CopBlock founder faces 21 years in prison on "wiretapping" charges for filming police

Activist Post

According to court documents, Adam “Ademo” Mueller, journalist and co-host of nationally syndicated radio talk show Free Talk Live, has been indicted on three counts of felony wiretapping. The charges are a result of a vlog Mueller posted on CopBlock.org about an incident involving alleged police misconduct, which featured recorded interviews of on-duty public officials.

Mueller’s report focused on video recorded by a student’s cell phone at Manchester’s West High School, which depicted Officer Darren Murphy slamming a 17-year-old boy into a cafeteria table in October of 2011. Although public officials told the student to delete the video, it ended up in Adam Mueller’s hands instead.

Three former NSA employees expose in court ‘mass illegal surveillance’ program

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

The National Security Agency (NSA), which has recently been protected from having to disclose their relationship withthe search engine giant and data mining powerhouse Google, is back in court over the case Jewel v. NSA.

The case, which was reinstated by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in late 2011, is challenging the NSA’s now well known massive warrantless surveillance program.

This case is more important than ever with the NSA pouring a whopping $2 billion into a heavily fortified data centerwhich will almost certainly be used to monitor the communications of Americans. The National Counterterrorism Center’s new guidelines allowing extended data retention make matters even worse, if you can imagine such a thing.

Three former employees of the NSA, William E. Binney, Thomas A. Drake, and J. Kirk Wiebe, have come forward with evidence to back up a case being valiantly fought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

From Bush to Obama, the snooping goes on

The Patriot Act's section 215 – just renewed by Congress – permits almost unlimited powers of surveillance of US citizens

Prison Planet image

Dan Kennedy
Guardian

Remember section 215?

It was a notorious provision of the USA Patriot Act, renewed on Thursday, that allowed the government to snoop on what library books you'd borrowed, what videos you'd rented, your medical records – anything, really, if investigators thought it might have something to do with terrorism, no matter how tangential.

I wrote about it for the Boston Phoenix in 2003, as an example of the then budding excesses of the Bush-Cheney years.

Well, section 215 is back – not that it ever went away. Charlie Savage reports in Friday's New York Times that two Democratic senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have accused the Obama administration of using Section 215 for purposes not intended by Congress. Russ Feingold, then a Democratic senator for Wisconsin, raised similar alarms in 2009.

The senators know what the White House is up to because they were privy to secret testimony. But under Senate rules, they can't reveal what they learned. Thus they have demanded that the White House come clean with the public. "Americans would be alarmed if they knew how this law is being carried out," Udall is quoted as saying.

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US Senate moves forward on anti-terror powers

EN: VOMIT. "FBI and intelligence officials have warned that if the Patriot Act is not extended by the deadline they would be robbed of crucial tools in the fight against terrorism -- including wiretapping."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
© AFP/Getty Images/File Chip Somodevilla

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate moved Thursday toward extending controversial counter-terrorism search and surveillance powers at the heart of the Patriot Act adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In a procedural move, US lawmakers voted to end debate on the subject which would allow them to pass to a formal vote on extending the act just hours before it expires at midnight (0400 GMT Friday).

The Senate voted 79-18 against to close debate. But with the clock ticking, they still had to agree to waive the usual 30-hour waiting period after the end of debate before proceeding to a vote.

Domestic Spying Exposed as Patriot Act Extension Looms (Video)

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RELATED ARTICLES:
EFF Demand Answers About Secret Surveillance Law Memo
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NSA Collects a Library of Congress Amount of Data in 6 Hours

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EFF Demands Answers About Secret Surveillance Law Memo

Justice Department Withholding Information on Controversial Legal Theory

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Electronic Frontier Foundation

Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit against the Department of Justice (DOJ), demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight.

A report released last year by the DOJ's own Inspector General revealed how the FBI, in defending its past violations of the Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA), had come up with a new legal argument to justify secret, unchecked access to private telephone records. According to the report, the DOJ's Office of the Legal Counsel (OLC) had issued a legal opinion agreeing with the FBI's theory. That legal opinion is the target of the FOIA lawsuit filed Thursday.

The Inspector General's report is heavily redacted, concealing which part of the surveillance statutes the FBI and OLC are relying on to reach their dangerous conclusion and to what types of records this new purported exception to the law applies. However, the report does show that the Inspector General had grave concerns about the FBI's interpretation of the law.

No surveillance without oversight

Given the FBI's record of fallibility – and without genuine safeguards for citizens – this $1bn biometrics project is alarming

Biometrics/Wikimedia image

Jay Stanley
Guardian

The FBI recently announced that its Next Generation Identification System (NGIS) has "reached its initial operating capacity". This vast new biometrics project, for which Lockheed Martin won a $1bn contract in 2008, encompasses not only fingerprints but also, possibly, such biometrics as iris scans, face recognition, bodily scars, marks and tattoos.

Such a system raises a number of concerns from a civil liberties perspective. Many types of biometrics are of particular concern because they allow individuals to be tracked secretly and at a distance. For instance, facial recognition may allow a person to be tracked by various CCTV cameras across a city. Worse, in the future, this may be automated and done by computers.

The FBI is rushing ahead with this system in a larger context that is very troubling. Since 9/11, we've repeatedly seen the government throw together new identity and tracking systems without building in the necessary protections to make sure innocent people aren't caught up in them. A good example is aviation watchlists. Countless travelers have found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare – improperly listed as suspected terrorists, hassled, arrested or worse, and with no way to clear their names in the eyes of the government's secretive security bureaucracies. The problem is not just errors and mistaken identification, or the lack of due process or rigorous procedures for keeping the lists accurate, but also the possibility that government bureaucrats have used a "when in doubt, thrown a name on the list" approach.

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New Proposal to Wiretap Suspected Infringers Raises Privacy Concerns

This is Part II of a series of articles analyzing specific aspects of the Obama Administration's White Paper (available for download here), recommending legislative changes to combat online piracy and counterfeiting.  Click here for if you missed our overview of the White Paper in Part I.

David Makarewicz, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

One of the most troubling recommendations in the White Paper is the Obama Administration's request for Congress to grant its enforcement agencies the power "seek a wiretap for criminal copyright and trademark offenses."  This would require Congress to amend the Wiretap Act, which does not currently include copyright and trademark infringement among the offenses that justify a privacy invasion as extreme as a wiretap.

In order to preserve the private nature of communications, the Wiretap Act (as amended by the The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986), 18 U.S.C. § 2511, makes it generally illegal for anyone, including the Government, to "intercept, any wire, oral, or electronic communication." However, the law has carved out certain exceptions to this rule under which the Government can request permission to intercept certain communications for a limited time.

Officials Push to Bolster Law on Wiretapping

Charlie Savage
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.

The officials say tougher legislation is needed because some telecommunications companies in recent years have begun new services and made system upgrades that caused technical problems for surveillance. They want to increase legal incentives and penalties aimed at pushing carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to ensure that any network changes will not disrupt their ability to conduct wiretaps.

An Obama administration task force that includes officials from the Justice and Commerce Departments, the F.B.I.and other agencies recently began working on draft legislation to strengthen and expand the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that says telephone and broadband companies must design their services so that they can begin conducting surveillance of a target immediately after being presented with a court order.


There is not yet agreement over the details, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, but they said the administration intends to submit a package to Congress next year.

Albert Gidari Jr., a lawyer who represents telecommunications firms, said corporations were likely to object to increased government intervention in the design or launch of services. Such a change, he said, could have major repercussions for industry innovation, costs and competitiveness.

“The government’s answer is ‘don’t deploy the new services — wait until the government catches up,’ ” Mr. Gidari said. “But that’s not how it works. Too many services develop too quickly, and there are just too many players in this now.”

To bolster their case that telecom companies should face greater pressure to stay compliant, security agencies are citing two previously undisclosed episodes in which investigators were stymied from carrying out court-approved surveillance for weeks or even months because of technical problems with two major carriers.

The disclosure that the administration is seeking ways to increase the government’s leverage over carriers already subject to the 1994 law comes less than a month after The New York Times reported on a related part of the effort: a plan to bring Internet companies that enable communications — like Gmail, Facebook, Blackberry and Skype — under the law’s mandates for the first time, a demand that would require major changes to some services’ technical designs and business models.

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Court: NSA can keep mum if it wiretapped Gitmo lawyers

Supreme Court says NSA doesn't have to say whether it has warrantless wiretapping records  

Associated Press  

The Supreme Court won't make the super-secret National Security Agency divulge whether it has records of the warrantless wiretapping it did of lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay inmates.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from detainee lawyer Thomas B. Wilner.

Wilner and other detainee lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA asking whether it has warrantless wiretapping records on them. But the NSA won't say whether it does or does not, saying that revealing this information would endanger national security.

Federal courts have agreed with the NSA, saying that the FOIA does not require the divulgence of sensitive national security information. 

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Wiretapped phones, now Internet?

Charlie Savage

The New York Times

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations of the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is "going dark" as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications -- including encrypted e-mail transmitters such as BlackBerry, social networking websites such as Facebook and software that allows direct "peer-to-peer" messaging such as Skype -- to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The legislation, which the Obama administration plans to submit to Congress next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering technological innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had "huge implications" and challenged "fundamental elements of the Internet revolution" -- including its decentralized design.

"They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet," he said. "They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function."

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

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Feds Want to Make It Easier to Eavesdrop Online

BILL SEEKS TO EXPAND GOVERNMENT'S WIRETAPPING POWER

By Emily Rauhala,  Newser Staff

The feds say online wiretaps will keep us safe.   (Shutterstock)

(NEWSER) – The feds want to overhaul wiretappingregulations to expand their ability to eavesdrop online, reports the New York Times. The Obama administration plans to submit a bill to Congress next year that would require all service providers to be technically capable of wiretapping the communications they enable, from encrypted BlackBerry emails to Skype messaging. Law enforcement types say their surveillance capabilities are "going dark" as everybody—from mob bosses to drug cartels—turns away from telephones. 

Officials point to the case of the failed Times Square bomber, who was discovered to have communicated online via a service that didn't have the ability to intercept his messaging; even if investigators had caught wind of Faisal Shahzad's plans before the attempt, their ability to wiretap him would have been delayed. Of course, not everybody agrees. Listening in online threatens the “Internet revolution,” says a rep from the Center for Democracy and Technology. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.” And, says one prof, forcing firms to find ways to "unscramble" encrypted messages could backfire. “I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he says. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.” 

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Police Harassing Citizens Who Film Them

YouTube -- Cato Institute

RELATED ARTICLE:
Activism in the Age of Tyranny and Terror

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