EPIC Grades Obama on Privacy and Civil Liberties

Now, I've written in excruciating detail on this blog about what a total and complete disappointment President Obama has been on issues related to privacy and civil liberties. I never expected his actions as President to fully match his words as a candidate (and constitutional scholar!) - this is rarely EVER the case, particularly when it comes to issues related to national security - but the two seem to be diametrically opposed on nearly every issue.

Sadly, what has become an ironclad, and increasingly dangerous "rule of thumb" in this country, is that once a power is taken by the government (i.e. Patriot Act), or a civil liberty/constitutional protection erased, its gone...NO President, anymore anyway, once elected offers to "give" up power achieved by the President (s) before him. And boy oh boy has this remained true between the privacy eviscerating Administration of George W. Bush and that of President Barack Obama.

Before I get to some of what I believe are his greatest failings, let's get to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Privacy Report Card for President Obama released last week.

EPIC gave the Administration a grade of C in Consumer Privacy, B in Medical Privacy, D in Civil Liberties, and B in Cybersecurity. This year's grades are a drop from the grades given in EPIC's 2009 Privacy Report Card and reflect important privacy developments during the past year.

For me personally, the list of disappointments is getting, literally, too long for me to address these days. So forgive me for reaching back into my archives and getting some help...from myself.

We all know by now the Administration's whole-hearted embrace of Whole-Body-Imaging in airports. As we also now 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. Telecom immunity? You bet. Justice for those spied on? Hell no.

We also now KNOW, that it was President Obama himself that worked behind the scenes to ensure that absolutely no meaningful reforms to the Patriot Act were adopted...essentially a complete reversal of his positions as a Senator and Presidential candidate. Strange, he doesn't lift a finger for things like the public option or the Consumer Protection Agency, but man, he's one tough customer when it comes to protecting the Patriot Act.

Its as if we're watching a debate between the eloquent, pro-civil liberties "Candidate Obama" and the just as eloquent, anti-constitutional authoritarian, President Obama.

Senator Obama branded the Patriot Act "shoddy and dangerous" and pledged to end it in 2003. In 2005, he pledged to filibuster a Bush-sponsored bill that included several of these exact components recently extended, calling them "just plain wrong" in a Senate speech. He argued:

"Government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document -- through library books they've read and phone calls they've made...We don't have to settle for a Patriot Act that sacrifices our liberties or our safety -- we can have one that secures both."

But now let's hear from President Obama, who wrote in a letter that he was advocating IN FAVOR of the most abusive provisions in the Act to stand...the same ones he claimed were "shoddy and dangerous" as a Senator.

For instance, business and citizens groups can still have their records examined by the government with minimal checks on how the information can be used and more particularly used against. Individuals often based on flimsiest of evidence can still be targeted for monitoring and surveillance if suspected of being a potential terrorist.

Organizations and individuals can still be slapped with so-called roving wiretaps (taps that can be placed on an individual or group anywhere, anytime) again based on weak evidence or unfounded suspicion....

Now President Obama justifies keeping nearly all of Bush's terror war provisions in place with the standard rationale that the government must have all the weapons needed to deal with the threat of terrorism. If you think I'm confusing Bush and Cheney with Obama, sadly, you're wrong.

Then there was the Administration's radical interpretation and use of the "state secrets" privilege to block courts from hearing a host of information, from torture allegations to wiretapping claims. In other words, for the sole purpose of protecting those that committed crimes that the President vehemently criticized as a Senator and promised to address as a candidate.

We now know that the Administration is going along - in most respects - with the Bush policies of indefinite detention and military tribunals.

And as most are probably aware (I've posted on it recently), Obama is backing a bill that would require all Internet companies to be able to tap into any online communications that they enable.

Trust me, that's just a quick list I've put together...there are many more examples I could give. But for today's purposes, let's see some of what EPIC cites (surely much the same), and a few articles, namely from Computerworld, Networkworld, and Daily Tech.

But, in case you think I'm being too hard on the man, watch the Daily Show's fantastic run down of the Obama "constitutional scholar" candidate vs. Obama "constitution eviscerating" President:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Computerworld reports:

On the civil liberties front, for instance, there were high expectations that changes would be made to many programs, including the Patriot Act, the Fusion Centers that were created for sharing intelligence information between local and federal agencies, no-fly lists and the Real-ID national identification program. All of those were programs inherited from the Bush administration, and a year ago it was too early to assess what impact the new administration would have on them, he said.

The fact that little has changed a year later is surprising given the early expectations, Rotenberg said. The Obama administration's failure so far to set up an advisory board for monitoring key issues such as the airport full-body scanner program is troubling, he noted. So too is its relative inaction around controversial programs such as the Patriot Act and the Fusion Center initiative, he said.

Rotenberg also criticized what he claimed has been the Federal Trade Commission's less than aggressive approach in dealing with serious consumer privacy issues stemming from the use of technologies such as Facebook and Google's Buzz and Street View.

Read more here.

Daily Tech also honed in on the numerous outright reversals by the President:

More controversial, however, is the domestic spying efforts closely tied to the terrorism. Namely the National Security Agency (NSA), under the Patriot Act of 2001, was given the right warrantless wiretaps of calls between U.S. and foreign citizens. That alone was controversial enough, but an expose in The New York Times showed that domestic calls between two U.S. citizens were also being intercepted, in what the NSA dubbed an "accident".

A special Obama administration task force consisting of U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Commerce, NSA, Federal Bureau of Investigations, local law enforcement, and more is looking to reinforce warrantless wiretap. The move is perhaps unsurprising, considering that the council shares many of the same experts that mastermind President George W. Bush's original Patriot Act.

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Under the proposed changes, telecoms would be mandated to not only prepare for such instances, but also for warrantless wiretapping as spelled out under the Patriot Act. Those telecoms who complied fully would be rewarded with undisclosed incentives, while those who resist or were slow to comply would face fines or other penalties.

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Previously detailed nuances of the plan call for the government also to gain new warrantless surveillance powers over other communications resources such as email (e.g. Gmail), text messages (including encrypted services, like RIM's), social networks (e.g. Facebook), and internet forums.

Read more here.

Now to perhaps the most comprehensive article on the subject, NetworkWorld reports:

It's grade card time and President Obama earned a big fat D as is doomed civil liberties, as in does have unchecked authority to kill you, and as in dangerous and overreaching state secrets arguments. It's sad how our right to privacy seems to be decreasing while the government's right to keep secrets seems to be growing. EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) released the 2010 Privacy Report Card (PDF) for the Obama Administration, giving Obama a "D" grade in Civil Liberties. Why? For the same reasons that the ACLU argues that the president does not have the unchecked authority to kill you, and EFF warns that the government is singing the same old state secrecy tune about wiretapping.

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The ACLU is fighting against targeted killing and death without due process. Due to state secrets privilege, if you even found out that you were targeted by the CIA to be killed, you couldn't even fight it in court because to mention state secrets jeopardizes national security. You see, the government keeps secret "kill lists," but the Obama administration says that it's a state secret who they plan to assassinate. Former Director of National Intelligence agreed that the government has a license to kill Americans that are secretly labeled terrorists. Since the Obama administration has asserted its authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens outside armed conflict zones, the ACLU is arguing that President Obama does not have unchecked authority to kill you.

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The state-secrets doctrine seems as out of control as does what is happening to privacy, civil liberties and human rights during the War on Terror. Just look at how many people in peace groups or activists that have wrongfully been put on watchlists or been labeled as a terrorist. Spying on free speech is at Cold War levels! How soon before speaking out for civil liberties, privacy, freedom is also considered low level terrorism? At the rate things are going, could people who are activists, who are considered "low level terrorist" start to be targeted? In 2009, research showed that 10 or more civilians die for every terrorist killed by drone missiles. If the "CIA's Predator drones targeting software was pirated" and faulty, so that it might "possibly miss its target by as much as 40 feet," could the government then say oops, the software steered it wrong and take out even more alleged enemies of the United States? Would that too be considered a "state secret?"

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EFF wrote that the state secrets privilege amounts to an immunity for government law-breaking. The "government has made the same dangerous and overreaching state secrets arguments in the domestic warrantless wiretapping cases." The court had dismissed the legality of the NSA's warrantless dragnet surveillance program "because so many Americans have had their communications and communications records illegally obtained by the government, no single person has legal 'standing' to challenge the ongoing program of government surveillance. In other words: if everyone is being spied on, no one can sue." EFF argued (PDF),"that ruling risks creating a perverse incentive for the government to violate the privacy rights of as many citizens as possible in order to avoid judicial review of its actions." The government says "the same thing it has been arguing for the past five years in every other warrantless wiretapping case: that any attempt by the courts to judge the legality of the alleged surveillance would violate the state secrets privilege and harm national security."

And now the government wants to wiretap the web.

Click here to read more.

To repeat one of my past "conclusions" on this blog: Look, fear as an argument, no matter how ludicrous or exaggerated, trumps privacy these days, as least when it comes to coverage in the corporate media, or positions taken by the entire Republican Party and probably a majority of the Democrats - and now clearly this President.

I find it particularly dismaying that the tables have been so turned that the onus (and derision) has been placed on those that simply believe the government, or corporate America for that matter, should not have access to everything we do, particularly when we have committed no crime. Now we must prove that whatever the latest power the government seeks to enshrine as law won't stop an attack (and if we can't prove this negative, we are endangering Americans!) or how it could specifically harm us...rather than the onus being on those seeking to circumvent our privacy and rights in the name of "national security."

If we can all go back in time for a minute, and remember those dark days of the Bush Administration (i.e. all of them), we should also remember the consistent, vehement, and vocal opposition from the left of Bush assaults on privacy and the constitution, from eavesdropping, to indefinite detention, to state secrets, to the Patriot Act abuses, and so, and so forth.

This vehement opposition was of course warranted, and important. But now that Obama is President, and CONTINUING THESE POLICIES, the same outcry that once existed has become a whimper. No, I'm not talking about groups like the ACLU or EFF, but certainly Democrats in Congress, left wing talk radio, and even newspaper editorial boards.

And why is this silence so damaging? Because a so called "liberal" President, a constitutional scholar no less, has now codified what just a few years ago were rightly considered radical attacks on the Constitution and Rule of Law. Now those very same policies have not only been embraced by the new President, but has been accepted by the Democrats in Congress!! In other words, the ball has just moved WAY towards the neoconservative worldview, and their interpretation of an all powerful Executive Branch.

The idea that because Obama is more intelligent, measured, and schooled in constitutional law than Bush (all of which is true), that this somehow means we should entrust him with near unchecked powers, be it wiretapping, assassination of American citizens, or indefinite detention, is patently absurd. Even if it were true that he would use these powers wisely (which is impossible), what's to say the next President will too?

Glenn Greenwald articulated my point (one I've been making here for quite some time) perfectly in a post of his today, stating: Here again, we see one of the principal and longest-lasting effects of the Obama presidency: to put a pretty, eloquent, progressive face on what (until quite recently) was ostensibly considered by a large segment of the citizenry to be tyrannical right-wing extremism (e.g., indefinite detention, military commissions, "state secrets" used to block judicial review, an endless and always-expanding "War on Terror," immunity for war criminals, rampant corporatism -- and now unchecked presidential assassinations of American citizens), and thus to transform what were once bitter, partisan controversies into harmonious, bipartisan consensus...

Let's all try to ensure that this is NOT one of Obama's lasting legacies.

Pilot Protests "Digital Strip Search" Machines and How to Opt-Out Yourself

Just about everybody who reads this blog even on an occasional basis knows I have covered the issue of airport body scanners (also known as "whole body imaging") extensively here. Before I get to two very interesting articles today, one on an airline pilot being punished for refusing to go through one himself and the other about a journalist's first hand experience choosing "option b", let me go over a few of the basics.

Most important to understand is that these machines essentially allow airport security to see through your clothing, producing images of digitally naked passengers. Now, I don't want to rehash all that I have written on this subject before because there's a lot I want to get to today, so to find out most everything you need to know about these machines and their privacy implications (among other issues with them), check out my article "The Politics of Fear and Whole Body Imaging" (from January 2010), or check out some of my past posts on the subject, here, here, and here.

To date, my focus has primarily been on (see my former posts for answers to these questions):
A. whether being viewed essentially naked just to board a plane is in itself a violation of privacy,
B. whether these scanners actually make us "safer",
C. whether the irrational fears of a terrorist attack warrant the increasing encroachments on our civil liberties and quality of life,
D. whether these images are actually protected and won't be somehow shared or saved, E. what forces and corporate interests have the most to gain from pushing this ever expanding surveillance state, and,
F. what does all this mean for the airline passenger - particularly if he/she chooses NOT TO be subjected to these machines (i.e. aggressive pat down)?

As I mentioned above, my past posts answer these questions in detail, and let's just say in each case its much worse than you probably could imagine. I'll summarize some of this at the end of today's blog, but let's get to these two stories that I think add to this ongoing "debate".

First, the Memphis newspaper the Commercial Appeal covered a recent incident with no less than an airline pilot. Wayne Risher reports:

ExpressJet Airlines first officer Michael Roberts drew a line in the sand last Friday morning at Memphis International Airport security Checkpoint C. He left the airport without boarding a flight to his duty base in Houston, refusing a full-body scan and its alternative, a manual pat-down, by Transportation Security Administration

On Tuesday, Roberts, 35, was waiting to find out whether his protest would cost him his job. I'm not trying to throw down the gauntlet with the federal government per se," he said. "I just want to be able to go to work and not be harassed or molested without cause."

"I just kind of had to ask myself 'Where do I stand?' I'm just not comfortable being physically manhandled by a federal security agent every time I go to work." TSA spokesman Jon Allen, citing privacy considerations, wouldn't confirm that Roberts was the person who was turned away by airport police after refusing to comply with TSA security procedures. Roberts was wearing his pilot's uniform and identification at the time.

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Roberts said he's not minimizing the importance of tight security to protect air travelers, but he said he doesn't believe TSA has the answer. "I have those (security) concerns as well, but I don't believe this approach is a necessary or effective way to mitigate the threat."

He called TSA a "make-work" jobs program combined with a feel-good effort "to give us a false sense of security to let us believe the folks in Washington are keeping us safe."

Click here to read more.

Before I comment on that, let's get to the article by Mike Adams from the magazine Natural News entitled "How to opt-out of the TSA's naked body scanners at the airport"(another issue some have with these machines is the potential health risks, which are unproven, but nonetheless worth notice). This is of particular interest to me because numerous women commented on a past blog post of mine on how people are treated if they choose to opt-out. Their stories are NOT REASSURING.

Adams, known as the Health Ranger writes:

I encountered my first airport naked body scanner while flying out of California today, and of course I decided to "opt out" of the scan. You do this by telling the blue-shirted TSA agents that you simply wish to opt out of the body scanner. Here's what happened after that:

A TSA agent told me to step to the side and stay put. He then proceeded to shout out loudly enough for all the other travelers and TSA agents to hear, "OPT OUT! OPT OUT!" This is no doubt designed to attract attention (or perhaps humiliation) to those who choose to opt out of the naked body scanner. I saw no purpose for this verbal alert because the same TSA agent who was yelling this ultimately was the one who patted me down anyway.

....

Speaking of the naked body scanners, as I was having my crotch swept by the back of the hand of this TSA agent, I was observing other air travelers subjecting themselves to the naked body scanners. They were told to walk into the body scanner staging area and then hold their arms in the air in a pose as if they were under arrest. They were told to freeze in this position for several seconds (perhaps 10 seconds) during which they were being blasted with ionizing radiation that we all know contributes to cancer.

The TSA, of course, will tell you that these machines can't possibly contribute to cancer. But they said the same thing about mammograms, and we now know that mammograms are so harmful to women's health that they actually harm ten women for everyone one woman they help (http://www.naturalnews.com/020829.html). So I'm not exactly taking the U.S. government at its word that naked body scanner radiation is "harmless."

As these air travelers were being scanned, their naked body images were appearing on a screen somewhere, of course. Some TSA agent was examining the naked body shape and contours of all these people, and even though we were told by the TSA that the image viewing machines cannot store images, we have since learned that the machines actually do have the capability to store those images (http://www.naturalnews.com/029378_full_body_scanners_images.html). In addition, rogue TSA employees could simply use their cell phones to take snapshots of what they see on the screen. There are no doubt rules against such behavior, but it's bound to happen sooner or later.

Meanwhile, my own security screening was proceeding fully clothed. I don't want to broadcast my naked butt cheeks on the TSA's graphic monitors, thank you very much!

...

The most fascinating part about this entire process was not the verbal broadcast of my opt out status, nor having my crotch swept by the latex-covered back hand of some anonymous TSA agent, but rather the curious fact that I was the only one opting out. Although I must have watched at least a hundred people go through this particular security checkpoint, there wasn't a single other person who opted out of the naked body scan.

They all just lined up like cattle to have their bodies scanned with ionizing radiation. To me, that's just fascinating. That when people are given a choice to opt out of being irradiated, they will choose to just go along with the naked body scan rather than risk standing out by requesting to opt out.

You see, I'm not convinced that the TSA's naked body scanners enhance air travel security at all. Previous security tests conducted by the FAA show quite clearly that the greatest threat to airplane safety isn't from the passengers but from ground crews, where bombs and other materials can be quite easily smuggled onto planes.

But even though naked body scanners may not enhance air travel security, they do accomplish something far more intriguing: The successful completion of an experiment in human behavior. If you were to pose the question "Will people line up like cattle to be electronically undressed in front of government security officers?" The answer is now unequivocally YES!

Most people, it turns out, will simply do whatever they're told by government authorities, even if it means giving up their privacy or their freedoms. Almost anything can be sold to the public under the guise of "fighting terrorism" these days, including subjecting your body to what is essentially a low-radiation CT scan at the airport!

I don't know about you, but I don't think I should be required to subject myself to ionizing radiation as a condition of air travel security. Of course, the more technically minded readers among you might counter by saying that high-altitude travel is, all by itself, an event that subjects you to low levels of ionizing radiation (which is true). But that's all the more reason to not add the body's radiation burden any more than necessary. Americans already get far too much radiation from CT scans and other medical imaging tests (not to mention mammograms). Do we really need to dose peoples' bodies with yet more radiation every time they board an airplane?

Click here to read more.

Let's start with the obvious: there are a myriad of reasons to oppose the widespread use of these scanners, from privacy to cost to practicality to slowing down our run away "fear industrial complex".

As I have argued over and over, including in my speech about the costs of war, we would do well to rethink the words "safe" and "secure". In this instance, what about the concept of "safe" from government intrusiveness and corporate profiteering off fear peddling? Considering the ACTUAL threat posed by terrorists, and the ACTUAL need for these machines, I would argue such intrusion makes us less safe, not more.

Remember, the likelihood that I'll get hit by lightning in one year is 500,000 to 1 while the odds I'll be killed by a terrorist on a plane if I flew constantly over 10 years is 10 million to 1. Does this laughably minuscule risk warrant yet another civil liberties encroachment? Does this irrational fear of being blown up in a plane really warrant supporting wars on countries that did nothing to us, or in this case, wasting HUGE amounts of money on ineffectual security systems?

Again, quoting past blogs I've written, "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?

Does this "fear" warrant increasing the already long list of airline passenger indignities?

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? I think, at least to an extent, the answer is yes.

For these reasons and more, 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?

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?

Now, as to the points made by the journalist from Natural News, and add that to the numerous women who commented on a post I did back in July about their experiences, I think a pattern is becoming clear...one that appears to be a very concerted effort by airport security to force people to go through the body scanners...be it through making the alternative body search even more intrusive and uncomfortable, shaming and embarrassing those that refuse, or simply trying to say that they have to, when they don't.

Look, if our two choices are being digitally strip searched, or aggressively felt up, then perhaps a growing consumer backlash against the machines may take shape. At the end of the day, if the flying public revolts against these scanners it will be monumentally more difficult to justify their exorbitant costs.

In Europe they've added another reason to oppose these scanners: it violates child pornography laws. If there is some kind of global public revolt underway, if we are to take the article in Natural News as an indicator, it isn't happening in America - yet.

For me personally, its about more than all the individual points I've made from not making us safer to invading our privacy. This issue matters, as does so many other privacy related debates, because it highlights the way we are allowing "false fears" to drive too much of our public policy decisions and to adversely and artificially influence and affect our lives, opinions, and emotions. Fear is not a principle or pillar to build a healthy society around, particularly when those very fears are being magnified and sold to us by those that have ulterior motives to exaggerate threats.

The trend-line since 9/11 has been all too clear...and we're headed, rapidly, in the wrong direction. Whole Body Imaging is just one piece of a much larger puzzle that indicates privacy as both a right, and an idea is under assault. Lines in the sand must be drawn. Digital strip searches is one of the places we should draw one.

Facebook, Privacy, and the Department of Homeland Security

For a virtual book's worth of posts I've done in the past on Facebook's rather strained and adversarial relationship with privacy just put in "facebook" in the search box in the upper left corner and click search. Due to time constraints (been keeping me from posting here as much as I'd like), rather than rehash all of Facebook's "attack on privacy greatest hits", I want to get straight to what privacy expert Bruce Schneier had to say on the issue last week and then get to some recent revelations coming from documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation indicating the Department of Homeland Security is big on social network surveillance.

First, Bruce Schneier on how social-networking sites deliberately encourage people to disclose personal details about themselves so the sites will have content to sell to advertisers.

Zdnet reports: "These CEOs are deliberately killing privacy — it's their market — and Facebook is the worst offender," Schneier told reporters at RSA Conference Europe in London. "In the end, Facebook will do its best by its customers, who aren't you [but advertisers]."

...

Schneier added that people "shouldn't be surprised" that a service paid for by third parties is acting in the interests of those third parties.

Earlier in the day, the security expert said in a conference keynote speech that many social-networking sites only give limited options for privacy. For example, Facebook does not make it easy to delete posts, and those posts are shared with a wide variety of people, Schneier noted.

He told the press conference that organisations are collecting increasing amounts of data on people, to the detriment of privacy. While technical solutions implemented by ISPs would go some way to improving internet privacy, governments should ultimately shoulder the responsibility, he said. "I would like to see governments pass broad data-protection laws," Schneier added.

Now, coupled with Schneier's remarks, I found this bit of related, and concerning news.

Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveal two forms of tracking: First, surveillance of social networks to investigate applicants for citizenship, and second, the Homeland Security Department's use of a "social networking monitoring center" to collect and analyze public communication during the period of President Obama's inauguration.

A May 2008 memo (obtained by the EFF through a Freedom of Information Act request) by officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of DHS, encourages security employees to "friend" citizenship petitioners on social networking sites as a means of ferreting out fraud.

"Many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don't even know," the document says. "This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS (Office of Fraud Detection and National Security) to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."

Here's more from EFF:

Of the two disclosures, the citizenship verification initiative is perhaps the most disconcerting, both for its assumptions about people who use social networking sites and for its potentially deceptive and unethical approach to collecting information. Specifically, the disclosure contains a May 2008 memo by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) entitled Social Networking Sites and Their Importance to FDNS [Office of Fraud Detection and National Security] [PDF] which states:

Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuels a need to have a large group of “friends” link to their pages and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don’t even know. This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities.

This social networking gives FDNS an opportunity to reveal fraud by browsing these sites to see if petitioners and beneficiaries are in a valid relationship or are attempting to deceive [United States Citizen and Immigration Services] about their relationship. Once a user posts online, they create a public record and timeline of their activities. In essence, using MySpace and other like sites is akin to doing an unannounced cyber “site-visit” on a [sic] petitioners and beneficiaries.

(Emphasis added). In other words, USCIS is specifically instructing its agents to attempt to “friend” citizenship petitioners and their beneficiaries on social networks in the hope that these users will (perhaps inadvertently) allow agents to monitor their activities for evidence of suspected fraud, including evidence that their relationships might not live up to the USCIS’ standard of a legitimate marriage.

More analysis from EFF: "Of course, there are good reasons for government agencies and law enforcement officials to use all the tools at their disposal, including social networks, to ferret out fraud and other illegal conduct. And while one might just chalk this up to another case of “caveat friendster," it does raise some questions about the agency’s conduct.

First, the memo makes no mention of what level of suspicion, if any, an agent must find before conducting such surveillance, leaving every applicant as a potential target. Nor does the memo address whether or not DHS agents must reveal their government affiliation or even their real name during the friend request, leaving open the possibility that agents could actively deceive online users to infiltrate their social networks and monitor the activities of not only that user, but also the user’s friends, family, and other associates. Finally, the memo makes several assumptions about social networking users that are not necessarily grounded in truth and reveal the author’s lack of understanding of the ways people use social networking sites.

...the memo engages in armchair psychology by assuming a large friend network indicates “narcissistic tendencies.” Second, and perhaps more disturbing, the memo assumes a user’s online profile always accurately reflects her offline life. While Facebook and MySpace would like their users’ profiles to always be current and accurate, users may have valid reasons for keeping some of their offline life out of their online profiles (for example, many users still feel their relationship status is private). Unfortunately, this memo suggests there’s nothing to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date off-hand comment in a status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full citizenship investigation."

Californa Privacy Bills Signed, Vetoed By Governor

As per usual, I want to briefly go through the fates of the handful of important California privacy bills that made it all the way to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk.

Privacy Bills Signed by Governor

SB 1268 (Simitian) - Protects Privacy of Electronic Toll Users: Representing a major privacy victory was the Governor’s signing of SB 1268. The bill puts in place a number of protections for personally identifiable information of electronic toll collection subscribers, including, but not limited to: travel pattern data, address, telephone number, bank account information, and credit card information.

The bill would restrict transportation agencies from handing over subscriber information unless a law enforcement agency provides a search warrant, or, in cases in which the delay required in seeking a search warrant would result in an imminent danger to the health or safety of a member of the public, a written statement by the law enforcement agency explaining the nature of the situation. In addition, it would provide that in each instance where a subscriber’s personally identifiable information is handed over to a law enforcement agency, the subscriber him or herself must be notified within a reasonable timeframe.

SB 909 (Wright) - Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies: This bill will require a person who instigates an investigative consumer report for employment purposes to provide a consumer with a Disclosure and Request for Consent for the information to be sent outside of the United States.

SB 1087 (Alquist) - Identity Theft: This bill gives additional rights to victims of identity theft - an increasingly common crime in California - by authorizing restitution for three years of credit report monitoring and for the costs to repair a credit rating. The legislation also expands the definition of what is considered to be identity theft and increases fines and potential incarceration time for those found guilty.

The bill also allows a person who believes that he or she is the victim of identity theft the right to initiate an investigation of the matter by contacting the law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over the person's residence or place of business. The victim may then obtain information from various financial entities concerning the suspected identity theft incident and may further investigate the matter. The victim may also petition a court for an expedited determination of his or her factual innocence concerning misuse of his or her identifying information.

Privacy Bills Vetoed By Governor

SB 1166 (Simitian) - Protecting Personal Information: The Governor’s veto of SB 1166 marks the biggest “privacy disappointment” of the session. Its a particularly stinging loss because, while the Governor vetoed a nearly identical bill last year, he said to bring it back again with just a minor modification - which was made. Apparently, the Governor changed his mind, and consumers will continue to pay the price, here's why:

A recent study by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse indicated upwards of 500 million data breaches since 2005, including personal medical records, credit card numbers and Social Security numbers. According to a 2009 Javelin Research&Strategy, individuals are four times more likely to be the victim of identity theft in the year after receiving a data breach notification letter.

It goes without saying then, that these findings epitomized the need for the Governor to sign SB 1166 (Simitian). California’s current security breach notification law does not require public agencies, businesses, or persons subject to that law to provide any standard set of information about the breach to consumers. As a result, security breach notification letters often lack important information - such as the time of the breach or type of information that was breached - or are confusing to consumers.

SB 1166 would have rectified this problem by amending California's security breach notification law stating that any public agency, person or business required to issue a security breach notification to more than 500 residents must submit the notification electronically to the Attorney General. This measure also would have required that the notification be written in plain language and include contact information regarding the breach, the types of information breached, and the date, estimated date, or date range of the breach.

Yet the Governor's veto message claims "This bill is unnecessary, however, because there is no evidence that there is a problem with the information provided to consumers. Moreover, there is no additional consumer benefit gained by requiring the Attorney General to become a repository of breach notices when this measure does not require the Attorney General to do anything with the notices.”

Just ask consumers whether its more helpful to receive a letter that provides more than just a notice that your information has been breached, but also what you can do about it, when it happened (so you can check that date against your credit card statements, etc.), and other useful, SPECIFIC information.

The bottom line is that this law IS NEEDED. The past few years have demonstrated that there are some holes that still need to be plugged. According to a survey of data breach victims, 28% of those receiving a notification did not understand “the potential consequences of the breach after reading the letter.”

SB 482 (Mendoza) – Protecting Financial Privacy: This is another big disappointment, particularly considering how many people's credit scores have suffered due to the Great Recession. This bill would have prohibited a prospective employer from using consumer credit reports in the hiring process.

An employer should not have any right to obtain confidential information that is not germane to a prospective employee's job. Credit reports do not have predictive value in determining a worker's ability to perform job duties, but a bad credit report might unfairly influence a hiring employer's attitude toward a job applicant. AB 943 would provide exceptions in cases when the job duties include access to cash or other financial assets, when the job is in law enforcement, and in other narrow areas.

So that's a quick rundown of the privacy bills that we (Consumer Federation of California) had been tracking all year that actually made it to his desk. While the signing of the electronic toll bill was a victory, its difficult to understand the Governor's reasoning for vetoing the credit report and the security breach bills...but then, we are talking about Governor Schwarzenegger...so logic, and rational, consistent public policy positions don't really apply.

Bruce Schneier on Obama's "Wiretap the Internet" Plan

I don't want to rehash everything I wrote on Tuesday, so to get my extensive coverage of this issue just go to Tuesday's post (below). What I do want to do however, is share the thoughts of privacy expert Bruce Schneier on a soon to be submitted bill that would require all Internet companies to be able to tap into any online communications that they enable.

Schneier adds some critical details to what I wrote about in my last piece, including the US becoming an exporter of a draconian surveillance infrastructure (thus making matters worse for those struggling for freedom), to the system being hacked and used by "other than government" interests for "other than law enforcement" means, to the fact that such an infrastructure would be too costly with no real benefit...except the loss of privacy and the increased threat of identity threat. Wow...sounds like a winner!

Its fairly short in length, so I'm going to post Scheier's piece on CNN.com in full:

On Monday, The New York Times reported that President Obama will seek sweeping laws enabling law enforcement to more easily eavesdrop on the internet. Technologies are changing, the administration argues, and modern digital systems aren't as easy to monitor as traditional telephones.

The government wants to force companies to redesign their communications systems and information networks to facilitate surveillance, and to provide law enforcement with back doors that enable them to bypass any security measures.

The proposal may seem extreme, but -- unfortunately -- it's not unique. Just a few months ago, the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India threatened to ban BlackBerry devices unless the company made eavesdropping easier. China has already built a massive internet surveillance system to better control its citizens.

Formerly reserved for totalitarian countries, this wholesale surveillance of citizens has moved into the democratic world as well. Governments like Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom are debating or passing laws giving their police new powers of internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell. More are passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain customer data in case they might need to be investigated later.

Obama isn't the first U.S. president to seek expanded digital eavesdropping. The 1994 CALEA law required phone companies to build ways to better facilitate FBI eavesdropping into their digital phone switches. Since 2001, the National Security Agency has built substantial eavesdropping systems within the United States.

These laws are dangerous, both for citizens of countries like China and citizens of Western democracies. Forcing companies to redesign their communications products and services to facilitate government eavesdropping reduces privacy and liberty; that's obvious. But the laws also make us less safe. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in.

Any surveillance system invites both criminal appropriation and government abuse. Function creep is the most obvious abuse: New police powers, enacted to fight terrorism, are already used in situations of conventional nonterrorist crime. Internet surveillance and control will be no different.

Official misuses are bad enough, but the unofficial uses are far more worrisome. An infrastructure conducive to surveillance and control invites surveillance and control, both by the people you expect and the people you don't. Any surveillance and control system must itself be secured, and we're not very good at that. Why does anyone think that only authorized law enforcement will mine collected internet data or eavesdrop on Skype and IM conversations?

These risks are not theoretical. After 9/11, the National Security Agency built a surveillance infrastructure to eavesdrop on telephone calls and e-mails within the United States. Although procedural rules stated that only non-Americans and international phone calls were to be listened to, actual practice didn't always match those rules. NSA analysts collected more data than they were authorized to and used the system to spy on wives, girlfriends and famous people like former President Bill Clinton.

The most serious known misuse of a telecommunications surveillance infrastructure took place in Greece. Between June 2004 and March 2005, someone wiretapped more than 100 cell phones belonging to members of the Greek government -- the prime minister and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and justice -- and other prominent people. Ericsson built this wiretapping capability into Vodafone's products, but enabled it only for governments that requested it. Greece wasn't one of those governments, but some still unknown party -- a rival political group? organized crime? -- figured out how to surreptitiously turn the feature on.

Surveillance infrastructure is easy to export. Once surveillance capabilities are built into Skype or Gmail or your BlackBerry, it's easy for more totalitarian countries to demand the same access; after all, the technical work has already been done.

Western companies such as Siemens, Nokia and Secure Computing built Iran's surveillance infrastructure, and U.S. companies like L-1 Identity Solutions helped build China's electronic police state. The next generation of worldwide citizen control will be paid for by countries like the United States.

We should be embarrassed to export eavesdropping capabilities. Secure, surveillance-free systems protect the lives of people in totalitarian countries around the world. They allow people to exchange ideas even when the government wants to limit free exchange. They power citizen journalism, political movements and social change. For example, Twitter's anonymity saved the lives of Iranian dissidents -- anonymity that many governments want to eliminate.

Yes, communications technologies are used by both the good guys and the bad guys. But the good guys far outnumber the bad guys, and it's far more valuable to make sure they're secure than it is to cripple them on the off chance it might help catch a bad guy. It's like the FBI demanding that no automobiles drive above 50 mph, so they can more easily pursue getaway cars. It might or might not work -- but, regardless, the cost to society of the resulting slowdown would be enormous.

It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. No matter what the eavesdroppers say, these systems cost too much and put us all at greater risk.

Obama's (and Bush's) War On Privacy Targets The Internet

Wow...what can I say? Obama Administration seeks to "Wiretap the internet"...what's not to like about the sound of that news headline!?

Now, I've written in excruciating detail on this blog about what a total and complete disappointment President Obama has been on issues related to privacy and civil liberties. I'm not going to say that I expected his actions as President to fully match his words as a candidate (and constitutional scholar!). This is rarely EVER the case, particularly when it comes to issues related to national security, but this is getting downright ridiculous.

Sadly, what has become an ironclad, and increasingly dangerous "rule of thumb" in this country, is once a power is taken by the government (i.e. Patriot Act), or a civil liberty/constitutional protection erased, its gone...NO President, anymore anyway, once elected offers to "give" up power achieved by the President (s) before him. And boy oh boy has this remained true between the privacy eviscerating Administration of George W. Bush and that of President Barack Obama.

Now, before I get to the OUTSTANDING analysis of this leaked Administration proposal by Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, let me first provide a bit more backdrop on it. Be it the Washington Post, New York Times or the San Jose Mercury News, the essential story is this: National security and U.S. law enforcement officials are preparing to submit a bill to Congress that would require all Internet companies to be able to tap into any online communications that they enable. While government officials say the legislation is needed because much communication among criminals and terrorists has moved online, privacy advocates called the proposal dangerous and excessive.

I want to provide a couple quotes from some of my privacy advocate friends too: Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a group that promotes the rights and interests of online consumers, said it "would give away the digital keys to our consumer data kingdom. This is too much to give away to any government, Republican or Democrat. This proposal should be fought by civil libertarians, consumers and business leaders."

The bill, which hasn't yet been released, would require companies that provide encrypted communications to be able to break into those coded signals upon receiving a legal wiretapping order,

Similarly, and thankfully, privacy advocates are challenging the claim that U.S. officials are losing their policing abilities. Let's be honest here, how can anyone in the world, with a straight face, say our government has LESS surveillance capabilities in the past, rather than MORE???

If I remember correctly, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed a succession of laws that has made it far easier for law enforcement and security officials to spy on online and other communications with or without warrants.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an online civil liberties group noted how the government "has also amassed massive databases of electronic information that it can use in investigations."

Privacy advocates are also arguing that providing a "back door" into online communications to allow government officials to spy on them would make those communications fundamentally insecure, providing a point of vulnerability that hackers could exploit. In Greece in 2005, hackers used just such a back door to eavesdrop on phone calls made by the prime minister and other officials.

"This is a bad idea," Rotenberg said. "Not just bad in the sense that it opens the door to Big Brother surveillance, but it "... puts Internet users and companies at greater risk of identity theft, corporate espionage and surreptitious spying."

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had "huge implications" and challenged "fundamental elements of the Internet revolution" -- including its decentralized design.

"They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet," he said. "They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function."

Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, took issue with the move. "This proposal is a drastic anti-privacy, anti-security, anti-innovation solution in search of a problem.

He noted that in an official 2009 review of 2,400 federal, state and local law enforcement applications for wiretap orders, "encryption was encountered during one state wiretap, but did not prevent officials from obtaining the plain text of the communications."

But some additional context is needed on this I think. Consider also that a government report was just released (see my last post) detailing just how lawless the FBI's monitoring of "suspects", mostly peace activists and left wing protesters (non-violent of course), were...all under the guise of the Patriot Act and the phony "war on terror" (that pretty much justifies everything in the eyes of government now).

The spying could take the form of listening to phone calls, intercepting wireless communications, harassing photographers or infiltrating protest groups. Also discovered was the way in which agencies' are increasingly connected through various information sharing measures, making it more likely that information collected on an individual by a small police department could end up in an FBI or CIA database.

Remember, the Internet is the communication tool of choice now for political activism and organizing. Doesn't the fact that the report also noted how the FBI monitored peaceful protest groups and in some cases attempted to prevent protest activities (particularly against the war) provide us with one of the clear motives behind the Administration's plan to "wiretap the Internet"?

Or, if you don't believe that is its motive, and you believe, unlike the Bush Administration, it will be wise and judicious in its use of these monitoring capabilities, then what about the next Administration? Sorry, but I don't trust a "President Romney, Huckabee, Giuliani, or Palin" further than I can throw them.

Sadly, even though we have a Democratic President, a constitutional scholar that ran on protecting privacy no less, our expanding surveillance state has not been restrained, in fact its been accelerated.

Sometimes I'm astonished how little people on the left have come to grips with the fact that on issues ranging from indefinite detention to rendition to wiretapping to ASSASSINATION OF AMERICAN citizens to use of state secrets to defend Bush Administration civil liberties assaults (something Obama rightly criticized as a candidate) to now OPPOSING whistleblower protections (which he advocated in support of as candidate) to his embrace of all the key Patriot Act provisions he so adamantly criticized as a candidate (and recently even fought behind the scenes to ensure NO REFORMS were added that might protect civil liberties) to his support for whole body imaging machines in airports to his efforts to expand the use of National Security Letters, this President is no different, whatsoever, than Bush.

Just this past week we learned that the FBI "searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago," including the home of a well-known Palestinian American anti-war activist. The attorney for the activist believes that a recent Supreme Court case that allowed prosecution of humanitarian groups seen as aiding terrorists may be responsible for the raid. Now imagine the FBI with the power to monitor all internet advocacy and communications?

Also, JUST THIS WEEK, the Obama administration employed a "state secrets" defense to urge a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by civil liberties groups who say the targeting of a U.S. citizen for killing overseas is illegal.

With all of that, let's get to Glenn Greenwald's thoughts on this (we tend to REALLY see things similarly):

The tyrannical mentality of the UAE, Saudi and Bush DHS authorities are far from aberrational. They are perfectly representative of how the current U.S. administration thinks as well: every communication and all other human transactions must be subject to government surveillance. Nothing may be beyond the reach of official spying agencies. There must be no such thing as true privacy from government authorities.

Anyone who thinks that is hyperbole should simply read two articles today describing efforts of the Obama administration to obliterate remaining vestiges of privacy. The first is this New York Times article by Charlie Savage, which describes how the Obama administration will propose new legislation to mandate that the U.S. Government have access to all forms of communications, "including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct 'peer to peer' messaging like Skype." In other words, the U.S. Government is taking exactly the position of the UAE and the Saudis: no communications are permitted to be beyond the surveillance reach of U.S. authorities.

...

Then there is this article in The Washington Post this morning, which reports that "[t]he Obama administration wants to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country, a dramatic expansion in efforts to counter terrorist financing and money laundering." Whereas banks are now required to report all such transactions over $10,000 or which are otherwise suspicious, "the new rule would require banks to disclose even the smallest transfers." "The proposal also calls for banks to provide annually the Social Security numbers for all wire-transfer senders and recipients." It would create a centralized database enabling the U.S. Government to monitor a vastly expanded range of financial transactions engaged in by people who are under no suspicion whatsoever of criminal activity...

...

That concept -- that the U.S. Government should not be monitoring, surveilling and collecting data on individuals who are not under criminal investigation -- was once the hallmark of basic American liberty, so uncontroversial as to require no defense. But decades of effective fear-mongering over everything from Communists to drug kingpins -- and particularly the last decade of invoking the all-justifying, Scary mantra of Terrorism -- has reduced much of the American citizenry into a frightened and meek puddle of acquiescence which not only tolerates, but craves, a complete deprivation of privacy.

Needless to say, both articles this morning are suffused with quotes from government officials tossing around the standard clichés about Scary Terrorists, Drug Lords, and other cartoon menaces hauled out to justify every expansion of government power and every reduction of individual privacy (that, of course, was the same rationale invoked by UAE and Saudi officials: "The UAE issued a statement explaining the decision, saying it had come because 'certain Blackberry services' allow users to avoid 'any legal accountability', raising 'judicial, social and national security concerns'.").

Leave aside the fact that endlessly increasing government surviellance is not only ineffective in detecting Terrorist plots and other crimes, but is actually counterproductive, as it swamps the Government with more data than it can possibly process and manage. What these Obama proposals illustrates is just how far we've descended in the security/liberty debate, where only the former consideration has value, while the latter has none. Whereas it was once axiomatic that the Government should not spy on citizens who have done nothing wrong, that belief is now relegated to the civil libertarian fringes.

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What makes this trend all the more pernicious is that at exactly the same time that the Government is demanding greater and greater access to what you do and say, it is hiding its own conduct behind an always-higher and more impenetrable wall of secrecy. Everything you do and say must be accessible to them; you can have no secrets from them. But everything they do -- including even criminal acts such as torture, assassinations and warrantless surveillance -- is completely off-limits to you, deemed "state secrets" that not even courts can review in order to determine their legality. This is all driven by Francis Bacon's observation that "knowledge is power": the idea is to make sure that they have full knowledge of what you do (i.e., full power over it), while you have no knowledge about what they do (i.e., no power).

For those insisting that the Government must have the technological ability to eavesdrop on any and all communications in order to stop Terrorists and criminals, what are you going to do about in-person communications? By this logic, the Government should install eavesdropping devices in all private homes and public spaces, provided they promise only to listen in when the law allows them to do so (I believe there was a book written about that once). For those insisting that the Government must have the physical ability to spy on all communications, what objections could one have to such a proposal? We've developed this child-like belief that all Bad Things can be prevented -- we can be Kept Safe from all dangers -- provided we just vest enough power in the Government to protect us all. What we lose from that mentality, however, is quite vast yet rarely counted. A central value of the Internet was that it was supposed to enable the flow of information free from the surveillance and control of governmental and other authorities.

Click here to read the rest of Greenwald's post.

Its hard for me to add much to Greenwald's points, as they're so right on. Its obviously hard to argue that privacy, as both a right and an idea, isn't literally whithering away on the vine before our very eyes.

Fear as an argument, no matter how ludicrous or exaggerated, trumps privacy these days, as least when it comes to coverage in the corporate media, or positions taken by the entire Republican Party and probably a majority of the Democrats. I find it particularly dismaying that the tables have been so turned that the onus (and derision) has been placed on those that simply believe the government, or corporate America for that matter, should not have access to everything we do, particularly when we have committed no crime. Now we must prove that whatever the latest power the government seeks to enshrine as law won't stop an attack (and if we can't prove this negative, we are endangering Americans!)or how it could specifically harm us...rather than the onus being on those seeking to circumvent our privacy and rights in the name of "national security."

As I have asked many times before on this blog, is the loss of freedom, privacy, and quality of life a worthwhile trade-off for unproven protections from a terrorist threat that is far less a concern that being struck by lightening?

This increasingly intrusive surveillance state threatens the very concept of privacy, particularly privacy as a necessary requisite for liberty, which I believe it is. With privacy comes control, with control comes at least a semblance of power. The Internet is where so much of the future of political dialogue, activism, and communication will occur...I think it would be a gross mistake to allow open access to the government...we've seen how the FBI has used such monitoring capabilities when it comes to the telephone or wireless computers.

The likelihood a terrorist like Bin Laden will destroy us is extremely low…but the likelihood that our banana republic economy will is extremely high (made only higher by the amount we spend on “defending” against a mythical “enemy”). Yet, we are being led to believe there is this grave, terrorist threat out there…and there's no amount of resources we won't spend to "fight it."

I question the very premise that the government benefits from, or certainly that we need, such an all encompassing surveillance state. Remember, our military, our CIA, our spying agencies (such as NSA) are every bit corporate as they are governmental: in some cases more so. So complete is the merger that it's the same people who switch seamlessly back and forth between governmental agencies and their private "partners". This means we have not only a vast Secret Government, but one that operates with virtually no democratic accountability and is driven not by National Security concerns but by its own always-expanding private profits.

All this begs the question: who is really benefiting from this expanding surveillance state and why? More on that in future posts...

Justice Department: FBI Investigations of Left Leaning Groups "Improper"

I want everyone to go back in time for a bit and remember the dark days of the Bush Administration. In this case, it was the Administration's use of the Patriot Act to vastly expand the reach of the FBI, particularly in its monitoring of left leaning political advocacy groups inside the United States...all to protect us from terrorism of course (sarcasm).

One of the most damning charges the Justice Department was attempting to determine the validity of was whether the FBI targeted these groups because of their specific political "beliefs" and/or for political purposes?

As the Washington Post reports, the Justice Department concluded that on one hand, the "FBI improperly investigated some left-leaning U.S. advocacy groups after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks...citing cases in which agents put activists on terrorist watch lists even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience."

But, on the other hand, the investigation stops short of asserting the FBI targeted specific groups due to their politics, which I find a bit contradictory, writing, "A report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine absolved the FBI of the most serious allegation: that domestic groups were targeted purely for their activism against the Iraq war and other political activity, which would have violated their First Amendment rights. Civil liberties groups and congressional Democrats had accused the FBI of employing such tactics during George W. Bush's administration.

Now, before I get to a bit more of the article and the report, I want to go back a bit to describe some of what we know about the FBI's use of the Patriot Act under the Bush Administration to target liberal groups, particularly anti-war ones during the years between 2001 and 2006 in particular.

First, according to a recent report by the ACLU, there have been 111 incidents of illegal domestic political surveillance since 9/11 in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

The report shows that law enforcement and federal officials work closely to monitor the political activity of individuals deemed suspicious, an activity that was previously common during the Cold War. That includes protests, religious activities and other rights protected by the first amendment.

The spying could take the form of listening to phone calls, intercepting wireless communications, harassing photographers or infiltrating protest groups. Also discovered was the way in which agencies' are increasingly connected through various information sharing measures, making it more likely that information collected on an individual by a small police department could end up in an FBI or CIA database.

The report also noted how the FBI monitors peaceful protest groups and in some cases attempts to prevent protest activities. Its not hard to make the obvious connection between the increase in domestic political surveillance to an erosion of the standards of privacy and civil liberties in the wake of 9/11. The Patriot Act of course serves as exhibit A, as it authorized law enforcement to use tools domestically that were formerly restricted to hostile groups in foreign nations.

This all sounds VERY POLITICAL to me...otherwise where are all the examples of right wing groups being monitored? This discrepancy is particularly questionable when considering its right wing types that tend to be those advocating violence, even government overthrow, rather than peace.

And let's be clear, just because its now 2010 and we have a Democratic President, that doesn't mean this expanding surveillance state has in any way been restrained. The Patriot Act's key provisions allowing this kind of government surveillance in the first place were all renewed.

And worse, in recent months it was none other than the Department Of Justice itself that has been pressuring Congress to expand its power to obtain records of Americans' private Internet activity through the use of National Security Letters (NSLs).

All of this of course is part of a much larger trend that paints a disturbing narrative, a narrative that points in one direction only: an increasingly intrusive surveillance state with an Executive Branch getting dangerously close to being above the law.

It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission. To get this information, the F.B.I. simply has to ask for it in the form of a national security letter, which is an administrative request that does not require a judge’s signature.

These national security letters are the same vehicles that the Bush administration used after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to demand that libraries turn over the names of books that people had checked out. The F.B.I. used these letters hundreds of thousands of times to demand records of phone calls and other communications, and the Pentagon used them to get records from banks and consumer credit agencies. Internal investigations of both agencies found widespread misuse of the power, and little oversight into how it was wielded.

In other words, this is simply about removing one last protection we have from FBI surveillance abuses, namely, federal judges and courts and the scrutiny they could supply to requests for sensitive information made by the government. We know, for a fact, that under the Bush Administration the VAST MAJORITY of Patriot Act abuses had nothing to do with terrorism, or trying to actually catch terrorists or stop terrorist acts.

No, what makes this kind of expansion of surveillance capabilities so dangerous is that they are more often than not used to target political enemies (think peace protesters, anti-globalization protesters) or just small time drug dealers. Let's hope the President does not get rewarded the same way his predecessor did every time he starts crying about the big bad terrorist wolf.

The concern of course is that once these expanded surveillance powers (and others) are accepted, even codified, by the "left" no less, they are untouchable...and what were once considered inalienable rights, are now gone, for good.

As Glenn Greenwald noted last year, “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.”

So please keep all of the above in mind when reading this Washington Post article and the findings by the Justice Department...and ask yourself, were these surveillance jobs politically motivated? I can't see how you can conclude they weren't...

More from the article:

...the report cited what it called "troubling" FBI practices in the Bush administration's monitoring of domestic groups between 2001 and 2006. In one instance, the report said, FBI officials falsely said an agent photographed antiwar demonstrators as part of a terrorism investigation, which led FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to unintentionally give incorrect information about the incident to Congress.

In another, agents investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities "with little or no basis," the report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said.

The groups that were monitored, which also include a Catholic organization that advocates for peace, compared the FBI's actions to questionable domestic spying tactics the bureau usedagainst antiwar demonstrators and others in the 1960s under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover.

"The use of McCarthyite tactics against PETA and other groups that speak out against cruelty to animals and exploitative corporate and government practices is un-American, unconstitutional, and against the interests of a healthy democracy,'' said a statement from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights group that was among those monitored.

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Civil liberties groups have long accused the bureau of overreacting to the hijackings by improperly monitoring antiwar demonstrators and environmental groups. Fine's investigation began in 2006 after the American Civil Liberties Union released documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that it said showed that the FBI was monitoring left-leaning groups.

Michael German, an ACLU senior policy counsel and former FBI agent, said Fine's report "clearly shows that the FBI was improperly spying on people's First Amendment-protected activity, and that the FBI didn't have enough internal controls to prevent abuse.''

Fine's report says that in some cases, agents began investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons. In others, the report said, the FBI extended probes "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files.

Much of the report is about a 2002 antiwar protest sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh-based organization dedicated to promoting peace.

Mark Berry, a probationary FBI agent with little anti-terrorism experience, attended the rally and photographed demonstrators distributing leaflets. An internal FBI document said the bureau was investigating "Pittsburgh anti-war activity,'' the report said.

Read more here.