Obama threatens to veto greater intelligence oversight: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below)

One of the principal weapons used by the Bush administration to engage in illegal surveillance activities -- from torture to warrantless eavesdropping -- was its refusal to brief the full Congressional Intelligence Committees about its activities.  Instead, at best, it would confine its briefings to the so-called "Gang of Eight" -- comprised of 8 top-ranking members of the House and Senate -- who were impeded by law and other constraints from taking any action even if they learned of blatantly criminal acts. 

This was a sham process:  it allowed the administration to claim that it "briefed" select Congressional leaders on illegal conduct, but did so in a way that ensured there could be no meaningful action or oversight, because those individuals were barred from taking notes or even consulting their staff and, worse, because the full Intelligence Committees were kept in the dark and thus could do nothing even in the face of clear abuses.  The process even allowed the members who were briefed to claim they were powerless to stop illegal programs.  That extremely restrictive process also ensures irresolvable disputes over what was actually said during those briefings, as illustrated by recent controversies over what Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats were told about Bush's torture and eavesdropping programs.  Here's how Richard Clarke explained it in July, 2009, on The Rachel Maddow Show: [ Read more ... ]

The majestic petulance of John Roberts: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

The petulance and sense of self-importance on display here is quite something to behold:

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's State of the Union address was "very troubling" . . . . Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case. . . . Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.
"So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.
"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court -- according the requirements of protocol -- has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’: Via Threat Level.

Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing.

“There is no cyberwar,” Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.

“I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There are no winners in that environment.”

Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage.

His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar — and was losing it. [ Read more ... ]

Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet: Via Threat Level.

The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.

McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering:  McConnell is the nice-seeming guy who is willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those not in the know.

When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they can start making firewalls and malware into military equipment. And now McConnell, back safely in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, is out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.

And now he says we need to re-engineer the internet. [ Read more ... ]

Intelligence Official Acknowledges Policy Allowing Targeted Killings Of Americans: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

ACLU Says More Information Needed On Policy That Grants President Power To Target Americans Abroad

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a congressional hearing on Wednesday that the U.S. may, with executive approval, deliberately target and kill U.S. citizens who are suspected of being involved in terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union expressed serious concern about the lack of public information about the policy and the potential for abuse of unchecked executive power.
 
The following can be attributed to Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project: [ Read more ... ]

Be Careful What Your Bumper Sticker Says: Via Threat Level.

“No More Blood For Oil.”

Bumper stickers with that phrase were synonymous with opposition to the Iraq War, during the George W. Bush administration.

Simply hosting that message on one’s bumper was cause enough to remove two attendees at Bush’s 2005 speech at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum in Colorado. The White House had a policy of excluding those who did not agree with the president from his public appearances. It’s a policy a federal appeals court is upholding in a decision a dissenting judge decried as “simply astounding.”

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2-1 ruling means, in short, that the would-be attendees who were ousted from the event had no First Amendment constitutional right to remain at the speech. The two plaintiffs obtained the free tickets from a local Colorado representative, and sued the government for giving them the boot. [ Read more ... ]

President Obama Rightly Emphasizes Need For Better Intelligence, But Erroneously Defends State Of Terror Watch Lists: Via ACLU - Privacy.

Government Should Protect Civil Liberties While Protecting Safety, Says ACLU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – President Obama today addressed airport security in remarks responding to the Christmas Day attack on a plane headed for Detroit.

The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union:

"We welcome President Obama's emphasis on better information and intelligence sharing between government agencies. Our limited security resources should be invested where they will do the most good and have the best chance of thwarting attacks, and that means developing competent intelligence and law enforcement agencies that will stop terrorists before they get to the airport. [ Read more ... ]

Author of Torture, Spy Memos Was Just Doing His Job: Via Threat Level.

The government lawyer who wrote memos authorizing the Bush administration to engage in torture and warrantless surveillance says he was just doing his job, according to a recent interview.

Asked by the New York Times if he regretted writing the torture memos, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo replied, “No, I had to write them. It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered.”

Yoo, whose memos offered the government legal justification for its actions, said his client was former President Bush and the U.S. government as a whole. The Times asked whether it wasn’t the case that the U.S. people was his client, and not the president. Yoo replied, “If there’s a conflict between the president and the Congress, then you have to pick one or the other.” [ Read more ... ]

Obama Appoints Former Microsoft Security Chief New Cyber Security Czar: Via Threat Level.

It took seven months but President Obama has finally found someone to take the cybersecurity czar job no one wanted.

Howard Schmidt,  a former Microsoft security executive and a one-time cybersecurity adviser to President George W. Bush, has been appointed to the position of cybersecurity coordinator, according to a White House announcement on Tuesday.

Schmidt served as vice chair, and then chair, of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and as Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security for the White House from December 2001 until May 2003, when he reportedly left the position out of frustration that the government wasn’t making cybersecurity a priority. After leaving the White House, he became chief information security officer at eBay. [ Read more ... ]

Schmidt tapped as White House cybersecurity coordinator: Via Computerworld Security News.

Seven months after he announced the creation of a White House cybersecurity coordinator, President Obama has selected industry veteran Howard Schmidt for the job, an administration official confirmed Monday night.

The official told CSOonline.com that the White House will make the announcement today.

"Cybersecurity is critical to both our national security and economic competitiveness, and the president wanted to ensure that the cybersecurity coordinator had the right mix of public and private sector experience," the official said. "After an extensive search, the president chose Schmidt because of his unique background and skill sets."

Schmidt has a long history in the IT security sector and has served in the White House before as vice chairman of the president's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. [ Read more ... ]

White House Takes Another Step Toward Greater Transparency: Via EFF.org Updates.

The Obama Administration today issued its long-awaited Open Government Directive (OGD), a blueprint for transparency that the President promised on January 21, his first full day in office. The OGD is “intended to direct executive departments and agencies to take specific actions to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration” the President spoke of as he took office, and it is hopefully the first of many concrete steps that will be taken to alter the entrenched culture of secrecy that pervades the federal government.

The OGD imposes four broad mandates on the federal bureaucracy: [ Read more ... ]

Judge Refuses to Lift 5-Year-Old Patriot Act Gag Order: Via Threat Level.

A federal judge on Tuesday declined to remove a gag order imposed on the president of a small ISP who wants to reveal the contents of a national security letter he received from the FBI.

The NSL demanded the president of the New York company provide the government with e-mails from a customer the government deemed a threat. An NSL, a type of self-issued subpoena fortified by the Patriot Act, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records relevant to a government investigation without a court warrant.

The case last hit the courts in December, when the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision with Sonia Sotomayor in the majority, narrowed the standard by which recipients of NSLs must keep mum.

Those supplying the requested data to the government are forbidden from disclosing their mandatory cooperation, and face up to five years in prison for breaching the gag. The government issues about 50,000 NSLs each year, and an internal audit showed widespread government abuse in connection to them. [ Read more ... ]

E-Mail Mocking Obama Is ‘Exhibit A’ in Wrongful-Firing Suit: Via Threat Level.

Editor: Goto the original article to see the email.The president of a Midwest office supply company is in court after a salesman claimed the boss’ pre-election e-mail rant against Barack Obama amounted to an edict: Vote for Obama and you’re fired.

The lawsuit (.pdf) claims the president of KK Office Solutions’ pre-election e-mail criticizing Obama to company employees was no joke and instead resulted in the firing of a pro-Obama salesman, Elliot Snell, who openly made it known he supported and voted for Obama.

“Mr. Snell was terminated for voting for his presidential candidate of choice. Voting for a president is acting in a manner that public policy would encourage as it is similar to civic duties/opportunities such as performing jury duty, seeking public office or joining a labor union,” Snell’s lawsuit said.

The lawsuit, filed in Kansas state court Oct. 6, highlights that there is no federal statute directly protecting private workers from being retaliated for their votes. “There’s not really a federal statute that would cover this. It’s just not there. It has to be a public policy argument that is covered by state law,” said Snell’s attorney, Lawrence Williamson of Kansas. [ Read more ... ]

Chicago’s Loss: Is Passport Control to Blame?: Via In Transit Blog - NYTimes.com .

Did Chicago lose the chance to host the 2016 Olympics because of airport security issues?

Among the toughest questions posed to the Chicago bid team this week in Copenhagen was one that raised the issue of what kind of welcome foreigners would get from airport officials when they arrived in this country to attend the Games. Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, in the question-and-answer session following Chicago’s official presentation, pointed out that entering the United States can be “a rather harrowing experience.”

President Obama, who was there as part of the 10-person team, assured Mr. Ali that all visitors would be made to feel welcome. “One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world,” he said.”

But Mr. Obama’s assurances may have not been enough to assuage critics like Mr. Ali. A few hours later the Games went to Rio de Janeiro.

The exchange underscores what tourism officials here have been saying for years about the sometimes rigorous entry process for foreigners, which they see as a deterrent to tourism. [ Read more ... ]

Telco Spy Immunity Up for Grabs: Via Threat Level.

Lawmakers are considering key changes to the Patriot Act and other spy laws – proposals that could give new life to lawsuits accusing the nation’s telecommunications companies of turning over Americans’ electronic communications to the government without warrants.

President Barack Obama supported that telco-immunity legislation as an Illinois senator last year. President George W. Bush signed the bill, and a federal judge this summer dismissed the closely watched telecom lawsuits brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

On Oct. 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee likely will consider revoking that immunity legislation as it works to revise the Patriot Act and other spy laws with radical changes that provide for more government transparency and more privacy protections. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Stands Behind ‘State Secrets’ in Spy Case: Via Threat Level.

SAN FRANCISCO – Hours after the Justice Department announced it would limit its use of the state secrets privilege in new cases, the administration appeared before a federal judge here Wednesday and continued to invoke that defense in a closely watched spy case.

The litigation at issue, now five years old, tests whether a sitting president may bypass Congress and adopt a warrantless surveillance program, as President Bush did in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.

“We need to protect information concerning the manner and methods by which we seek to detect and prevent a terrorist attack,” Justice Department special counsel Anthony Coppolino said Wednesday while arguing to a federal judge to dismiss the case on the basis of state secrets.

The 5-year-old case, having a tortured procedural history, is the furthest along in challenging the Bush administration’s warrantless Terror Surveillance Program. [ Read more ... ]

CIA Directors conclude CIA shouldn't be investigated for murder: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below)

In a truly shocking development being treated as major news, seven former CIA Directors -- including all three who served under George W. Bush -- jointly concluded that the CIA should not be criminally investigated for torture deaths, and they have written a letter to President Obama (.pdf) expressing that view.  Do leaders of organizations in general ever believe that their organizations and its members should be criminally investigated and possibly prosecuted for acts carried out on behalf of that organization, and do CIA Directors specifically ever believe that about the CIA?  Has a CIA Director ever advocated that CIA agents be criminally investigated for illegal intelligence activities?

But what's most notable about this letter is that it is not addressed to the individual charged with making decisions about whether an individual should be prosecuted:  namely, the Attorney General of the U.S.  Instead, it is addressed to the President himself, and they "urge [him] to exercise [his] authority to reverse Attorney General's August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations."  What so-called "authority" are they talking about? [ Read more ... ]

Whose Lawyer? The People’s Lawyer.: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Today a group of former CIA directors sent a letter to President Obama asking him to kill Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigation into the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody. Clearly these CIA directors have forgotten one key thing: this isn’t the president’s decision to make.

Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Program, said in a statement today: [ Read more ... ]

WT EXCLUSIVE: White House collects Web users' data without notice: Via Washington Times.

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information. [ Read more ... ]

Obama appointee previews the imminent preventive detention debate: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

By all accounts, the White House is going to unveil its proposal for indefinite detention within the next four to eight weeks, and it has begun dispatching proponents of that scheme to lay the rhetorical groundwork.  In The Washington Post today, one of the proposal's architects -- Law Professor Robert Chesney, a member of Obama's Detention Policy Task Force -- showcased the trite and manipulative tactics that will be used by advocates of indefinite detention to win support for their radical program [anyone doubting that detention without trials is radical should recall that Obama's own White House counsel Greg Craig told Jane Mayer back in February that it's "hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law"; New York Times reporter William Glaberson wrote that "Obama's detention policy "would be a departure from the way this country sees itself"; Sen. Russ Feingold warned that it "violates basic American values," "is likely unconstitutional," and "is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world"; The New York Times' Bob Herbert said that "Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention"; and the Obama policy's most vigorous Congressional proponents are Tom Coburn and Lindsey Graham]. 

According to Chesney, though, the real extremists are those "on the left" who oppose preventive detention; those who believe that radical liberties such as criminal charges, trials and due process are necessary before the state can put someone in a cage for life; those who agree with Thomas Jefferson that trial by jury is "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." [ Read more ... ]

Cybersecurity Act Returns With a Fresh Coat of Paint: Via EFF.org Updates.

In April, we voiced serious concerns about the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, a bill by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), that sought to give the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet. For months, the bill has been redrafted behind closed doors and has recently been circulated, but by all accounts, the changes are cosmetic and it's sadly more of the same.

Like the original bill, the new version appears to give the President carte blanche to decide which networks and systems, private or public, count as "critical infrastructure information systems or networks." And alongside that authority, there still appears to be murky language that would permit the President to shut down the Internet. Note the troubling provision in the original bill, which said:

The President [...] may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security;

[ Read more ... ]

Group Plans Lawsuit To Unveil the CIA’s ‘Pentagon Papers’: Via Wired: Threat Level.

The CIA and other agencies are sitting on a trove of documentary evidence of actual and suspected wrongdoing under the Bush administration, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to file a lawsuit Wednesday to force the intelligence community to come clean, the group says.

At issue are the misconduct reports the spy agencies are required to file with the Intelligence Oversight Board, a board of private citizens with security clearances who oversee the spy agencies and report to the president. The board is tasked with evaluating the self-reported malfeasances of intelligence agencies, looking at the agencies’ responses, and forwarding on the worst to the attorney general when it believes criminal prosecution is called for. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Claims Immunity, As New Spy Case Takes Center Stage: Via Threat Level.

SAN FRANCISCO – The latest legal volley attacking President George W. Bush’s once-secret electronic eavesdropping dragnet gets its first court hearing here Wednesday, nearly four years after the warrantless surveillance program was revealed.

The Jewel v. NSA lawsuit was filed in September by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It responded to 2008 federal legislation that immunized the nation’s telecommunications companies from suits challenging their complicity in the President’s Surveillance Program. The EFF redrafted its earlier case against the telcos to target the government for funneling Americans’ communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker will hear arguments from both sides on the Obama administration’s motion for the case to be thrown out.

In court filings, the administration says the suit (.pdf) “would require or risk the disclosure of information that is properly subject to the state secrets privilege and related statutory privileges.” The administration claims it’s shielded by sovereign immunity, in addition to citing the controversial state secrets privilege.

All the while, the EFF maintains the dragnet surveillance (.pdf) continues unabated under Obama. [ Read more ... ]

Bush’s Secret NSA Spying May Have Tainted Prosecutions, Report Warns: Via Threat Level.

The Justice Department needs to investigate whether the secretiveness of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program tainted terrorism prosecutions by hiding exculpatory evidence from defendants, an oversight report from five inspectors general warned Friday.

The report (.pdf), mandated by Congress, also warned that President’ Bush’s post-9/11 extrajudicial  intelligence programs involved unprecedented collection of communications, and that the government needs to be careful about storing and using that data.

Senator Russ Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat who sits on the Intelligence committee, said the report showed the programs were “outrageous” and called for more declassification.

“This report leaves no doubt that the warrantless wiretapping program was blatantly illegal and an unconstitutional assertion of executive power,” Feingold said. “I once again call on the Obama administration and its Justice Department to withdraw the flawed legal memoranda that justified the program and that remain in effect today.” [ Read more ... ]

Dear Potus 08 - Via CFP: Technology Policy '08:

From the in-progress page on the program wiki:

If the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy community wrote a letter to the next President of the United States about our priorities for technology policy, what would we say -- and how would we get him or her to read it?

There's only one way to find out.

At this year's conference dinner, we will launch a collaborative effort to write a short letter to the next President from the CFP '08 attendees. We'll get these initial results up on a wiki for comments and evolution, and refine them over the follwing 36 hours. By Friday morning, if we've managed to converge on something plausible, we'll start circulating the current draft for signatures. At the end of the conference, we'll mail the current draft to the presidential campaigns and invite their response.

We'll also put it all up on the web - with a Creative Commons "by" (attribution) license - and invite others to use it for whatever purposes they want as we revise our initial draft, get broader involvement and discussion, and try to get our voice heard amidst the din of the campaigns.

We'll be using this blog as a big part of the "Dear Potus 08" project, both to update the details -- currently described as "mostly TBD" -- and to discussparticular topics. The 9.5 theses thread is the best place to get involved with the technology policy discussion right now.

In this thread, any questions or thoughts about "Dear Potus 08" -- or links to similar projects?

(Read Original Article - Via CFP: Technology Policy '08.)