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Monday, August 16, 2010

Fwd: [bangla-vision] Fw: Obama Demands Access to Internet Records, in Secret and Without Court Review



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lindy Greene <lindygreene@roadrunner.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 1:43 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] Fw: Obama Demands Access to Internet Records, in Secret and Without Court Review
To: Out_Of_The_Frying_Pan@yahoogroups.com, WorldReviewOfNewspapers@yahoogroups.co.uk, bangla-vision@yahoogroups.com, Bush Be Gone <Bush_Be_Gone@yahoogroups.com>, AmeriConscience@yahoogroups.com


 

Forwarded to me by a friend.
 
This bears out what I always say - that, in a police state, the government perceives its real enemies to be its own citizens.
 
It is more afraid of a domestic uprising than of a foreign adversary. All the horrific Orwellian policies are put in place more to muzzle the potential internal threat than to quell external opposition.
 

Big Brother: Obama Demands Access to Internet Records, in Secret
and Without Court Review
 
By Tom Burghardt
 
 
Global Research, August 13, 2010

The Obama administration is seeking authority from Congress that would

compel internet service providers (ISPs) to turn over records of an individual's

internet activity for use in secretive FBI probes.

 

In another instance where Americans are urged to trust their political minders, 

The Washington Post reported last month that "the administration wants to add

just four words--'electronic communication transactional records'--to a list of

items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval."

 

Under cover of coughing-up information deemed relevant to espionage or

terrorism investigations, proposed changes to the Electronic Communications

Privacy Act (ECPA) would greatly expand the volume of private records that

can be seized through National Security Letters (NSLs).

 

Constitution-shredding lettres de cachet, NSLs are administrative subpoenas

that can be executed by agencies such as the FBI, CIA or Defense Department,

solely on the say-so of supervisory agents.

 

The noxious warrants are not subject to court review, nor can recipient even

disclose they have received one. Because of their secretive nature, they are

extremely difficult to challenge.

 

Issued by Executive Branch agents with no accountability hiding behind a

façade of top-secret classifications and much-ballyhooed "sources and

methods," NSLs clearly violate our constitutional rights.

 

The Fourth Amendment unambiguously states: "The right of the people to be

secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable

searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but

upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly

describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

 

However, in "new normal" America, constitutional guarantees and civil rights

are mere technicalities, cynical propaganda exercises jettisoned under the

flimsiest of pretexts: the endless "War on Terror," where the corporate

state's praetorian guards work the "dark side."

 

Once served, firms such as telecommunication providers, banks, credit card

companies, airlines, health insurers, video rental services, and even booksellers

and libraries are compelled to turn over what the secret state deems relevant

records on targets of FBI fishing expeditions.

 

If burdensome NSL restrictions are breeched for any reason, those recipients

can be fined or even jailed if gag orders built into the draconian USA Patriot Act

are violated. However, even the Patriot Act's abysmally lowered threshold for

seizing private records specify that NSLs cannot be issued "solely on the basis

of activities protected by the first amendment of the Constitution of the United

States."

 

Despite these loose standards, congressional investigators, journalists, and civil

liberties watchdogs found that the FBI violated the rules of the road, such as

they are, thousands of times. Between 2003-2006, the Bureau issued 192,499

NSLs. According to current estimates, the FBI continues to hand out tens of

thousands more each year.

 

According to a May 2009 Justice Department letter sent to the House and

Senate Judiciary Committees, "In 2007, the FBI made 16,804 NSL requests"

and followed up the next year by issuing some "24,744 NSL additional

requests ... to 7,225 United States persons."

 

The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a 2007 

report which concluded that the Bureau had systematically abused the process

and exceeded its authority. A follow-up report published by the OIG in

January found that serious civil liberties breeches continue under President

Obama.

 

This is hardly surprising, given the track record of the Obama administration.

"Reform," Obama-Style

The latest White House proposal would hand the secret state unprecedented

access to the personal communications of every American. What Bushist war

criminals did secretly, Obama intends to do openly and with the blessings of a

supine Congress. As constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald points out, "not

only has Obama ... blocked any reforms, he has taken multiple steps to further

expand unaccountable and unchecked surveillance power."

 

Nowhere is this more apparent than by administration moves to "reform"

ECPA. While the Justice Department claims their newly-sought authority does

not include "'content' of email or other Internet communications," this is so

much eyewash to deceive the public.

 

In fact, the addition of so-called transactional records to the volume of files

that the state can arbitrarily seize would hand the government access to a

limitless cache of email addresses, dates, and times they were sent and

received, and a literal snap-shot on demand of what users look at or

search when they log onto the internet.

 

As I have pointed out before, most recently last month when I described the

National Security Agency's PERFECT CITIZEN program, the roll-out of

privacy-killing deep-packet inspection software developed by NSA already 

has the ability to read and catalogue the content of email messages flowing

across private telecommunications networks.

 

Former Bushist Homeland Security official, Stewart A. Baker, applauded the

proposal and told the Post, "It'll be faster and easier to get the data." Baker

touts the rule change as a splendid way for ISPs to hand over "a lot more

information to the FBI in response to an NSL."

 

While the Post claims "many internet service providers" have "resisted the

government's demands to turn over electronic records," this is a rank

mendacity.

 

A "senior administration official," speaking anonymously of course, told the 

Post that "most" ISPs already "turn over such data." Of course they do, and at

a premium price!

 

Internet security analyst Christopher Soghoian has documented that just one

firm, Sprint Nextel, routinely turned over their customers' geolocation data to

law enforcement agencies and even built them a secure web portal to do so, 

eight million times in a single year!

 

Soghoian wrote last year that "government agents routinely obtain customer

records from these firms, detailing the telephone numbers dialed, text

messages, emails, and instant messages sent, web pages browsed, the queries

submitted to search engines, and, of course, huge amounts of geolocation data

detailing exactly where an individual was located at a particular date and time."

 

As a public service, the secrecy-shredding web site Cryptome has published

dozens of so-called compliance guides for law enforcement issued by a

plethora of telecoms and ISPs. Readers are urged to peruse Yahoo's manual 

for a taste of what these grifters hand over.

 

While the administration argues that "electronic communication transactional

records" are the "same as" phone records that the Bureau can obtain with an

NSL, such records reveal far more about a person's life, and political

views than a list of disaggregated phone numbers. This is precisely why the

FBI wants unlimited access to this data. Along with racial and religious profiling,

 the Bureau would be handed the means to build a political profile on anyone

they deem an "extremist."

 

That "senior administration official" cited by the Post claims that access to a

citizen's web history "allows us to intercede in plots earlier than we would if our

hands were tied and we were unable to get this data in a way that was quick

and efficient."

 

Perhaps our "change" administration has forgotten a simple historical fact: 

police states are efficient. The value of privacy in a republic, including whom

one communicates with or where one's interests lie, form the core values of a

democratic order; principles sorely lacking in our "new normal" Orwellian

order!

 

In a small but significant victory, the ACLU announced this week that "the FBI

has partially lifted a gag it imposed on American Civil Liberties Union client

Nicholas Merrill in 2004 that prevented him from disclosing to anyone that he

received a national security letter (NSL) demanding private customer records."
In a statement to reporters, Merrill said: "Internet users do not give up their

privacy rights when they log on, and the FBI should not have the power to

secretly demand that ISPs turn over constitutionally protected information

about their users without a court order. I hope my successful challenge to the

FBI's NSL gag power will empower others who may have received NSLs to

speak out."

 

Despite this narrow ruling, the FBI intends to soldier on and the Obama

administration is hell-bent on giving the Bureau even more power to operate in

the dark.

 

Commenting on the Merrill case, The Washington Post reported FBI

spokesperson Mike Kortan claimed that NSL "secrecy is often essential to the

successful conduct of counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations"

and that public disclosure "may pose serious risks to the investigation itself and

to other national security interests."

 

Those "other" interests, apparently, do not extend to the right to express one's

views freely, particularly when they collide with the criminal policies of the

secret state.

__._,_.___


--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/

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