Category Archives: Privacy

FBI Doesn’t Follow Laws With “National Security Letters”

Individual Rights, Privacy, The Bill Of Rights, War on Terror

I’m shocked! SHOCKED!

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI’s use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general’s audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations — some of which were potential violations of law — in a sampling of 293 “national security letters.” The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.

Now, normally this would assume that these cases came before a judge, were looked at to ensure they met the standards, and somehow still passed the scrutiny they needed to be blocked. But as we all know, that’s not how they roll.

The letters enable an FBI field office to compel the release of private information without the authority of a grand jury or judge. The USA Patriot Act, enacted after the 2001 attacks, eliminated the requirement that the FBI show “specific and articulable” reasons to believe that the records it demands belong to a foreign intelligence agent or terrorist.

…

Now the bureau needs only to certify that the records are “sought for” or “relevant to” an investigation “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

I would think that this goes against the 4th Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I do believe this would entail a complete instance of the government to demand records of peoples’ “papers, and effects” without a warrant, and by the above quote, the proof of probable cause (which is no longer certified by a judge) is greatly diminished.

Of course, I can’t completely blame the FBI here. Business has been more than willing to roll over for the feds, to the point where they are providing information that isn’t asked for and is not legally allowed to be provided. Of course, our wonderful FBI is destroying that information filing it away for future use.

In at least two cases, the officials said, Fine found that the FBI obtained full credit reports using a national security letter that could lawfully be employed to obtain only summary information. In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released. The FBI “sequestered” that information, a law enforcement official said last night, but did not destroy it.

Now, don’t you feel safer? After all, we don’t need to worry about terrorists in a police state. We just need to worry about the police.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

DOJ Pushing For Mandatory Data Retention

Individual Rights, Privacy

Declan McCullough reports at CNet that the Department of Justice is pushing a proposal that would require internet service providers and web sites to keep records of the identity of users who upload pictures or videos:

The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.

That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.

A second purpose of the meeting in Washington, D.C., according to the sources, was to ask Internet service providers how much it would cost to record details on their subscribers for two years. At the very least, the companies would be required to keep logs for police of which customer is assigned a specific Internet address.

This is only the latest chapter in what has been a multi-year quest by the DOJ, FBI, and Bush Administration to make it easy to spy on internet traffic. Past proposals have included everything from redesigning routers to make electronic eavesdropping easier to allowing law enforcement to conduct internet surveillance without a warrant for up to 48 hours. So far, ISPs and content providers have resisted government efforts to turn them into partners of law enforcement. It’s unclear how much longer that resistance can hold out.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

Memo: The Earth Doesn’t Move

Church and State, Education, General, Monopolies, Politics, Privacy, Religious Liberty, The Bill Of Rights

Cross posted here at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds

Kansas’ government school science curriculum is no longer the laughing stock of the nation and the world; the dubious honor may next be bestowed on Georgia. Georgia state representative Ben Bridges has circulated a memo to other state lawmakers around the country encouraging his colleagues to challenge the teaching of evolution (while promoting of I.D. creation “science”) in court by stating that evolution is not science but part of another religion thus violating the separation of church and state. This in itself is nothing too unusual; those who promote I.D. have made that argument before. Bridges memo goes even further: evolution is part of an ancient Jewish conspiracy! Obviously, this did not sit well with the Anti-defamation League.

Just when I thought this story couldn’t get nuttier, the memo has links to a site called fixedearth.com as its authority. Fixedearth.com not only takes on well-established scientific theories of evolution and the big bang (what the site calls “big bangism”) but the very fact that…the earth revolves around the sun! According to the site the earth DOES NOT MOVE and the sun REVOLVES AROUND THE EARTH. No shit.

Marshall Hall, the sites creator and former government school teacher (scary), believes that the idea that the earth revolves around the sun is also a giant conspiracy to discredit the bible. Hall references two bible verses “The world is established and cannot move” (Psalm 93:1) and “He hangeth the Earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7). Following these verses, Hall goes on to say:

The Bible and all real evidence confirms that this is precisely what He did, and indeed:

The Earth is not rotating…nor is it going around the sun.

The universe is not one ten trillionth the size we are told.

Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as “science”.

The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie.

Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s “knowledge” about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.

I can’t say that I am all that surprised that there are such people out there who have not left the dark ages. What is a little surprising and very disturbing is the idea that a U.S. lawmaker on any level would listen to moon bats such as Marshall Hall to put forward an agenda in government schools. Had I stumbled across this site myself, I would have thought it to be a spoof to mock creationists because I know that most creationists would never question the idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Most creationists would not take Psalm 93:1 and Job 26:7 literally and would say that the descriptions made in these verses were based on the understanding people had of the universe at that time (which is a lame explanation if you ask me seeing that they were supposedly authored by the creator of the universe). In a previous post, I wrote the following statement:

Since we don’t want to offend the fragile faith of the fundies, why not allow them to substitute their own version of reality in all the other sciences? Clearly the astronomers don’t know what they are talking about either because the Bible clearly stated that the earth was flat and that the sun revolves around the earth. We ought to burn all books written which contradict the Bible. This will be no small task: we pretty much have to rid ourselves of everything we have learned about biology, geology, astronomy, anthropology, psychiatry, history, mathematics, medicine, and more.

Little did I know at the time I wrote that statement that there were fundies with influence setting out to do just that. Could there ever be a better argument for school privatization and school choice than this?

Hat tip: Nealz Nuze

Related Posts:
Sunday School Science Lesson
The End of Faith (Book Review)
Can Mysticism Co-Exist with Reason and Liberty?
The Battle for Young Minds

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

A Fundamentally Silly Ruling

Individual Rights, Legal, Privacy

In what can only be described as a fundamentally silly decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a never-enforced Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys:

Atlanta – In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Alabama statute banning the commercial distribution of sex toys, saying that there is no fundamental right to privacy raised by the plaintiff’s case against the law.

According to the statute, it is “unlawful for any person to knowingly distribute any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” This would mean that much of the content on Restricted21.com would not be accessible, which seems excessive.

In 1998, the Alabama chapter of the ACLU brought suit on behalf of several plaintiffs – chief among them adult toy retailer Sherri Williams (who are one of many outlets that make their business on selling the Best pocket pussy options out there, amongst other things) – seeking to enjoin the statute. The recent ruling by the 11th Circuit marks the third trip through the appellate process for the case.

In his opinion affirming the Alabama District Court’s ruling, Judge Charles Wilson concluded that the state has a “legitimate rational basis for the challenged legislation” despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision – Lawrence vs. Texas which overruled anti-sodomy laws across the country.

As Julian Sanchez argues, this decision seems impossible to reconcile with two long-standing Supreme Court decisions on the issue of sexual privacy and commercial activity:

Two of the seminal privacy cases of the last century- Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird-involved contraceptives, which were publicly sold and distributed commodities. So it seems clear that when some activity is implicated in the right of sexual privacy, the fact that it necessarily includes some public component-in this instance the dissemination or commercial sale of contraceptives to be used in the privacy of the home-cannot provide a pretext for gutting the right. Really, in light of Griswold and Eisenstadt, the key question would seem to be, not whether the state may thrust the camel’s nose of regulation into the commercial tent-flap (no!), but whether the liberty interest in dildoes really belongs in the same category as contraception, given that the former do not seem to be something “so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

Then, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Court recognized, though, that the right to privacy extended to more than just procreation:

The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.

And then there’s the Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

So where, then, does the State Of Alabama obtain the right to ban a commercial product ? » Read more

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

Republicans Revive Internet Surveillance Bill

Privacy, Technology

Republican lawmakers are renewing their efforts to turn Internet Service Providers into deputies of law enforcement:

All Internet service providers would need to track their customers’ online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican “law and order agenda.” With the amount of usage on the internet these days (click here for the stats), it can hold a lot of vital and necessary information for police or other authorities. Employees of any Internet provider who fail to store that information face fines and prison terms of up to one year, the bill says. The U.S. Justice Department could order the companies to store those records forever. Hopefully, all companies will get this news before the bill is enforced. A lot of companies make use of proxies (click here) to keep their employee searches anonymous. This helps them to maintain cybersecurity, so many businesses use those. However, this bill would prevent companies from using those.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called it a necessary anti-cybercrime measure. “The legislation introduced today will give law enforcement the tools it needs to find and prosecute criminals,” he said in a statement.

The proposed law doesn’t define what information ISPs would be required to keep, but leaves that up to the Attorney General and the Justice Department:

Details about data retention requirements would be left to [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales. At a minimum, the bill says, the regulations must require storing records “such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders.”

Because there is no limit on how broad the rules can be, Gonzales would be permitted to force Internet providers to keep logs of Web browsing, instant message exchanges, or e-mail conversations indefinitely. (The bill does not, however, explicitly cover search engines or Web hosting companies, which officials have talked about before as targets of regulation.)

That broad wording also would permit the records to be obtained by private litigants in noncriminal cases, such as divorces and employment disputes. That raises additional privacy concerns, civil libertarians say.

As the industry argues, there is simply no evidence that providers have not cooperated with law enforcement in the past upon being served by a duly issued subpoena or search warrant. Instead, what it does is create a vast amount of data that can be used by the government for whatever purpose it deems necessary without regard to whether there is probable cause that a crime has been committed, and without any concern at all for the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Internet users.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com
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