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 backfiring of the surveillance state: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below - Update II)

Every debate over expanded government surveillance power is invariably framed as one of "security v. privacy and civil liberties" -- as though it's a given that increasing the Government's surveillance authorities will "make us safer."  But it has long been clear that the opposite is true.  As numerous experts (such as Rep. Rush Holt) have attempted, with futility, to explain, expanding the scope of raw intelligence data collected by our national security agencies invariably impedes rather than bolsters efforts to detect terrorist plots.  This is true for two reasons:  (1) eliminating strict content limits on what can be surveilled (along with enforcement safeguards, such as judicial warrants) means that government agents spend substantial time scrutinizing and sorting through communications and other information that have nothing to do with terrorism; and (2) increasing the quantity of what is collected makes it more difficult to find information relevant to actual terrorism plots.  As Rep. Holt put it when arguing against the obliteration of FISA safeguards and massive expansion of warrantless eavesdropping power which a bipartisan Congress effectuated last year: [ Read more ... ]

Salon Radio: Critical state secrets hearing today: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below w/transcript - Update II)

[link to recorder fixed]

The case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen -- brought by five victims of Bush's torture/rendition program against the Boeing subsidiary that shipped them to be tortured -- was the Obama DOJ's first test of its commitment to restore basic accountability and the rule of law.  Back in February, it resoundingly failed that test when they demanded that the case be dismissed in its entirety by invoking the same radicalized version of the "state secrets" privilege which the Bush DOJ, to great controversy, repeatedly invoked.  That was the first sign that things would go terribly awry with Obama's rule of law and civil liberties record.  This warped rendition of the "state secrets" doctrine transforms it from a long-standing, simple evidentiary privilege (i.e., this specific document is too sensitive to use in the litigation) into a sweeping, dangerous shield of immunity for government lawbreaking (i.e., courts have no right to review the legality of the crimes we commit in secret). 

The Obama administration now insists that courts must dismiss lawsuits alleging presidential lawbreaking whenever the CIA Director claims the lawsuit would jeopardize state secrets; or, as the ACLU Brief puts it, "torture victims must be denied a day in court based on an Affidavit submitted by their torturers."  The Obama DOJ has gone on to invoke that same Bush-created version of the secrecy theory to demand dismissal of numerous other cases alleging various types of lawbreaking by the Executive Branch. [ Read more ... ]

CIA’s Lost Magic Manual Resurfaces: Via Danger Room | Wired.com .

At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid $3,000 to renowned magician John Mulholland to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document — and a related paper, on conveying hidden signals — were believed to be destroyed in 1973. But recently, the manuals resurfaced, and have now been published as “The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception.” Topics include working a clandestine partner, slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, and “surreptitious removal of objects by women.”

This wasn’t the first time a magician worked for a western government. Harry Houdini snooped on the German and the Russian militiaries for Scotland Yard. English illusionist Jasper Maskelyne is reported to created dummy submarines and fake tanks to distract Rommel’s army during World War II. Some reports even credit him with employing flashing lights to “hide” the Suez Canal.

But Mulholland’s contributions were far different, because they were part of a larger CIA effort, called MK-ULTRA, to control people’s minds. Which lead to the Agency’s infatuation with LSD, as David Hambling recounted here a few weeks ago: [ Read more ... ]

Court Silences CIA Operative Despite Yellowcake Scandal: Via Threat Level.

Valerie Plame Wilson cannot publicize details of her work as a CIA operative, even though a government official already outed her as an agent in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a federal appeals court says.

Plame Wilson, who served as chief of the unit responsible for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq, argued that confidentiality agreements she signed to win her employment more than two decades ago should be nullified. The CIA has prohibited her from discussing her pre-2002 employment in her 2007 memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.

She maintained the confidentiality agreement should be set aside because government officials leaked to the press that she was an agent. Also, as part of a battle to obtain retirement benefits, her 20-year-employment status became part of the congressional record.

Given that she has been revealed as a operative, the First Amendment allows her to sidestep her confidentiality agreement, she argued.

But the appeals court, in siding with a lower court and a CIA review board prohibiting her from describing her work prior to 2002, said the nation’s national security could be compromised (.pdf) by the disclosures she’d planned in her book. In addition, the court said, it was irrelevant whether it was widely known that she was working under cover. [ Read more ... ]

CIA Invests in Social-Network Datamining: Via Schneier on Security.

From Wired:

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It's part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using "open source intelligence" -- information that's publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Here's the Visible Technologies press release on the funding.

Read Original Article:(Via Schneier on Security.)

Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets: Via Danger Room | Wired.com .

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill. [ 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 ... ]

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 ... ]

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 ... ]

Attorneys Can See Classified Info in Coffee Table Spy Suit: Via Threat Level.

A federal judge in Washington has ordered the government to grant security clearances to lawyers on both sides of a lawsuit claiming illegal spying against a DEA agent, in a ruling that challenges the government’s long-held claim that the executive branch alone has the authority to determine who can access classified material.

The attorneys in the case, which was noted by Secrecy News, need the security clearances to obtain classified knowledge held by their clients so they can adequately argue the lawsuit, the judge said, in an August 26 ruling supported by attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit, but bitterly opposed by the government.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court ordered an emergency stay of the order pending an appeal by the Justice Department. [ 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 ... ]

An Ethical Code for Intelligence Officers: Via Schneier on Security.

August's Communications of the ACM has an interesting article: "An Ethics Code for U.S. Intelligence Officers," by former NSAers Brian Snow and Clint Brooks. The article is behind a paywall, but here's the code: [ 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 ... ]

House Intelligence Committee To Probe CIA Disclosure Policy: Via ACLU online newsroom.

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), today announced that his committee would be launching an investigation into allegations that the CIA intentionally lied to Congress about “significant actions.” The investigation will focus on how Congress and its committees are kept informed by the executive branch and whether the recent revelations of information being withheld violated federal laws including the National Security Act of 1947.

The following can be attributed Michael Macleod-Ball, Interim Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office: [ Read more ... ]

International Accountability for CIA’s “Torture Flights”: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Starting next Monday, July 20, a five-member United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries will conduct a two-week examination of this country’s use of private military and security contractors (PMSCs). Two members of the Working Group will meet with officials from the Obama administration, members of Congress, nongovernmental organizations (like the ACLU) and PMSCs. This official visit comes at the invitation of the U.S. government. From a statement released today: [ Read more ... ]

Oversight FAIL: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last Friday marked the release of a report on the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP), the report that those of us in the surveillance policy world have been waiting for with bated breath since, well, the FISA Amendments Act passed last summer and mandated its creation.

The report, jointly drafted by the Offices of Inspectors General for the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was supposed to finally shed some light on President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program that the New York Times exposed in December 2005. Well, the Inspectors General (IGs) basically told us, "Don’t hold your breath." Major oversight FAIL.

First of all, while the report does include some new information gleaned from interviews with officials involved in the program, the report primarily cites already public sources, like congressional testimony, to tell a story we already know.

Moreover, the report fails to address a number of key questions: [ 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 ... ]

State Secrets Privilege: Beware of Blunt Objects: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last month, the Obama Justice Department filed a brief asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for a full panel (or "en banc") hearing of the ACLU’s extraordinary rendition case against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan. This filing was in response to the ACLU’s victory in April, when a three-judge panel of the appeals court reversed (PDF) a district court’s dismissal of the lawsuit after the government intervened and improperly asserted the "state secrets" privilege.

Today, we filed a brief opposing a rehearing of the case. In the brief, we argue: [ Read more ... ]

Construction Crew Severs Secret ‘Black Line’: Via Threat Level.

A construction crew working on an office building in Virginia in 2000 severed a fiber optic cable that wasn’t on anyone’s map. Apparently it was a ‘black line’ used for carrying secret intelligence data, according to sources who spoke recently with the Washington Post.

Within minutes of cutting the cable, three black SUV’s pulled up carrying men in suits who complained that their line was severed. [ Read more ... ]

Ninth Circuit Issues State Secrets Opinion, Allows Rendition Case to Proceed: Via EFF.org Updates.

Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Government's expansive view of the state secrets privilege, allowing an "extraordinary rendition" case against Jeppesen Dataplan to proceed. In the case, which was brought by the ACLU, the plaintiffs allege that "Jeppesen provided flight planning and logistical support services to the aircraft and crew on all of the flights transporting the five plaintiffs among their various locations of detention and torture."

The government had moved to dismiss the case pursuant to the state secrets privilege, and the federal District Court agreed, leading to the appeal. While the appeal was filed last year, Obama Administration adopted the Bush Administration's legal position.

The Ninth Circuit's decision is strong in several ways. First, it recognized that the government was arguing that any actions it called "secret" should be immune from law. The Court firmly rejected that claim: [ Read more ... ]

Obama: State Secrets Privilege is ‘Overbroad’: Via Threat Level.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday said his administration is looking to reform the controversial “state secrets privilege,” which both Obama and former-president Bush have wielded to try and kill lawsuits over warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition. 

Obama addressed the subject in an hour-long prime time press conference touching on a variety of topics, and marking the president’s 100th day in office.  The question came from Michael Scherer of Time magazine.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. During the campaign, you criticized President Bush’s use of the state secrets privilege, but U.S. attorneys have continued to argue the Bush position in three cases in court. How exactly does your view of state secrets differ from President Bush’s? And do you believe presidents should be able to derail entire lawsuits about warrantless wiretapping or rendition if classified information is involved? [ Read more ... ]

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‘State Secrets’ Can’t Hide CIA Torture Program, Appeals Court Rules: Via Threat Level.

The government cannot dispose of a civil suit accusing a Boeing subsidiary of helping the CIA transport prisoners  for torture by claiming the whole program was a national secret, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling chips away at the Obama and Bush administrations’ reliance on the so-called
“state secrets privilege” to dismiss inconvenient lawsuits that target secret and extra-judicial anti-terrorism programs started after 9/11.

The lawsuit alleges that flight support contractor Jeppesen Dataplan helped the CIA fly five non-U.S. citizens to foreign countries whose governments tortured and imprisoned the men, a legally dubious program known within the U.S. government as “extraordinary rendition”. [ Read more ... ]

U.N. torture official on America's legal obligations to impose accountability: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

After President Obama announced last week that he opposes prosecutions of CIA officials who tortured detainees in reliance on OLC memos purporting to legalize that conduct (a decision which is not Obama's to make), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, announced that Obama's policy of immunizing CIA torturers violates international law and, specifically, the clear obligations of the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture (signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988).   [ Read more ... ]