EFF to Urge True Transparency in Congressional Hearing Thursday: Via EFF.org Updates.

Washington, D.C. - On Thursday, March 18, at 2 p.m., members of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a public hearing on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Obama administration compliance with transparency law. The hearing comes as transparency advocates celebrate Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of our nation's open government laws that features numerous events measuring the progress made in combating official secrecy.

Senior Counsel David Sobel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will testify at Thursday's hearing, urging the White House to fulfill its promises for open government. Despite President Obama's order to government agencies last year to renew their commitment to FOIA, EFF and other organizations still see delays in releasing relevant documents, excuses for not releasing other records, and excessive redactions, among other needless secrecy. [ Read more ... ]

Pentagon Discloses Hundreds of Reports of Possibly Illegal Intelligence Activities: Via EFF.org Updates.

The Department of Defense has released more than 800 heavily-redacted pages of intelligence oversight reports, detailing activities that its Inspector General has “reason to believe are unlawful.” The reports are the latest in an ongoing document release by more than a half-dozen intelligence agencies in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by EFF in July 2009.

The reports, submitted to the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) by various Department of Defense components, cover the period from 2001 through 2008. The IOB’s role within the Executive Office of the President is to ensure that each component of the intelligence community works within the Constitution and all applicable laws. As such, the Inspector General of each intelligence agency is required to submit periodic reports to the IOB, which in turn is required to forward to the Attorney General any report identifying an intelligence activity that violates the law. Intelligence oversight reporting is rarely disclosed to the public. [ Read more ... ]

Appeals Court Backs EFF Push for Telecom Lobbying Documents Disclosure: Via EFF.org Updates.

San Francisco - Today a federal appeals court rejected a government claim of "lobbyist privacy" to hide the identities of individuals who pressured Congress to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the government's warrantless electronic surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. As the court observed, "There is a clear public interest in public knowledge of the methods through which well-connected corporate lobbyists wield their influence."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been seeking records detailing the telecoms' campaign for retroactive legal immunity under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Telecom immunity was enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

"Today's ruling is an important one for government and corporate accountability," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "The court recognized that paid lobbyists trying to influence the government to advance their clients' interests can't hide behind privacy claims to keep their efforts secret." [ Read more ... ]

Court Keeps White House Spy Docs Secret: Via Threat Level.

A federal appellate panel on Tuesday blocked a court order requiring disclosure of e-mail between the White House, Justice Department, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence — communications that paved the way for new spy legislation.

The 2008 messages were a precursor to legislation that year to kill litigation against the nation’s carriers for funneling Americans’ communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a California judge who ordered disclosure of those e-mails and the names of telco company lobbyists who pushed for the legislation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights group in San Francisco, sought the e-mail and lobbyist information under a Freedom of Information Act claim. [ Read more ... ]

Seven "Corporations of Interest" in Selling Surveillance Tools to China: Via EFF.org Updates.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement of a new U.S. policy on global Internet Freedom included a bold new statement about the responsibilities of American technology companies:

...We are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a quick profit.

We couldn't agree more. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Reverses Position on Disclosing Lobbyist Contacts: Via EFF.org Updates.

In yesterday's State of the Union address, President Obama made an important commitment to openness and transparency in government:

It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my Administration or Congress.

This is welcome news. For the past few years, EFF has been litigating a Freedom of Information Act case against the government, seeking the identities of lobbyists who contacted the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on behalf of their telecommunications company clients in order to push for telecom immunity. [ Read more ... ]

Report Confirms FBI Misuse of Authority to Obtain Phone Records: Via EFF.org Updates.

The Washington Post reported today that the "FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records," using methods that FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni admitted "technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records."

This issue first came to light in a March 2007 report by the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General, which revealed that the FBI's Communications Analysis Unit (CAU) had routinely been using “exigent letters” to obtain customer information from telecommunications companies, including Verizon and AT&T. [ Read more ... ]

Senator Demands IP Treaty Details: Via Threat Level.

That a U.S. senator must ask a federal agency to share information regarding a proposed and “classified” international anti-counterfeiting accord the government has already disclosed is alarming. Especially when the info has been given to Hollywood, the recording industry, software makers and even some digital-rights groups.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is demanding that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk confirm leaks surrounding the unfinished Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, being negotiated largely between the European Union and United States. Among other things, Wyden wants to know if the deal creates international guidelines that mean consumers lose internet access if they are believed to be digital copyright scofflaws.

He also wants to know whether internet service providers could lose “safe harbor” protection for failing to police their customers’ digital content for copyright infringement violations. Such a move would heap copyright liability onto the ISP, and fundamentally alter U.S. copyright law.

What “legal incentives,” Wyden asked Kirk in a Wednesday letter, would “encourage Online Service Providers (OSPs) to cooperate with copyright owners to deter the unauthorized storage or transmission of copyrighted materials.”

The questions came weeks after leaked documents from the European Union suggested the United States was taking those positions on the accord’s draft internet section. [ Read more ... ]

Court: Feds Can Hide Alleged Spying on Gitmo Lawyers: Via Threat Level.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the government’s refusal to admit or deny it has documents related to warrantless eavesdropping on Guantanamo Bay detainees and their lawyers.

In doing so, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted a little-known defense called the Glomar doctrine. The doctrine, the court ruled, allows the National Security Agency to refuse to acknowledge to the lawyers suing under the Freedom of Information Act that there are any documents responsive to allegations their clients had been or are being targeted under the Terrorist Surveillance Program adopted following the 2001 terror attacks.

“Confirming or denying the mere existence of specific records in a general surveillance program would logically be both confirming or denying that the NSA was targeting a specific individual and confirming or denying that the NSA is conducting a general surveillance program,” (.pdf) the New York-based appellate court wrote Wednesday. [ Read more ... ]

Newly-released documents show flaws in domestic intelligence collection and oversight: Via CDT - Center for Democracy & Technology.

Last Wednesday several U.S. intelligence agencies released previously classified documents in response to FOIA litigation from EFF & ACLU. Among these was a document reporting that the Department of Homeland Security had improperly investigated the Nation of Islam in 2007. DHS retracted the intelligence report on the black Muslim group hours after its release – but not before the report was disseminated widely to hundreds of other government agencies, private organizations and individuals. While it is a positive sign that DHS’ intelligence oversight managed to catch and retract the Nation of Islam report, the fact that the report was written at all suggests continuing confusion, at the working level, about what is the proper focus of domestic intelligence activity.

The government has spied on the Nation of Islam and its leaders for decades, but never obtained evidence that the organization was a terrorist outfit. So why was it under investigation yet again? Not because new evidence of violence or illegality surfaced, but because the group’s leader was sick.

Read Original Article:(Via CDT - Center for Democracy & Technology.)

Lawsuit Challenging Unconstitutional Spying Should Be Reinstated, Says ACLU: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

FISA Amendments Act Must Be Subject To Judicial Review

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

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief late Wednesday arguing that its lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional government spying law should be reinstated. The ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed the landmark lawsuit in July 2008 to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the executive branch virtually unchecked power to collect Americans' international e-mails and telephone calls by the millions, without a warrant and without suspicion of any kind.

"Allowing this case to move forward is essential to protecting innocent Americans' e-mail and telephone communications from dragnet, suspicionless government monitoring," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "Without court oversight, individual privacy rights are left to the mercy of the political branches. The courts have not only the authority but also the obligation to ensure that individual rights are not trampled by overbroad surveillance laws." [ Read more ... ]

Intelligence Agencies Release Docs Describing Misconduct in Response to EFF Lawsuit: Via EFF.org Updates.

Today the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency released 162 pages of intelligence oversight reporting in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by EFF in July.

The reports, made to a presidential advisory committee called the Intelligence Oversight Board, detail intelligence activities that the agencies "have reason to believe may be unlawful."

EFF is reviewing the documents now and has posted them on our website. Some of our initial finds include reports that: [ Read more ... ]

22 Million E-mails Missing From Bush White House Found: Via Threat Level.

White House computer technicians have found 22 million e-mails that were believed to have been lost during President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the Associated Press.

The discovery was announced Monday by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed lawsuits against the Executive Office of the President (EOP) in 2007 for the e-mails. [ Read more ... ]

Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, ‘Confuse’ Consumers: Via Threat Level.

Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.” [ 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 ... ]

Once Again, Government Moves to Delay Release of Telecom Lobbying Documents: Via EFF.org Updates.

This evening, the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice filed yet another emergency motion with the Ninth Circuit, asking for a stay of the deadline to release telecom immunity lobbying documents, less than 24 hours before the documents are due to be released to the public.

Almost simultaneously, a report appeared on Politico.com, claiming that the government will be releasing some documents, while fighting in court to hide the remainder. Despite this report, the government's motion seeks to delay disclosure of all the documents, and no new documents have been released just yet.

For those following this saga, this is deja vu all over again. [ Read more ... ]

Secret ACTA treaty can't be shown to public, just 42 lawyers: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Turns out that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will include a section on Internet "enforcement procedures" after all. And how many people have had input on these procedures? Forty-two. [ Read more ... ]

Special Interests See ‘Classified’ Copyright Treaty; You Can’t: Via Threat Level.

Want to know the language of the ever-transforming proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement?

It’s classified. And, according to the Obama administration, it carries national security implications. According to leaked documents on WikiLeaks, the proposed treaty would require ISPs to terminate repeat copyright scofflaws, criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, subject iPods to border searches and even interfere with the legitimate sale of brand-name pharmaceutical products.

But as it turns out, the administration has shared the secret treaty’s contents with more than three dozen individuals in the private sector, from the left and the right of the copyright debate. Those individuals include Business Software Alliance attorney Emery Simon, Google copyright czar Bill Patry and president of Public Knowledge Gigi Sohn. [ Read more ... ]

What Does DHS Know About You?: Via philosecurity.

Here’s a real copy of an American citizen’s DHS Travel Record retrieved from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s Automated Targeting System (ATS). This was obtained through a FOIA/Privacy Act request and sent in by an anonymous reader (thanks!)

The document reveals that the DHS is storing the reader’s:

Read Original Article:(Via philosecurity.)

Prompted by EFF Lawsuit, FBI (Partially) Releases Domestic Surveillance Guidelines: Via EFF.org Updates.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a heavily censored version of its controversial Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidelines (DIOG), which became effective on December 1, 2008. EFF requested public disclosure of the guidelines under the Freedom of Information Act in December and, after more than six months passed with no response, we filed suit against the Department of Justice in June 2009. In response to the lawsuit, the Bureau agreed to answer EFF's disclosure request no later than October 13, and the court ordered it to do so. The FBI’s partial release of the DIOG complies with the court's order to respond to our request.

The 258-page document implements the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations, the most recent version of which was issued late last year by former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. For 33 years, the FBI's domestic surveillance activities have been conducted according to a set of guidelines promulgated and revised by successive Attorneys General. Initially crafted by Edward Levi in 1976, the first set of guidelines were put into place to curb the invasive techniques of the FBI's Counterintelligence Programs (“COINTELPRO”) of the 1960s and 1970s. [ Read more ... ]

The Torture Report: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)

Since 2004, the ACLU and its partners — the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace — have been litigating under the Freedom of Information Act for documents concerning the abuse of prisoners held by the Department of Defense and CIA. The litigation has produced thousands of pages of government documents, including the Justice Department torture memos that were released in April, the FBI emails that discussed the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, and dozens of autopsy reports relating to the deaths of prisoners in the custody of the Defense Department.

To those of us who have been working on the lawsuit, though, the remarkable thing is not how much information has been released but how much is still being withheld. [ Read more ... ]

EFF Wins Release of Telecom Lobbying Records: Via EFF.org Updates.

San Francisco - A judge ordered the government Thursday to release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the records be provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by October 9, 2009.

The decision is part of EFF's long-running battle to gather information about telecommunications lobbying conducted as Congress considered granting immunity to companies that participated in illegal government electronic surveillance. Telecom immunity was eventually passed as part of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008, but a bill that would repeal the immunity -- called the JUSTICE Act -- was introduced in the Senate last week.

"Today's ruling is a major victory for government transparency," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "As the court recognized, it was unlawful for the government to deny Americans access to this information in the midst of the debate over telecom immunity last year. We're pleased these records will now be available to the public as Congress considers the JUSTICE Act." [ 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 ... ]

Black Sites? What’s That? Torture? Us?: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last week, the Department of State (DOS) released a huge tranche of documents on its website in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights and NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. There’s a lot of stuff to wade through, but we found some gems.

In this email from Laura M. Stone of the DOS to Anne S. Casper at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Stone writes (PDF):

If iTV ask anything about the Black Sites here, I think we should stick to what we have done before: deny flat out that they exist.

[ Read more ... ]

Surrendering Your Fourth Amendment Rights at the Border: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

Today the ACLU filed a lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) demanding records about the CBP’s policy of searching travelers’ laptops without suspicion of wrongdoing. The lawsuit was filed to enforce a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in June, when we requested the criteria used for selecting passengers for suspicionless searches, the number of people who have been subject to the searches, the number of devices and documents retained and the reasons for their retention.

In the policy, the CBP asserts the right to read the information on travelers’ laptops "absent individualized suspicion." So that means searching all files saved on laptops, including personal financial information, family photographs and lists of Web sites travelers have visited, without having any reason to believe a traveler has broken the law. [ Read more ... ]