II while he was giving a lecture at the University of Colorado. They watched his home in Piedmont, Calif. They used photographs of a reporter to see if the reporter met with him. And they tried to recover a laptop computer stolen from him in Italy so they could analyze its contents.

Look, I’m certain this is all very localized, and no indication whatever of corporate best practices as a whole. Let alone an indictment of corporate culture.

And I’m especially sure that the Bush administration has never treated leaks in a similar fashion.

Just because all their golfing buddies are going it. And their campaign contributors.  Read more 

Security expert Bruce Schneier in WaPo:

If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it — even if it’s not set to expire anytime soon. If you don’t have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don’t want one of these chips in your passport.

RFID stands for “radio-frequency identification.” Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don’t have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.

Maybe if I wrap it in foil? Well, no.  Read more 

Sure, it’s just a prototype. But still.:

The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.