Our human rights vs. The Others: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below - Update II)

Ten American Baptists were arrested two weeks ago in Haiti on charges that they exploited the chaos in that country by attempting to smuggle 33 young Haitian children across the border without permission -- either to bring them to a life of Christianity or (as some evidence suggests) to filter them into a child trafficking ring.  National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez is deeply upset by the plight of at least one of the detained Americans, Jim Allen, whom she contends (based exclusively on his family's claims) is innocent.  Lopez demands that the State Department do more to "insist" upon Allen's release, and -- most amazingly of all -- complains about the conditions of his detention.   She has the audacity to cite a Human Rights Watch description of prison conditions in Haiti as "inhumane."  Lopez complains that Allen was waterboarded, stripped, frozen and beaten has "hypertension," was shipped thousands of miles away to a secret black site beyond the reach of the ICRC and then rendered to Jordan allowed to speak to his wife only once in the first ten days of his confinement, and was consigned to years in an island-prison cage with no charges denied his choice of counsel for a few days (though he is now duly represented in Haitian courts by a large team of American lawyers). [ Read more ... ]

AOL Ditches Security Tokens To Make Logging In Easier: Via Threat Level.

AOL customers who sprang for the company’s $10 “PassCode” security token to harden their account can get ready to toss their fancy crypto-numeric keyfobs in the same landfill as all those CD-ROMs AOL mailed them in the 1990s.

As the Virginia-based company prepares for its December 10 spin off from Time Warner, it’s telling customers that it will no longer support RSA’s SecurID tokens, which it began offering as an optional extra in 2004.  AOL drew accolades from security types at the time, for what was ballyhooed as the first broad consumer deployment of two-factor authentication. [ Read more ... ]

Feds Charge $522,000 For One FOIA Request: Via Threat Level.

The Treasury Department wants more than $500,000 to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, a fee an attorney on the case suggested Tuesday might be one of the largest bills of its kind.

“I have not seen one that has been larger,” said Noah Wood, a Missouri attorney suing the government to comply with his nearly 4-year-old FOIA request.

The Treasury Department, Wood said, is “downright telling us where we can stick it.”

Wood wants the government to produce documents he hopes shows where are perhaps millions of dollars of once-frozen assets of a former Libyan-backed company in the United States, which Wood says owes his law firm legal fees. Toward that end, he is suing the government (.pdf) to comply with the FOIA request and to reduce the bill.

Still, the government wants Wood to pay “approximately $522,886″ for the records. The original tab was $26,000-plus, but after some revisions in what Wood was seeking, the government upped the ante – even though not all information being sought would be forthcoming, according to the bill. (.pdf) [ Read more ... ]

FBI’s Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records: Via Threat Level.

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.

Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the “Total Information Awareness” system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Such a system, if successful, would correlate data from scores of different sources to automatically identify terrorists and other threats before they could strike. The FBI is seeking to quadruple the known staff of the program.

But the proposal has long been criticized by privacy groups as ineffective and invasive. Critics say the new documents show that the government is proceeding with the plan in private, and without sufficient oversight. [ Read more ... ]

Da Vinci Code Fans Targeted By Real International Conspiracy: Via Threat Level.

It’s the shocking mystery hidden for a millennium: What will Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s next book be about? But, beware, truth seekers: Chasing the latest clues to the upcoming novel The Lost Symbol could expose you to a vast and secret conspiracy that’s been manipulating Google search results to push malicious software. [ Read more ... ]

A Spy Chief's Political Education: Last Thursday evening, during the frantic endgame of a White House push to broaden its eavesdropping authorities, Democratic leaders from the House and the Senate gathered in the Capitol office of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, for a conference call with Mike McConnell, the nation’s top intelligence official.

Mr. McConnell was acting as the Bush administration’s chief negotiator for the measure, and the Democrats were furious to learn that he had rejected their latest proposal. They questioned whether Mr. McConnell had succumbed to pressure from the White House and Republican lawmakers. He denied those accusations, but admitted that intense pressure from Congressional leaders of both parties had taken a toll.

“I’ve spent 40 years of my life in this business, and I’ve been shot at during war,” Mr. McConnell responded, according to people who participated in the conference call. “I’ve never felt so much pressure in my life.” [ Read more ... ]

States, Uncle Sam Combating Identity Theft - washingtonpost.com: "Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia allow consumers to place a 'security freeze' on their credit files, and more states are considering similar legislation.

For the millions of consumers who receive notice each year that their personal or financial data was lost or stolen, a preemptive security freeze can offer peace of mind. It blocks businesses and potential fraudsters from gaining access to a consumer's credit report and score and from granting new lines of credit in the consumer's name. In many states, consumers who want to remove the freeze can use a special identification number to unlock access to their credit file. [ Read more ... ]

Intel chief: Curbs on public satellite photos may be needed | KOMO-TV - Seattle, Washington | Technology: "The director of a little-known U.S. spy agency that analyzes imagery from the skies says that the increasing availability of commercial satellite photos may require the government to restrict distribution.

'If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act,' Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday in a rare interview at his office in Bethesda, Md.

'I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas,' he said. [ Read more ... ]

Cybercriminals Look to Capitalize on Virginia Tech Tragedy - April 2007: "IT security and control firm Sophos has warned individuals of a social engineering phishing campaign that attempts to capitalize on the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Spam messages teasing camera phone footage of the Virginia Tech shootings have begun flooding inboxes worldwide. These messages, however, are infected with malware and could pose major problems if clicked through. [ Read more ... ]