Whole-Body-Imaging, the Health Threat, and the Security Industry Lobby

I have written a lot about the latest privacy invasive security “savior” being peddled by the Fear-Industrial-Complex (another term I've heard floated is the Homeland-Security-Industrial-Complex) called “Whole-Body-Imaging” ("digital strip search"). These full-body scanners use one of two technologies - millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays - to see through clothing, producing images of naked passengers.

I want to revisit the topic because of two articles I have come across in the past two days that further expose the myriad of reasons why these scanners are not a good idea.

Profiting off Fear

As with any modern "defense issue", there are big money interests advocating on behalf of these scanners - namely a variety of security industry companies and former high level officials like Michael Chertoff seeking to profit off the publics' irrational fear of terrorism. As an article in today's Los Angeles Times details, this industry is exploding in both profits and clout in the Capitol.

The Obama administration alone set aside $1 billion last year in stimulus funds for new security technology for the TSA. In January 2007, an article documenting its rising profile noted that "Rapiscan's (the primary manufacturer of "body scanners" and a client of Michael Chertoff) presence on Capitol Hill pays off," with the company having opened a new Washington office and hiring a number of outside lobbyists. As the article details:

"The results have been apparent. Last year the company did $17 million to $20 million in contracts. Over the past six months, the company has had $40 million in sales to the US government, compared with $8 million in 2004. 'We plan to dramatically expand in the next few years well above the multimillion-dollar [mark],' says Peter Kant, vice president of government affairs for Rapiscan…Rapiscan also decided last year to join the political money game in a more coordinated effort, by creating a political action committee.

Kant says he expects the PAC to raise $50,000 to $75,000 a year and donate equally to both parties. Previously, about 60 percent of the political donations from the firm's executives went to Republicans…How Rapiscan and other homeland-security companies will fare in the new political climate is still unclear. Lawmakers are expected to increase oversight and investigation of homeland-security issues such as government contracts."

As further noted in the Truthout.org article I'm featuring today by Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D.:

...Rapiscan received $25.4 million from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) by way of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e., the Stimulus Bill), to produce 150 new full-body scanners to be used at airports across the United States. Peter Kant, a vice president at Rapiscan, said that the government has given the TSA the green light to spend up to $173 million on new scanners, which could lead to the emplacement of hundreds of such devices in the near future. Interestingly, the $25.4 million tendered to Rapiscan for the first 150 scanners was formally awarded in September 2009, well ahead of the Christmas Day bombing attempt that has set off the recent flurry of scanner demands. According to recovery.gov, Rapiscan also received $2.9 million in stimulus monies in May 2009. The total number of jobs created by these millions in stimulus funds is estimated at 40.

In addition to the stimulus money recently administered, the US Army just announced an award of a no-bid contract to Rapiscan for 12 scanners to be used at military bases in Iraq and Kuwait. Previously, in December 2009, Rapiscan received a $5 million contract from NATO to provide screening devices for use in Afghanistan.

It goes without saying that there's also a political component to the recent push for these scanners, as elected officials are constantly seeking to score political points in the hopes of establishing their "tough on terror" credentials.

Privacy Concerns and TSA Lies

I have detailed the privacy implications, which I will touch upon again today. Let's face it, being digitally strip searched without probable cause at every airport by the least opens a pandora's box (where next will we use these scanners?)...and wets an already terror driven slipper slope.

And now, with this much money at stake, it should be no surprise that - thanks to the work of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and with help from the Freedom of Information Act -we now know for a fact that TSA officials have been misleading the public by claiming these scanners cannot store or send their graphic images.

According to the 2008 documents obtained by EPIC, the TSA specified that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities when in "test mode."Even taking into account the "test mode" caveat, these documents are contrary to the representations that have been made in recent weeks by TSA officials that the machines have "zero storage capability".

On the TSA's own Web site - in an effort to assure passengers their privacy is protected - it specifically says "the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image." Now we know that these devices DO include the ability to store, record and transfer images of passengers screened at U.S. airports, including hard disk storage and USB integration and Ethernet connectivity. In other words, the privacy concerns articulated by civil liberties advocates were not overstated.

Security Benefits Overstated

The claimed security benefits of these scanners have also proven to be highly dubious. It remains debatable in fact whether this technology would have even detected the “underwear bomber”. This is in contrast to what we do know: if law enforcement had simply acted on the information it had already gathered - like the warnings of the “underwear bomber's” father - the plot would have been foiled much earlier.

Another point to consider before embracing this latest "terror fix" is that for every specific tactic we target with a new, expensive, and often burdensome security apparatus, the terrorist's tactics themselves will change (including use of body cavities). Risks can be reduced for a given target, but not eliminated. If we strip searched every single passenger at every airport in the country, terrorists would try to bomb shopping malls or movie theaters.

New Concerns Over Threat to Health

And now, as the article entitled "Invasion of the Body Scanners" details, there are new concerns that question the untested nature of these technologies and whether they are in fact safe for widespread use. As an article from NaturalNews (recently reprinted by Truthout) observed:

"In researching the biological effects of the millimeter wave scanners used for whole body imaging at airports, NaturalNews has learned that the energy emitted by the machines may damage human DNA . Millimeter wave machines represent one of two primary technologies currently being used for the 'digital strip searches' being conducted at airports around the world. 'The Transportation Security Administration utilizes two technologies to capture naked images of air travelers - backscatter x-ray technology and millimeter wave technology,' reports the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a non-profit currently suing the US government to stop these electronic strip searches.

In order to generate the nude image of the human body, these machines emit terahertz photons - high-frequency energy 'particles' that can pass through clothing and body tissue. The manufacturers of such machines claim they are perfectly safe and present no health risks, but a study conducted by Boian S. Alexandrov (and colleagues) at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico showed that these terahertz waves could 'unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.'"

The Los Alamos study, which can be found in an online physics journal and is further analyzed in MIT's Technology Review (TR), opens the door for more in-depth investigations of this technology that is about to become pervasive, since, as TR noted, "a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record terahertz waves but also bombard us with them. And if our exposure is set to increase, the question that urgently needs answering is what level of terahertz exposure is safe."

And yet, as NaturalNews indicated, "no such long-term safety testing has ever been conducted by a third party. There have been no clinical trials indicating that multiple exposures to such terahertz waves, accumulated over a long period of time, are safe for humans." Given what we already know about the effects of radiation, as well as the initial report from Los Alamos, this would seem at a minimum to be a circumstance requiring greater study before mass deployment. It is more likely, however, that these untested devices will be in place long before adequate testing is done, suggesting that any such safety analysis will simply be undertaken as the devices are being used on human subjects at airports across the US and around the world.

Now to the rest of today's featured article by Dr. Amster, a professor of peace studies at Prescott College and the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association:

And then there are the obvious matters of privacy and dignity. One need not be a constitutional scholar or privacy-rights advocate to appreciate the implications of conducting such invasive de facto "strip searches" on a widespread scale.

...

The New York Times further noted that "others say that the technology is no security panacea, and that its use should be carefully controlled because of the risks to privacy, including the potential for its ghostly naked images to show up on the Internet." Indeed, as Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer intoned: "They say these full-body screening images - in which I am pretty sure we are naked - are immediately erased, but I don't believe them for a minute. Either somebody is keeping them on the hard drive to protect himself in case some terrorist gets by on his watch, or some enterprising guy is going to be selling Britney Spears' body scan to TMZ for a hundred thousand bucks. I mean this is America, land of the irrepressible entrepreneurial spirit." Absent clear and enforceable limitations, it seems likely that such scenarios will ensue.

...

Despite being known as a fairly Puritanical people in many respects - at least in terms of what constitutes "public decency" and the like - it seems that Americans perhaps are more permissive in their sense of decorum than we have been led to believe. Is it still voyeurism when the subject willingly desires to be watched? Must security and privacy exist in tension, or can they be fruitfully reconciled? Is constant surveillance becoming the baseline of our lives, and if so, who is watching the watchers? With the proliferation of public cameras, digital recorders, webcams, cellphone cameras and, now, terahertz scanners, we will be confronted with the implications of these technologies for the foreseeable future. The fact that our collective fears seem to be the leading edge of the debate doesn't bode particularly well for reasoned decision-making and the eventual utilization of new technologies for emancipation rather than subjugation.

And in the End …

The matter of full-body scanners presents a critical cultural referendum on basic questions of freedom and autonomy. The circumstances under which the issue is being presented - a climate of fear instilled by a well-hyped reminder of the shared trauma of 9/11 - make it almost impossible to have confidence in a sound and sober resolution. Moreover, the primary players behind the use of these technologies are imbricated within the workings of a growing military-industrial complex that continues to pervade more aspects of our lives.

This watershed moment in the public dialogue about security and privacy is framed by an increasing militarization of everyday life in America, as indicated by a recollection of the loci in which companies like Rapiscan operate - namely, "at airports, government and corporate buildings, correctional and prison facilities, postal facilities, military zones, sea ports and border crossings." This list could easily expand to include schools, hospitals, malls, arenas, banks, stores, and more. Now is the moment to rein it in while we still have a window of self-determination in which to do so.

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

I would just conclude today by reiterating a few points I have made here in the past. This increasingly influential "Fear-Industrial-Complex" (i.e. Department of Defense, corporate media, talk radio, security technologies industry, Congress, the White House, “the intelligence community”, pundits, weapons defense contractors, etc.) serves as a kind of de facto terror hype machine that is far more interested in maximizing profit and power than reducing any threat posed by terrorism.

The False Choice: Privacy versus Security

The unholy alliance of political expediency and corporate profit that is largely behind the "selling of these scanners" belies the false choice that pits "security against civil liberties". Sadly, this fundamentally dishonest "frame" is nearly universally accepted as fact and parroted by the corporate media, big business, and the government.

If we are truly trying to reduce the threat of terrorism there are DEMONSTRABLY more effective ways than those currently being pursued. A few alternative tactics to consider: stop bombing and occupying Muslim nations, arming their enemies, torturing and indefinitely jailing their people, and propping up many of their countries most ruthless dictators.

As I wrote in "The Politics of Fear and Whole-Body-Imaging": No one is denying that terrorism is a threat or seeking to justify their crimes, but how does creating more of them make us safer? And instead of spending one more minute listening to the grumblings of a war criminal like Dick Cheney, we would do well to heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr. instead: "We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others."

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) articulates why reducing privacy doesn't guarantee better security, stating "It's a mistake to believe you can trade privacy for security. A lot of times people give up privacy and they're no more secure. I'm very skeptical of people who say that if you only trade in privacy, you'll get more security. I don't think that's true, and body scanners are a good example of that."

I want to conclude with my "go to" quote that I think best dismantles the Privacy vs. Security lie from security expert Bruce Schneier, author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World:

"If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.”

Court Rules Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review

For those that might have missed last week's bit of bad news, a federal judge dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails. The group plans to appeal the decision.

For a little backdrop on this ongoing story, let me refresh our memories. First, to highlight the gravity of this issue and why its still critically important to address: Last year, a government report was released that disclosed that President Bush authorized secret surveillance activities that went beyond the previously disclosed NSA program – raising the prospect of additional unlawful conduct.

This new information had led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

Then we got another report, one that has only added to the building uproar against this program and in favor of investigations and prosecutions. This new report, mandated by Congress and produced by the inspectors general of five federal agencies, found that other intelligence tools used in assessing security threats posed by terrorists provided more timely and detailed information. In fact, NOT ONE instance could be cited that demonstrated the wiretapping program prevented any attack of any kind, ever. Nor did it lead to the capture of any terrorists.

In light of these facts, one would think that the Obama Administration would come down somewhere at least close to the position that candidate Obama espoused on the campaign trail. Sadly, the opposite has been true.

In fact, all we have to show as a nation since this program was exposed is additional protections (and retroactive immunity) to telecom companies for sharing our private information with the government, and more legal cover for the Executive Branch to carry out similar efforts in the future.

As we now all know, both Obama and Holder have completely reversed themselves on the issue of wiretapping, by not only refusing to prosecute or investigate the program and/or those that carried it out, but have even expanded their defense of the program in some important key respects.
So another route was taken by EFF: The Courts. Initially, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco ruled in 2006 that the AT&T customers could sue the company for allegedly allowing federal agents to intercept their calls and e-mails and seize their records without a warrant.

Last year, Judge Vaughn Walker threw out more than three dozen lawsuits claiming that the nation’s major telecommunications companies had illegally assisted in the wiretapping without warrants program approved by President Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

But, while he said the objections of the privacy groups were not strong enough to override the wishes of Congress, Judge Walker did show some sympathy for the plaintiffs’ claims. He had refused the government’s efforts to invoke the “state secrets” privilege and had moved toward compelling the Justice Department to turn over documents.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU appealed the case - a case in which Judge Walker kept intact related claims against the government over the wiretapping program, as well as a suit by an Oregon charity that says it has evidence it was a target of wiretapping without warrants.

As the Chronicle editorialized last year:

In the current case, several dozen phone customers are before a federal judge here asking that the government turn over data on eavesdropping. A prior suit against the phone companies for going along with the illegal surveillance was dismissed after Congress re-wrote domestic spying rules last year and indemnified the firms. Obama, then a senator, voted for changes in a surprising shift from his campaign-trail rhetoric that heavily criticized the abuses of civil liberties in the war on terrorism.

The Obama team is making the same arguments made by the Bush administration in denying it needs to explain anything. Allowing an open-court case will lay bare state secrets, your honor, and the country will lose a "crown jewel" piece of intelligence gathering, according to one Justice Department attorney. The spying may have been improper, but, sorry, we can't really talk about it....

The decision in his lap isn't an easy one. He can side with Obama lawyers and dismiss the case in the name of national security, a path that courts often take when confronted with a flag-waving invocation of homeland defense. Or he can open up a dark chapter in the nation's history to the plain light of legal examination. Such a decision would definitely roil the waters while the truth surfaces. But since the president won't do it, it's time the courts stepped in.

And now that brings us to last week's latest disappointment coming out of the courts. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

Unlike the AT&T suit, which was based on the company's contracts with its customers and its duty to maintain their privacy, the new suit was a claim of government wrongdoing that required evidence that the plaintiffs were the targets, Walker said.

To establish the right to sue, a private citizen must demonstrate a "direct, personal stake in the outcome" and cannot merely claim "a right to have the government follow the law," Walker said. Because the AT&T customers have no evidence that they were personally wiretapped, he said, they cannot differentiate themselves from "the mass of telephone and Internet users in the United States."

Walker is still considering a lawsuit by an Islamic group that was accidentally sent a government document reportedly showing it had been wiretapped.

Click here to read the rest of the Chronicle article.

In the decision, Judge Walker held the peculiar position that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a "particularized injury" but instead a "generalized grievance" because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.

in response to this interpretation, EFF stated: "We're deeply disappointed in the judge's ruling. This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America's system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that."

"The alarming upshot of the court's decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional. With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week -- just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans' phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process -- the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer."

Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit that's currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Click here to read more from EFF.

To recap: according to the Bush and Obama Administrations, and unfortunately this court, since citizens cannot show their messages were intercepted, they have no right to sue, because all such information is secret. And, disclosure of whether AT&T took part in the program would tip off our enemies, so we can't have that either. And now, we discover a new addition to this twisted logic: Since no individual can prove the harm done specifically to him/her, and this invasion of privacy threatens EVERYONE, there's nothing the court can do in the peoples defense. Nice.

I'll be following the appeal...

FBI used phony "terrorism emergencies" to illegally collect individual call records

Gee, you starting to see the same pattern that I am? With each new "privacy revolting" revelation to make it public has come the subsequent validation of many of my darkest fears regarding how the government and law enforcement would abuse the unprecedented powers granted them in reaction to the September 11th attack. We should all be giving special thanks for the Freedom of Information Act and the work of privacy rights and civil liberties groups!

The latest Constitution smashing headlines have an all too familiar ring: The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply by persuading phone companies to provide records (remember Retroactive Telecom Immunity?).

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post have detailed how counter terrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats - another disturbing and re-occurring theme I want touch on more today.

But before I go deeper into this story, lets take a step back and start connecting some dots. An undeniable pattern has emerged over the past few years that fundamentally challenges the entire premise of a "war on terror" and exposes just how ineffectual and counterproductive these policies have actually been. The reoccurring theme goes like this: Powerful interests - inside and outside of government - sell fear as way to justify the steady assault on our civil liberties, increased spending on military defense, and the growth of the surveillance state.

But here's another important piece of the puzzle that keeps popping up: more often than not the government HASN'T USED these expanded powers to actually fight terrorism (instead often to thwart anti-war protesters, bust small time drug dealers, monitor journalists, and who knows what else?) - as was promised. This begs a larger question, "Who has been targeted and why?"

This increasingly influential "Fear-Industrial-Complex" (i.e. Department of Defense, corporate media, talk radio, security technologies industry, Congress, the White House, “the intelligence community”, pundits, weapons defense contractors, etc.) almost serve as a kind of de facto terror hype machine that is far more interested in maximizing profit and power than reducing any threat posed by terrorism. This fact belies the false choice we are constantly offered pitting "security against civil liberties". Sadly, this fundamentally dishonest "frame" is nearly universally accepted as fact and parroted by the corporate media, big business, and the government.

In other words, do these increasingly intrusive and even unconstitutional anti-terrorism measures actually make us any safer (or less so)? And if so, is it worth the price? And, how can any free society benefit from, or reconcile, such policies as illegal search and seizures (including of laptops), warrantless wiretapping, the tracking of GPS devices in peoples cell phones, the utilization of "whole-body-imaging" (digital strip search) scanners in airports, the evisceration of Habeus Corpus, Rendition, Military Tribunals, and the Patriot Act?

Another question worth pondering: Can we really "defeat" terrorism by embracing a less free and more fearful society (two primary goals of terrorists)? Similarly, don't many of these government abuses constitute a form of terrorism in and of itself? And finally, a growing amount of evidence now suggests that we are gathering TOO MUCH information, and our expanding surveillance state is making us LESS safe, not more.

As Constitutional Scholar Glenn Greenwald notes, “The problem is never that the U.S. Government lacks sufficient power to engage in surveillance, interceptions, intelligence-gathering and the like. Long before 9/11 -- from the Cold War -- we have vested extraordinarily broad surveillance powers in the U.S. Government to the point that we have turned ourselves into a National Security and Surveillance State.

Terrorist attacks do not happen because there are too many restrictions on the government's ability to eavesdrop and intercept communications, or because there are too many safeguards and checks. If anything, the opposite is true: the excesses of the Surveillance State -- and the steady abolition of oversights and limits -- have made detection of plots far less likely. Despite that, we have an insatiable appetite -- especially when we're frightened anew -- to vest more and more unrestricted spying and other powers in our Government, which -- like all governments -- is more than happy to accept it.”

It is this irrational fear of terrorism that seems to be at the root of our nation's current "civil liberties and privacy" crisis. It is hard to imagine that without this fear, we would so easily give up our rights, support wars on countries that did nothing to us, and accept wasting precious resources on ineffective and burdensome security systems that diminish our quality of life (think of airports)?

Remember: Your chances of getting hit by lightning in one year is 500,000 to 1 while the odds you'll be killed by a terrorist on a plane over 10 years is 10 million to 1.

If you count the Ft. Hoot shooting as a terrorist attack, 16 people have died in the United States as result of terrorism in 2009. The other three deaths include the Little Rock military recruiting office shooting, the Holocaust Museum shooting, and Dr. George Tiller's assassination, the last two coming at the hands of right-wing extremists. Now let's compare that to the 45,000 Americans that died because they didn't have health insurance and 600 that died from salmonella poisoning.

If we are truly trying to reduce the threat of terrorism there are DEMONSTRABLY more effective ways than those currently being pursued. A few alternative tactics to consider: stop bombing and occupying Muslim nations, arming their enemies, torturing and indefinitely jailing their people, and propping up many of their countries most ruthless dictators.

As I wrote in "The Politics of Fear and Whole-Body-Imaging": No one is denying that terrorism is a threat or seeking to justify their crimes, but how does creating more of them make us safer? And instead of spending one more minute listening to the grumblings of a war criminal like Dick Cheney, we would do well to heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr. instead: "We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others."

I still think security expert Bruce Schneier sums up the false choice best:

"If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.”

With all that said, let's get to the Washington Post article on the FBI using phony "terrorism emergencies" to justify the illegal collection of Americans phone records. John Solomon and Carrie Johnson report:

Documents show that senior FBI managers up to the assistant director level approved the procedures for emergency requests of phone records and that headquarters officials often made the requests, which persisted for two years after bureau lawyers raised concerns and an FBI official began pressing for changes.

"We have to make sure we are not taking advantage of this system, and that we are following the letter of the law without jeopardizing national security," FBI lawyer Patrice Kopistansky wrote in one of a series of early 2005 e-mails asking superiors to address the problem.

The FBI acknowledged in 2007 that one unit in the agency had improperly gathered some phone records, and a Justice Department audit at the time cited 22 inappropriate requests to phone companies for searches and hundreds of questionable requests. But the latest revelations show that the improper requests were much more numerous under the procedures approved by the top level of the FBI.

...

The USA Patriot Act expanded the use of national security letters by letting lower-level officials outside Washington approve them and allowing them in wider circumstances. But the letters still required the FBI to link a request to an open terrorism case before records could be sought.

Shortly after the Patriot Act was passed in October 2001, FBI senior managers devised their own system for gathering records in terrorism emergencies. A new device called an "exigent circumstances letter" was authorized. It allowed a supervisor to declare an emergency and get the records, then issue a national security letter after the fact.

...

The 2003 memo stated that the new method "has the potential of generating an enormous amount of data in short order, much of which may not actually be related to the terrorism activity under investigation." Within a few years, hundreds of emergency requests were completed and a few thousand phone records gathered. But many lacked the follow-up: the required national security letters. Two individuals began raising concerns.

...

The e-mails show that they conceived the idea to open half a dozen "generic" or "broad" preliminary investigative (PI) case files to which all unauthorized emergency requests could be charged so a national security letter could be issued after the fact.

The generic files were to cover such broad topics as "threats against transportation facilities," "threats against individuals" and "threats against special events," the e-mails show. Eventually, FBI officials shifted to a second strategy of crafting a "blanket" national security letter to authorize all past searches that had not been covered by open cases.

...

Among those whose phone records were searched improperly were journalists for The Washington Post and the New York Times, according to interviews with government officials. The searches became public when Mueller, the FBI director, contacted top editors at the two newspapers in August 2008 and apologized for the breach of reporters' phone records. The reporters were Ellen Nakashima of The Post, who had been based in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez of the Times, who had also been working in Jakarta.

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

What immediately jumps out at me in this article is that last paragraph I posted: JOURNALISTS PHONE RECORDS WERE SEARCHED! Monitoring and intimidating the press strikes at the heart of what it means to be a functional democracy. I hope we learn more about how often this was used and for what reasons and on what reporters.

What also has been made abundantly clear these past few years is that once you allow the government to snoop unchecked in the name of national security, that' s exactly what they're going to do.

As Adam Sewer of the American Prospect notes: It's no secret that the FBI's use of National Security Letters - a surveillance tool that allows the FBI to gather reams of information on Americans from third-party entities (like your bank) without a warrant or without suspecting you of a crime - have resulted in widespread abuses.

All that the FBI needs to demand your private information from a third-party entity is an assertion that such information is "relevant" to a national security investigation -- and the NSLs come with an accompanying gag order that's almost impossible to challenge in court.

Privacy Groups Challenge Government on Laptop Seizures

Before I get to the latest efforts by the ACLU (among others) to challenge the government's incredibly intrusive seizures of peoples laptop computers at, or even near, border checkpoints, I want to direct you to some just published - and deeply disturbing - poll results.

The Quinnipiac survey above all else proves that fear still sells in America. Or, as I said in my critique of "Whole-Body-Imaging" scanners, the immense power of fear on the human mind, the growing influence of the security industrial complex, and the craven desire among politicians to use the threat of terrorism to score political points would be difficult to overcome.

In light of the extraordinary amount of propaganda and fear peddling the public has been subjected to since the attempted terrorist attack on a flight bound for Detroit, these numbers shouldn't be that shocking - but are disappointing nonetheless.

Among the findings were these irrational gems: Americans overwhelmingly now support (84 – 13 percent) greater use of airport body scanners, otherwise known as digital strip searches. Another 86 – 11 percent support new airport security measures even if they mean longer delays in air travel.

Voters also disagree with President Obama’s plan to try suspected terrorists in civilian courts (of course, he only advocates that for SOME...NOT ALL), saying 59 – 34 percent they should be tried in military courts.

They also say (52 – 44 percent) that law enforcement should be able to single out people who look Middle-Eastern for screening and questions, and by 79 – 16 percent, they back the recent decision to subject air travelers from 14 designated countries – most of them nations with large Muslim populations – to extra screening.

But that's not all: 63 percent of voters said that the government’s anti-terror policies lean too far toward protecting civil rights rather than national security (25 percent said they did not). And solid majorities even oppose the closing of our nation's shame: Guantanamo.

And perhaps this final question helps answer the "how the hell could people think this way?" question: More than three out of four respondents say it is very likely (35 percent) or somewhat likely (43 percent) that in the near future there will be a terrorist attack in the United States with a large number of casualties (and of course, strip searches, torture, and profiling DON'T MAKE US SAFER ANYWAY).

I don't want to go into a long diatribe today about what these numbers tell me, but suffice it to say, what is abundantly clear is we have completely lost touch with the core principles espoused in our Constitution.

Now to the issue of laptop seizures in "border patrol zones". As I wrote about here last year, these zones essentially allow government agents to stop and question people anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border. This little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation's border lines came about after 9/11, when Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security the right to use some of its powers deeper within the country.

According to the ACLU in October of 2008, the Department of Homeland Security had set up at least 33 internal checkpoints where they stop people, question them and ask them to prove citizenship. At that time I noted that if we allow these kinds of constitutional violations along our border, how long will it take before we start allowing them in the heartland? And I tend to be of the opinion that anytime we weaken the rights of ANYONE, we weaken them for EVERYONE.

And that brings us to the the supposed right of these border agents, for any reason they deem appropriate, to look into or even seize your laptop computer and all that it contains within.

So, for ANY reason, YOUR laptop and everything you have stored on it, can be taken from you by the government...the same government responsible for Abu Graihb, Rendition, Guantanamo, warrantless wiretapping, military tribunals, the Patriot Act, and the evisceration of Habeus Corpus.

In response to the work of the ACLU, the government came back with a slightly less intrusive policy, requiring the CBP to complete a search of an electronic device within five days and ICE to complete a search within 30 days.

In addition, agents must take additional steps to inform and educate travelers about the searches, and the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will conduct an assessment of the policy's impact on civil rights within 120 days.

Nonetheles, the battle has not waned, and has recently intensified with a pair of civil rights groups - the ACLU and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (with support from EFF) - seeking potential plaintiffs for a lawsuit that challenges the practice of laptop seizures.

Agam Shah of PC World reports:

The groups argue that the practice of suspicionless laptop searches violates fundamental rights of freedom of speech and protection against unreasonable seizures and searches...(and) have the support of Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has argued in court that laptop searches are invasive because devices like laptops contain personal data, which people should be able to keep private. EFF has also argued that some searches have been conducted without s

...

NACDL believes the policy "erodes fundamental privacy rights generally," the group said on its Web site. It "has a particularly chilling impact on lawyers who travel abroad with legal documents that are subject to the attorney-client or work-product privileges," NACDL wrote.

Last year, a document surfaced on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Web site that authorized U.S. agents to seize and retain laptops indefinitely. Government agents belonging to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is a part of DHS, were also authorized to seize electronic devices including portable media players and cell phones and inspect documents in them.

...

The ACLU is already challenging DHS in court over the issue. In August last year, the group filed a suit against the DHS after it was denied access to documents to learn about the policy. The EFF and the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) also filed a case last year against the DHS after they were denied access to records on questioning and searches of travelers at U.S. borders.

Click here to read more.

TSA Caught Lying About Privacy Concerns Associated with "Whole-Body-Imaging" Scanners

Well that sure didn't take long! Thanks to the work of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), with help from the Freedom of Information Act, we now know for a fact that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials have been misleading the public by claiming that their "Whole-Body-Imaging scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.

For a whole lot more information on the subject of these body scanners check out my recent article in the California Progress Report entitled "The Politics of Fear and Whole-Body-Imaging".

Now, back to yesterday's revelations: According to the 2008 documents obtained by EPIC, the TSA specified that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities when in "test mode."

Even taking into account the "test mode" caveat, these documents are contrary to the representations that have been made in recent weeks by TSA officials that the machines have "zero storage capability". On the TSA's own Web site - in an effort to assure passengers their privacy is protected - it specifically says "the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image."

Now we know that these devices DO include the ability to store, record and transfer images of passengers screened at U.S. airports, including hard disk storage and USB integration and Ethernet connectivity. According to EPIC, the device's specifications allow the TSA to manipulate 10 variable privacy settings, with the ability to dial privacy protections up, or down.

It goes without saying that these revelations raise significant privacy and security concerns.

Also according to EPIC, the TSA's technical specifications for the body scanners and its language in vendor contracts show that the systems also have a category of generic superusers who have the ability to disable privacy functions at any time. And being that these systems are based on Windows XP Embedded with Ethernet connectivity they are also subject to the same security risks associated with Windows.

In an article in Computerworld, EPIC's Executive Director Marc Rotenberg makes some key points to consider: "That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines - which can see beneath people's clothing -- can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders. I don't think the TSA has been forthcoming with the American public about the true capability of these devices. They've done a bunch of very slick promotions where they show people -- including journalists -- going through the devices. And then they reassure people, based on the images that have been produced, that there's not any privacy concerns. But if you look at the actual technical specifications and you read the vendor contracts, you come to understand that these machines are capable of doing far more than the TSA has let on. The TSA should suspend further deployment of the machines until privacy and security questions are resolved."

As for the TSA's "just trust us" defense, I'm not convinced, not by a long shot, and not after they've been caught red handed in a lie. When they say for instance, that officers in the remote screening rooms are prohibited from bringing in cellphones, cameras or any device with a camera, I would just say, so? Aren't rules meant to be broken? Or again, are we being asked to just "trust them"?

Somehow I can envision TSA agents - gasp! - without the proper supervision figuring out ways to capture and send images - administration policy or no. How much would an image of Angelina Jolie be worth to an electronic rag like TMZ?

AS I layout in my article on this subject, privacy is just one the concerns a lot of us have. There's also the wasting of resources on an unproven technology, the increasing deterioration of our civil liberties, the growing number of indignities faced by airline passengers in the "terror age", the moneyed interests pushing for these scanners (and other "terror saviors"), and the more general irrational fear utilized by elected officials, the media, and the military industrial complex (among others) to cull the American public into accepting such invasions of privacy, future wars, increased spending on the military...and then believing that somehow these things actually make them safer (from a threat that's a fraction of that posed by being hit by lightning).

Unfortunately, as I also noted last week, the power of fear on the human mind is difficult to overcome. I regret to report the findings of a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted last week that proves this point: 78% of those surveyed said they approve of full body scans on airline passengers. About 67% said they would not feel uncomfortable if they were to undergo a full body scan at an airline security checkpoint.

Worse, racial and ethnic profiling of passengers at airports received support from over half (51 percent) of those surveyed, with only thirty-eight percent saying profiling was not justified.

With that bit of bad news, I want to point you to an article that I found by Gavin MacFadyen, the Legal Columnist for Troy Media, entitled "Increased security measures a blow to our personal liberty." He makes about as articulate and convincing a case against the use of these kinds of scanners, and other security measure infringements, as one will find.

MacFadyen writes:

The more frightening fact is that a right, once abrogated or surrendered, is never fully realized again. The reality of life post-9/11 is that, in the name of collective security, we have been forced to, and largely willingly abdicated, personal privacy. The reasonableness of this in the face of terrorist threats is not really the question because, like a kaleidoscope, that interpretation depends on who is holding it up to the light.

Now, a failed Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound plane has once again allowed for airports and border crossings to become a kind of twilight zone of totalitarianism. Fundamental rights to be secure in your person; to not be subject to unreasonable searches or capricious detentions absent cause, seem to have vanished quicker than your unattended luggage.

...

The 1990’s saw two terrorist attacks on American soil – the WTC bombing of 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. Both involved the use of a rented Ryder truck. So, naturally, to keep us all safe, all those renting vehicles immediately became subject to intense questioning, behavioral analysis, pat downs and strip searches. Right? Wrong.

The absurdity of that response would be apparent on its face. Why then have we become so willing to surrender without a fight our basic liberties and human dignity at an airport or border crossing?Technology has made violations so unobtrusive that we forget how we would react were there not that barrier between those of us being watched and those doing the watching. Most major airports will be equipped with full body scanners in the very near future which allows for the indignity of what amounts to a strip search without all the fuss and bother of removing clothing.

It has long been the squawk of those who care little for personal liberty that if one “has nothing to hide then one has nothing to fear.” These are the same people for whom a constitution is nothing more than a placemat: nice to bring out at parties (don’t spill anything on it!) but really having no function other than decorative to impress the Soviets if they ever come to dinner again.The more frightening fact is that a right, once abrogated or surrendered, is never fully realized again. The wonder is not that it has happened – that’s what governments do. The wonder is that it is happening with, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, not a bang but with nary a whimper of real protest.

...

The paradox of civil liberties is that they initially arise and are first established out of a population feeling an unwarranted and intolerable intrusion upon their private lives. They are then perpetually subject to being defended from similar intrusions – undertaken this time, not by the authority against whom a population revolted – but by the very structure put in place to supplant and guarantee those hard-won freedoms.The perpetual tug of war between the individual and the state depends on vigilant assertion and stubborn insistence on civil liberties.

Those rights are no more acutely in danger than when that individual must battle, not only the state, but a significant portion of fellow citizens who see no harm in surrendering certain liberties in the face of a real or imagined threat.

Click here to read the rest of the article...and stay tuned...

Experts Hack Smart Meters

I've written quite extensively on the growing debate over smart electricity meters and the potential threat they pose to privacy (if we don't take the proper precautions). Public Utilities Commission's (PUC) across the country are currently considering how to implement such a grid, and in response to a rulemaking by the CPUC, and the lack of attention being paid to the concerns of privacy advocates to date on this issue, the Consumer Federation of California (CFC) recently joined The Utilities Reform Network (TURN) in urging the Commission to allow for a more comprehensive review and debate regarding such concerns.

As I have written too, the CPUC has agreed to hold separate privacy specific hearings - with accompanying workshops and public comments.

Today I want to focus on an article in today's North County Times that highlights some of the "security" concerns I have been bringing attention to here.

As I wrote in an editorial on the subject in the California Progress Report a few months back,:

"The paradox of a smart grid system is that what will ostensibly make it an effective tool in reducing energy usage and improving our electric grid - information - is precisely what makes it a threat to privacy: Information (ours). It is this paradox that has led some to suggest that privacy might even be the “Achilles’ heel” of the “Smart Grid”. What are the unintended consequences of such a system?

Personal privacy issues routinely arise when data collected is harmless in isolation, but becomes a threat when combined with other data, or examined by a third party for patterns. A few principles we should keep in mind as we develop a regulatory framework for such a transition will be consumer control, transparency, and accountability."

In addition, I took on the subject of hackers, saying "Hackers and criminals might seek to falsify power usage, pass on their charges to a neighbor, install a virus and take down the entire system, disconnect someone else from the grid, and plan burglaries with an unprecedented degree of accuracy."

I also delved into the subject of data and system protection:

3. How is your data protected? Utilities should be mandated by law, with strong penalties, to protect information against anyone who would seek to monitor/steal/manipulate it. The challenge here then is how to best protect the 1. Security of the Database and 2. Security of the Data in Transit (which could be trickier as it is wireless).

4. What happens if your data is breached: Consumers should be notified immediately in the event that personal information has been obtained by a party without the requisite consent.

With that backdrop, let me get to the article in the North Count Times entitled "Experts Hack New Power Meters".

Eric Wolff writes:

Utilities say they have been hardening the smart meters since they began development, but security consultants say they are worried: If criminals cracked the system, they could remotely install a virus that could shut down power for millions of customers. The new smart meters will have a host of capabilities: They will credit homeowners who produce their own electricity via solar cells or wind mills, be able to wirelessly communicate data to the utility and let utilities turn off the power remotely, among other functions that could be added."Were it telemetry only, then the only compromise is privacy," said Mike Davis, senior security consultant for the security service IOActive. "When you add remote disconnect, then you increase the attractiveness of the meter as a target."

Davis and his team hacked into smart meters last spring as part of a proof-of-concept they showed off at a Las Vegas security conference last summer. They reverse engineered meters they bought on eBay and found in trash bins near installation sites. Then they installed a computer virus that would replicate itself across the wireless network and block the utility from each meter as it went.

...

The demonstration may have also driven the federal government to create standards for smart meters in the previously unregulated smart meter arena. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a branch of the Department of Commerce, released a draft of standards in September...

The encryption would apply primarily to over-the-air communications from the devices. In theory, a criminal could sit in a car up to a mile away from a site and attempt to hack the WiFi signal of the devices. Baker said that would be pretty hard. "It's called security in depth," Baker said. "The old technology is there's one key that could open every door in the neighborhood. In the systems employed today, you need a different key for every room in your house." Alternatively, a hacker could just try to wire directly into a meter.

...

Davis said he is pleased that there is third-party testing, but he is still worried about creating a monoculture of devices. Because all the smart meters installed by SDG&E and Edison will be made by the same company and use the same software, they're only as strong or as weak as any one unit. "If the attacker finds the vulnerability in one, the entire network is vulnerable," he said. "That's a catastrophic failure."

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

Elias Quinn, from the Center for Environmental and Energy Security (CEES), at the University of Colorado Law School, and author of "Privacy and the New Energy Infrastructure" sums up the important to ensure proper safeguards are put into place before, not after, the system becomes more ubiquitous:

"Here—as with all attempts at anticipating problems—the solution must involve, first and foremost, drawing attention to the potential privacy problem posed by the massive deployment of smart metering technologies and the collection of detailed information about the electricity consumption habits of millions of individuals.

From there, efforts to devise potential solutions must progress in parallel paths, the first in search of a regulatory fix, the second a technological one. The first protects against the systematic misuse of collected information by utilities, despite new pressures on their profitability, by ensuring the databases are used only for their principle purposes: informing efficient electricity generation, distribution, and management. Such regulatory fixes are not difficult.

In the final analysis, the privacy problem posed by smart metering is only a difficult one if the data gets unleashed before consequences are fully considered, or ignored once unfortunate consequences are realized. But to ignore the potential for privacy invasion embodied by the collection of this information is an invitation to tragedy."

I'll be back with more on this issue as it comes, particularly when I know when the CPUC hearings are to take place, and what is said at them.

Article: "The Politics of Fear and "Whole-Body-Imaging"

Anyone reading this blog over the past few weeks knows that I've been really honed in on the "terror hysteria" and fearmongering that's exploded since the attempted terrorist attack by the "underwear bomber". In particular, how the attack is being used to essentially "sell" yet another high tech, invasive "security technology" (Whole-Body-Imaging) to the public.

Being that I've been covering the issue so much on this blog, I decided to write an article on the subject, and its been published in today's California Progress Report.

I'll also re-post here in full:

The Politics of Fear and “Whole-Body-Imaging”
By Zack Kaldveer, Consumer Federation of California

In response to the attempted terror attack on a Northwest flight bound for Detroit the Fear-Industrial-Complex (i.e. Department of Defense, corporate media, talk radio, security technologies industry, Congress, the White House, “the intelligence community”, pundits, weapons/defense contractors, etc.) has kicked into high gear.

"Terror hysteria" has become all the rage again - echoing throughout the corporate media landscape and out of the frothing mouths of politicians desperate to demonstrate just how tough they are (Republicans literally disgracing themselves).

Many of the same interests that took advantage of 9/11 to ram through the Patriot Act are out in force once again - aided this time by a much more influential and powerful “security industry”.

Advancements in security technology may serve certain important purposes in specific situations, but more often than not, represent the continuing expansion of Big Brother's ability to monitor and record nearly everything we do - usually under the guise of "keeping us safe".

Whole-Body-Imaging: A "Digital Strip Search"

The latest security “savior” being peddled is called “Whole-Body-Imaging” ("digital strip search") - with supporters seeking to have this technology installed in airport checkpoints across the country (at approximately $150,000 per scanner). These full-body scanners use one of two technologies - millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays - to see through clothing, producing images of naked passengers.

A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official was even quoted in the USA Today as saying, "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back".

What remains debatable however, is whether these scanners would have even detected the “underwear bomber”. This is in contrast to what we do know: if law enforcement had simply acted on the information it had already gathered - like the warnings of the “underwear bomber's” father - the plot would have been foiled much earlier.

Another point to consider before embracing this latest "terror fix" is that for every specific tactic we target with a new, expensive, and often burdensome security apparatus, the terrorist's tactics themselves will change.

Risks can be reduced for a given target, but not eliminated. If we strip searched every single passenger at every airport in the country, terrorists would try to bomb shopping malls or movie theaters.

As correctly pointed out by Ben Sandilands in his Plane Talking blog, "None of the techniques coming into use abroad can detect explosives inserted way, way, up a rectum, in say a reinforced condom like device that could be passed and then detonated. The whole 'threat' seems capable of lurching toward invasive physical examinations, ending in the collapse of air travel, if we follow the absurd logic that pervades a security scare industry that constantly seeks to create and then offer to solve new risks."

Furthermore, and perhaps most telling, is the substantial amount of evidence – including the case of the “underwear bomber” itself - that suggests our government is gathering TOO MUCH information, and our expanding surveillance state is making us LESS safe, not more.

As Constitutional Scholar Glenn Greenwald notes, “The problem is never that the U.S. Government lacks sufficient power to engage in surveillance, interceptions, intelligence-gathering and the like. Long before 9/11 -- from the Cold War -- we have vested extraordinarily broad surveillance powers in the U.S. Government to the point that we have turned ourselves into a National Security and Surveillance State. Terrorist attacks do not happen because there are too many restrictions on the government's ability to eavesdrop and intercept communications, or because there are too many safeguards and checks. If anything, the opposite is true: the excesses of the Surveillance State -- and the steady abolition of oversights and limits -- have made detection of plots far less likely. Despite that, we have an insatiable appetite -- especially when we're frightened anew -- to vest more and more unrestricted spying and other powers in our Government, which -- like all governments -- is more than happy to accept it.”

Terrorism, Lightning, Salmonella, and the Health Insurance Industry

Before we all run to hide in our closets, willfully give up our civil liberties and freedoms, support wars on countries that did nothing to us, and sign off on wasting HUGE amounts of money on ineffectual security systems, consider this: Your chances of getting hit by lightning in one year is 500,000 to 1 while the odds you'll be killed by a terrorist on a plane over 10 years is 10 million to 1.

Does this sound like a threat worthy of increasing the already long list of airline passenger indignities? Isn't suffering through longer and longer lines while being shoeless, beltless, waterless, and nail clipper-less enough? Now we've got to be digitally strip searched too?

Further illustrating my point is blogger Brad Friedman:

"If you count the Ft. Hoot shooting as a terrorist attack (which it wasn't, and isn't even considered one by experts), 16 people have died in the United States as result of terrorism in 2009. The other three deaths include the Little Rock military recruiting office shooting (1), the Holocaust Museum shooting (1), and Dr. George Tiller's assassination (1), the last two coming at the hands of right-wing extremists. Now let's compare that to the 45,000 Americans that died because they didn't have health insurance and 600 that died from salmonella poisoning.”

So let's scrap the whole meme that we should live in fear and must give up our constitutional rights in order to be safe from a threat that is a fraction of that posed by lightning, salmonella, and the health insurance industry. Once we are free from that fear, we can discuss, rationally, specific security proposals being pushed by a variety of politicians and security industry spokespeople looking to profit off "terror".

The False Choice: Privacy versus Security

As is so often the case with technologies like Whole-Body-Imaging, the concerns go far deeper than what data is collected (though that is important too). Also of great importance is what happens to that data once collected? The claims that these devices will distort a person's face or other features to protect privacy are nonsensical.

For one, a "would be terrorist" would simply find a way to use this “distortion” as yet another hole in the system (i.e. nasal, rectal or mouth cavities). And secondly, are we really to believe the government won't allow these devices to record any data when the easy "go to" excuse for doing so will be the need to gather and store evidence? What about the ability of some hacker in an airport lounge capturing the data using his wi-fi capable PC - and then filing it to a Flickr album, and then telling of its whereabouts on Twitter?

For these reasons, privacy advocates continue to argue for increased oversight, full disclosure for air travelers, and legal language to protect passengers and keep the TSA from changing policy down the road. Again, what's to stop the TSA from using clearer images or different technology later? The computers can't store images now, but what if that changes?

The bottom line is a rather stark one: Is the loss of freedom, privacy, and quality of life a worthwhile trade-off for unproven protections from a terrorist threat that has a 1 in 10 million chance of killing someone over a ten year time period?

Could all this hype be just another way to sell more security technologies, soften us up for future wars, increased spending on the military, and the evisceration of our civil liberties?

Walking through a whole-body scanner or taking a pat-down shouldn't be the only two options for citizens living in a free society. As the ACLU pointed out, "A choice between being groped and being stripped, I don't think we should pretend those are the only choices. People shouldn't be humiliated by their government" in the name of security, nor should they trust that the images will always be kept private. Screeners at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) could make a fortune off naked virtual images of celebrities."

More Effective Ways to Reduce the Threat of Terrorism

If we are truly trying to reduce the threat of terrorism there are DEMONSTRABLY more effective ways than those currently being pursued. A few alternative tactics to consider: stop bombing and occupying Muslim nations, arming their enemies, torturing and indefinitely jailing their people, and supporting ruthless dictators in their countries.

While we're at it we should reinstate every gay Arabic translator (which we have a critical shortage of today) expelled from the military due to their sexual preference (in fact all gays that were expelled), and focus our attention on intelligence gathering rather than warmaking to catch the real extremists that want to do our country harm.

No one is denying that terrorism is a threat or seeking to justify their murderous crimes, but how does creating more of them make us safer? And instead of spending one more minute listening to the grumblings of a war criminal like Dick Cheney, we would do well to heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr. instead: "We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others."

A Few Bright Spots in the Corporate Media

Thankfully we do have a few voices of reason in the mainstream, corporate media. First, be sure to check out this discussion on Whole-Body-Imaging between Air America's Thom Hartmann and the ACLU's Michael German.

Second, watch Rachel Maddow's extremely enlightening interview with security expert Bruce Schneier, author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. Schneier perhaps sums up the false choice we are being given best:

"If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.”

And finally, Keith Olbermann also covered this story, focusing in on how “Whole-Body-Imaging” may violate Britain’s child pornography laws – thereby possibly exempting children from being subjected to the scanners.

The Legislative Fight Ahead

The crisis that our democracy faces goes far deeper than any battle over one particularly intrusive scanner technology, and tackling these larger, fundamental and systemic social, cultural, and political challenges will have to be left for another day.

In the meantime, there is something that can be done on the issue of "Whole-Body-Imaging". A few months ago the House of Representatives - by a 310-118 vote - approved legislation that curbs the growing use of these devices at airport checkpoints. The question now becomes whether - particularly in light of the recent terror hysteria - the Senate will follow the House’s lead?

To counteract the immense power of fear on the human mind, the growing influence of the security industrial complex, and all those craven elected officials seeking to score political points, our Senators must hear from us. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is currently leading an effort to suspend the use of "Whole Body Imaging" technologies. Check it out, and make your voices heard.

Thom Hartmann Interviews the ACLU's Michael German on "Whole-Body-Imaging" and Greenwald Comments on our Surveillance State

I've been posting about the insanity of making this technology mandatory in airports for the past few weeks, so to get the whole story, you can go here, here, and here.

For today's purposes, let's get right to this outstanding discussion between Air America's Thom Hartmann and the ACLU's Michael German:



As I continue to point out here, before we all run to hide in our closets, gladly give up our civil liberties and freedoms, support wars on nation's that did nothing to us, and sign off on wasting HUGE amounts of money on ineffectual security systems, consider this: Your chances of getting hit by lightning in one year is 500,000 to 1 while the odds you’ll be killed by a terrorist on a plane over 10 years is 10 million to 1. At what point does the ever increasing list of passenger indignities end?

Now, in addition to us beleaguered travelers going shoeless, beltless and waterless, nail clipper-less...we’ve got to be electronically strip searched too? Here are a few other factoids to consider when determining whether we want to be electronically violated every time we try and fly, as pointed out by blogger Brad Friedman:

“If you count the Ft. Hoot shooting as a terrorist attack (which it wasn’t, and isn’t even considered one by experts), 16 people have died in the United States as result of terrorism in 2009. The other three deaths include the Little Rock military recruiting office shooting (1), the Holocaust Museum shooting (1), and Dr. George Tiller’s assassination (1), the last two coming at the hands of right-wing extremists. Now let's compare that to the 45,000 Americans that died because they didn’t have health insurance and 600 died from salmonella poisoning."

So let's scrap the whole meme that we should live in fear and that we must give up our constitutional rights in order to be safe from a threat that is a fraction of that posed by lightning, salmonella, and the health insurance industry.

I want to leave you with the words of perhaps the most articulate defender of civil liberties we have today, Glenn Greenwald:

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 [1]) 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 [2]; 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:

It has been demonstrated that when officials must establish before a court that they have reason to intercept communications -- that is, that they know what they are doing -- we get better intelligence than through indiscriminate collection and fishing expeditions.

The failure of the U.S. Government to detect the fairly glaring Northwest Airlines Christmas plot -- despite years and years of constant expansions of Surveillance State powers -- illustrates this dynamic perfectly. As President Obama said yesterday [3], the Government -- just as was true for 9/11 [4] -- had gathered more than enough information to have detected this plot, or at least to have kept Abdulmutallab off airplanes and out of the country. Yet our intelligence agencies -- just as was true for 9/11 -- failed to understand what they had in their possession. Why is that? Because they had too much to process, including too much data wholly unrelated to Terrorism. In other words, our panic-driven need to vest the Government with more and more surveillance power every time we get scared again by Terrorists -- in the name of keeping us safe -- has exactly the opposite effect. Numerous pieces of evidence prove that.

...

The problem is never that the U.S. Government lacks sufficient power to engage in surveillance, interceptions, intelligence-gathering and the like. Long before 9/11 -- from the Cold War -- we have vested extraordinarily broad surveillance powers in the U.S. Government to the point that we have turned ourselves into a National Security and Surveillance State. Terrorist attacks do not happen because there are too many restrictions on the government's ability to eavesdrop and intercept communications, or because there are too many safeguards and checks.

If anything, the opposite is true: the excesses of the Surveillance State -- and the steady abolition of oversights and limits -- have made detection of plots far less likely. Despite that, we have an insatiable appetite -- especially when we're frightened anew -- to vest more and more unrestricted spying and other powers in our Government, which -- like all governments -- is more than happy to accept it.

Read the full article here.

The Politics of Fear and the Debate over Whole-Body-Imaging

I want to continue with the discussion of airport security today, particularly the escalated clamor we're hearing all over the media, by politicians and representatives from the Fear-Industrial-Complex, to install Whole-Body-Imaging scanners in all airports - a device that photographs American air travelers as if stripped naked (and currently being utilized at some of our nation's airports).

Obviously with the recent attempted terrorist attack fresh in everyone's minds, the same interests that took advantage of 9/11 to ram through the Patriot Act are out in force once again - aided this time by a much more influential and powerful security-industrial-complex. While its true, that it is possible that such scanners may have identified the "underwear terrorist", the same could be said for other law enforcement techniques. There's also the fact that for every specific tactic we target with a new, expensive, and often burdensome security apparatus, the terrorist tactics themselves will also change.

I still would prefer more money spent on intelligence work and face to face questioning, and of course, to simply stop bombing and occupying Muslim nations, arming their enemies, and supporting their brutal authoritarian leaders.

But I don't want to rehash everything I just wrote last week, so for a more detailed introduction to this subject and various articles on it, check out past posts here, here, and here.

The paramount question in my mind still remains: Is the loss of freedom, privacy, and quality of life a worthwhile trade-off for unproven protections from a terrorist threat that has a 1 in 10 million chance of killing someone who's been flying 20 times a year for 10 years? As I mentioned last week, the chances I'm going to be hit by lightning this year are 500,000 to 1, a far more serious threat than any terrorist poses.

Here's a few other factoids to consider when determining whether we want to be digitally strip searched everytime we try and fly (aside from no liquid carry-ons, taking off our shoes, no nail cutters...where does it end?), as detailed by Brad Friedman: If you count the Ft. Hoot shooting as a terrorist attack (which it wasn’t, and isn’t even considered one by experts), 16 people have died in the United States as result of terrorism in 2009. The other three deaths include the Little Rock military recruiting office shooting (1), the Holocaust Museum shooting (1), and Dr. George Tiller’s assassination (1), the last two coming at the hands of right-wing extremists.

Now let's compare that to the 45,000 Americans that died because they didn’t have health insurance and 600 died from salmonella poisoning. So let's take a deep breath and start to consider what actually would reduce the threat of terrorism, and what won't, and what "precautions" will continue to burden the American public and decrease our quality of life as well as our right to privacy.

Bruce Schneier, author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, said it best: If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither. The risk can be reduced, but not eliminated, he says. "If we had perfect security in airports, terrorists would go bomb shopping malls," he says. "You'll never be secure by defending targets."

With that, let's get to the video clip of two congressman debating this subject on Fox (and the Republican is the one arguing AGAINST the electronic strip searches...imagine that!), then I'll get to today's Washington Post article on the debate.

Now the Washington Post:

Already shoeless, beltless and waterless, more beleaguered air passengers will be holding their legs apart, raising their arms and effectively baring it all as they pass through U.S. airport security checkpoints. Add the "full-body scan" to the list of indignities that some travelers are confronting in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era of vigilance.

Federal authorities, working to close security gaps exposed by the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, are multiplying the number of imaging machines at the nation's biggest airports. The devices scan passengers' bodies and produce X-ray-like images that can reveal objects concealed beneath clothes.

...

Seeing passengers beset by years of an ever-evolving airport drill -- at first handing over belts, cellphones and laptops for screening, then shoes, and later, dealing with restrictions on gels and liquids -- some activists and experts are asking how much compliance is too much in the name of homeland security.

"The price of liberty is too high," said Kate Hanni, who as founder of FlyersRights.org, an advocacy organization for air passengers, shuttles regularly between her California home and Washington to lobby Congress. Hanni said many of her group's 25,000 members are concerned that "the full-body scanners may not catch the criminals and will subject the rest of us to intrusive and virtual strip searches."

...

Critics say expanding the use of the machines is something of a knee-jerk reaction.
And, experts say, explosives can go undetected even in a full-body screening if potential terrorists conceal them in body cavities.

"It's definitely not a silver bullet," Carafano said. "There's a way to beat it. It's called a 'booty bomb,' where you actually insert the explosive inside the human being and then you detonate the explosive with a cellphone."

The TSA has tried to assuage privacy concerns by saying that the digital images produced by the machines would be deleted after passengers clear checkpoints. But critics are not reassured. "TSA has said, 'Trust us, we've put the switch to the "off" position,' " said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "But it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where they might decide to put the switch to the 'on' position."

Click here to read more.

There are many questions for us to consider as we continue on this path towards a full fledged surveillance society. What will happen to their images once they were scanned? Are they going to be recorded or do they just scan them and that's the end of them? Is this really the best way for us to spend our nation's limited resources? At what point have we given up too much of what makes us a free country just to supposedly prevent one new, specific tactic at a time? (1 in 10 million chance of even happening)

Glenn Greenwald sums up the irrational state of fear that increasingly grips our nation - in no small part due to the media - about as well as one can:

...demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe. This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood.

...

For a variety of reasons, nobody aids this process more than our establishment media, motivated by their own interests in ratcheting up fear and Terrorism melodrama as high as possible. The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others -- the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism -- dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have. The one thing we don't do is ask whether we ourselves are doing anything to fuel this problem and whether we should stop doing it. As Adams said: fear "renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable."

More to come as this debate is sure to heat up in Congress.