New freaky laser will scan EVERYONE in airports from 164 feet away

I'm going to bring these to your attention without much comment for now, but will have more to say later. Needless to say, reading this should tell you we've entered a new phase.

First, from Gizmodo (via the excellent Steve Hynd, and The Agonist):

Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.

And without you knowing it. ...

Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.

....it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people....

Back in 2008, a team at George Washington University developed a similar laser spectrometer using a different process. It could sense drug metabolites in urine in less than a second, trace amounts of explosive residue on a dollar bill, and even certain chemical changes happening in a plant leaf....

In other words, these portable, incredibly precise molecular-level scanning devices will be cascading lasers across your body as you walk from the bathroom to the soda machine at the airport and instantly reporting and storing a detailed breakdown of your person, in search of certain "molecular tags".

Read it all — I dare you.

You could (read: "will") be scanned for drug molecules on your person at the airport from 150 feet away. That's a game-changer in the invasive Spook Wars, I would think.

The small, inconspicuous machine is attached to a computer running a program that will show the information in real time, from trace amounts of cocaine on your dollar bills to gunpowder residue on your shoes. Forget trying to sneak a bottle of water past security—they will be able to tell what you had for breakfast in an instant while you're walking down the hallway.

And guess what? It's likely not even safe (again, the excellent Steve Hynd via Twitter):

How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA

A new model of the way the THz waves interact with DNA explains how the damage is done and why evidence has been so hard to gather

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes, paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. ...

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. ... Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.

It took the Vietnam War to mobilize the 60s generation, to personalize the risk beyond the theoretical, and create a revolution with critical mass.

Do not underestimate how important critical mass for the Counter-Culture that created modern American life. (And never forget, by the way, that every Hippie-hating Republican openly has sex with his girlfriend without public shame. Only the radicals and Beats did that in the 50s. You would think these Young Libertarians would at least say Thanks to the enemies they so eagerly emulate.)

Now the drug-moralizers have the ultimate weapon — long-range molecular scanners and a no-permission-needed fear atmosphere. It only starts at the airport. With this weapon on the streets of America, another generation will be at personal risk of jail on a tired cop's whim.

By my calculation (carry the two) 2013 is just around the corner.

Game-changer, say I — both ways.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius

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FBI promoting police state surveillance of internet

Why does the FBI hate freedom and America? The blows to the America of yesterday just won't stop. Yes, everyone realizes that we live in a different era but spying on Americans and launching attack after attack on the general public is getting ridiculous. Budgets for these programs appear to be readily available since the political class is much too afraid of being labeled as "soft on terrorism" even though there's no proof that spying like this makes us safer.

Before launching a full assault on the public, shouldn't the FBI and other agencies have to prove to the public - not just the politicians - that extreme actions contribute to making us safer? The defense and spying agencies have free reign these days and that needs to stop.

More on the latest attack via CNET:

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.

In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.

The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.

Read the rest of this post...

Join the EFF for a Week of Action Against #CISPA

Washington is once again doing their darnedest to monitor everything on the internet while forgetting about privacy and civil liberties. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is organizing a new effort to help educate Americans on the issues with CIPSA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act) and how to contact your representative in Congress. Some of the problems of this new effort to spy on Americans is that the law is not specific, so any excuse can be used to spy. Once they have your private information (which they can secretly collect without you knowing about it) the government can share it with whomever they like including companies and other agencies.

For additional information, read a good Q&A on Reddit for more. Spying on American citizens is very un-American so let your voice be heard. Read the rest of this post...

What the NSA is up to (part 1 of Running against the state)

This is Part 1 of a two-part post I'm calling, "Running against the state." Part 2 will be along in a bit, and at that point you'll see what the title is about.

Part 1 is about the NSA, because we always want to keep you informed about the news here at Casa Chez Nous. And this really is news — a major Wired article about what the NSA is building and just how big the National Spook apparatus really is.

As you read this, do think about the NSA. But also consider the state itself as an entity. The NSA is a part of the state.

James Bamford reports in Wired on where we are with the NSA, how far have they gone in their domestic spying and what's in the works. It's technologically fascinating and politically frightening (sorry, kids, but someone has to tell you; my emphasis and paragraphing):

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

... Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.

The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes.

And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted.

According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

The article is full and well worth your read.

A few key points to notice:

■ The "near-bottomless" storage capacity and the notion of digital "pocket litter." In other words, there's no disincentive to storing everything they can get their hands on. And they can get their hands on everything they want.

■ The connection between storing everything and code-breaking. As the article explains, if you stored coded stuff you can't break now, you have that stuff for later when the code is broken — even if it's years later. In essence, everything on earth that was electronically communicated and stored will someday be open — to them. Read the article for that explanation.

■ The way the NSA blew right past the "rules" and is now running in a rules-free environment.

The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email.

In the wake of the program’s exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn’t revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.

For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail. ...

Start reading there to focus on this part of the article. Again, fascinating.

■ And finally, this chilling, unexpanded (unexplained) quote:

The former NSA official [Binney] held his thumb and forefinger close together: “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”

The article doesn't go further, but stays focused on data collection. This is the most intriguing part of the interview, however, and clearly the author included it deliberately and provocatively. The speaker meant something by the comment — we just aren't told what.

I don't want to go too long here. Do read the article — it's rich and full. Bamford is author of author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. He knows whereof he writes.

As fascinating as this is, however, there's a yet-larger point. This is not about the NSA per se; it's about the state. Please stay tuned.

Enigmatically yours,

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Ron Paul's billionaire—Peter Thiel, founder of nat'l security giant Palantir, also PayPal

It seems that every national candidate has a billionaire daddy (or is had by one). Like sports team ownership, national political ownership is a big-money game these days.

First we learned about Newt Gingrich's billionaire — casino giant Sheldon Adelson. Then we discovered Santorum was similarly possessed — by Foster Freiss, a fan of Gov. Scott Walker and aspirin.

Now comes news of Ron Paul's billionaire. What this says about Dr. Paul is well worth knowing.

Bottom line — Ron Paul's billionaire is a major player from the depths of the public-private national security industry, a very heavy hitter from the Spook-Industrial State.

Mark Ames writing in The Nation (sub may be required; March 19 newsstand copy; my emphases):

So it should come as a shock and disappointment to his followers that Ron Paul’s single largest donor—his Sheldon Adelson, as it were—founded a controversial defense contractor, Palantir Technologies. The company profits from government espionage work for the CIA, the FBI and other agencies, and last year it was caught organizing an illegal spy ring targeting opponents of the US Chamber of Commerce, including journalists, progressive activists and union leaders. (Palantir takes its name from the mystical seeing stones used by characters in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to spy on one another.)

According to recently filed FEC disclosure documents, Ron Paul’s Super PAC, Endorse Liberty, has received nearly all of its money from a single source, billionaire Peter Thiel. So far, Thiel has contributed $2.6 million to the Super PAC, providing 76 percent of the its total intake.

Thiel, a self-described libertarian and opponent of democracy [sic] who made his fortune as the founder of PayPal, launched Palantir in 2004 to profit from what the Wall Street Journal described as “the government spy-services marketplace.” The CIA’s venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, was brought in to back up Thiel as one of Palantir’s first outside investors. Today, Palantir’s valuation is reported to be in the billions.

I wasn't kidding when I characterized Thiel — Palantir is a major player at Spook Central, the public-private conglo that runs the U.S. national security state.

Here's BusinessWeek on Palantir, as quoted by Ames (my reparagraphing):

Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantir’s technology is either creepy or heroic. Judging by the company’s growth, opinion in Washington and elsewhere has veered toward the latter.

Palantir has built a customer list that includes the U.S. Defense Dept., CIA, FBI, Army, Marines, Air Force, the police departments of New York and Los Angeles, and a growing number of financial institutions trying to detect bank fraud. These deals have turned the company into one of the quietest success stories in Silicon Valley—it’s on track to hit $250 million in sales this year—and a candidate for an initial public offering. Palantir has been used to find suspects in a case involving the murder of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, and to uncover bombing networks in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. “It’s like plugging into the Matrix,” says a Special Forces member stationed in Afghanistan who requested anonymity out of security concerns. “The first time I saw it, I was like, ‘Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.’ ”

Do check out the BW article. It's eye-opening.

If the name "Palantir" sounds familiar, it should. Palantir was involved in the early-2011 HBGary 75,000-hacked-emails story. Here's Ames on that:

[T]he technologies and know-how acquired over years of spying on suspected foreign terrorists and threats were turned against US citizens. In what became known last year as “Chamber-gate,” Palantir was outed by Anonymous as the lead outfit in a private espionage consortium, with security technology companies HBGary and Berico; the groups spent months “creating electronic dossiers on political opponents of the Chamber through illicit means.”

For more on that story, our coverage is here. This is Glenn Greenwald with just part of the fascinating detail (the whole piece is well worth your time):

And in another case, on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, they [HBGary] wanted to do the same to progressive groups and activists who are critical of the Chamber of Commerce and that’s what has kind of produced a lot of controversy is that the firms that were involved in these discussions, not just HBGary but also Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and most of all Hunton and Williams the very large and well connected DC law firm that represents both the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America. These are very serious and legitimate players and so to see all of them discussing an email on these kind of odious schemes to basically destroy the credibility of political adversaries is why this has become a news story.

When you think Ron Paul, think Spook Central. Paul is owned by a Spook Central billionaire.

Is Ron Paul really Mr. I'm Against War? Right... (Psst, wanna buy a bridge?)

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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How the FBI caught LulzSec hacker Sabu, and what that says about the FBI

We wrote recently about the FBI turning a Anonymous-type LulzSec hacker into a mole, a double agent. This mole then worked with the FBI to (among other things) crack into the email server of a top private security firm, Stratfor, and pass 5 million emails to Anonymous, who gave them to WikiLeaks for release.

(To come up to speed on that story, see here; it's fascinating. There's a Julian Assange angle.)

Now thanks to The Register, we know just how "Sabu" was found (h/t John Byrne via Twitter):

The man named by the FBI as infamous hacktivist Sabu was undone by an embarrassing security blunder, it has emerged. ... "They caught him because just once, he logged onto IRC without going through Tor [an anonymization service], revealing to the FBI his IP address," Graham claims.

And that was all they needed.

According to Robert Graham of Errata Security [Sabu] exposed his IP address, which allowed federal investigators to request records from ISPs and track down his location to a flat shared with his two sons on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

About the FBI, Graham said:

"This reveals a little bit about the FBI, namely that they've infiltrated enough of the popular IRC relays to be able to get people's IP addresses. We've always suspected they could, now we know."

And:

The report said investigators had coerced the unemployed dad [Sabu] into co-operating by threatening him with two years in prison away from his children on the easy-to-prove ID theft charges alone if he failed to turn informant on the rest of the LulzSec crew. The feds also persuaded him to turn over the encryption keys on his battered laptop, allowing them to obtain evidence of Monsegur's "hacking activities".

There's more, including information about the anti-Anonymous hackers the FBI was working with, how some LulzSec members confronted the now-turned Sabu, and how he evaded identification as a mole. It's quite a story.

There's lesson here for non-hackers as well. You have no idea who's peeping at you when you browse or chat. The FBI is apparently watching IRC traffic, and we learned years ago about "NSA telecom closets" that routinely monitor calls and internet traffic.

Anonymization services, on the other hand, are perfectly legal and have a variety of uses, especially in this world of hoped-for–PIPA and government spying.

I've seen Tor in particular recommended a number of times. More here, as well as at the google.

Safe browsing,

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

Federal court approves telco immunity for spying on citizens

The bad guys hate us because of our freedoms.

A federal appeals court has ruled as constitutional a law giving telecommunications companies legal immunity for helping the government with its email and telephone eavesdropping program. Thursday's unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision regarding the 2008 law. The appeal concerned a case that consolidated 33 different lawsuits filed against various telecom companies, including AT&T, Sprint Nextel, Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. on behalf of these companies' customers.

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Police investigating whether Murdoch’s newspaper spied on UK government ministers, intelligence agents

UK Guardian:

The former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain has been told by the Metropolitan police that they are investigating evidence that his computer, and those of senior Northern Ireland civil servants and intelligence agents, may have been hacked by private detectives working for News International.

If true, would this not count as espionage?

NOTE FROM JOHN: If all of these allegations are true, we're talking espionage on a massive scale.  It would be difficult to believe that the top brass at the paper did not know that this was going on - someone must have been coordinating this extensive a spy network (again, if these charges prove true).  I'm still amazed that the US press isn't covering this story more attentively, as this has tentacles potentially reaching Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, both Murdoch properties. Read the rest of this post...

Supreme Court considers whether cops can put a GPS on your car and track you without a warrant

This sounds like it should be a clear violation of your rights. The cops would probably argue that it's little different than following you with a helicopter or a squad car - they don't need warrants to do that. And it's an interesting point. This isn't the same as bugging your car, that would need a warrant. Still, this feels different to me than simply following someone with a car. In this case they need to put something on my person, or on my car which is akin to my person, I would argue. It's a fascinating case. More from HuffPost:

The justices appear poised to go big or go home when it comes to protecting privacy rights against digital intrusion.

Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner in Washington, D.C., is challenging his conviction for drug trafficking, asserting that the police violated his Fourth Amendment rights when, without a valid warrant or his consent, officers placed a GPS device on his car to track his movements on public streets. In taking United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court signaled its interest in seriously revisiting -- and , after almost three decades -- the question of whether advances in technology alter an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy.

Any thoughts? Is this creepy, or is it just like following someone with a squad car or a helicopter? Read the rest of this post...

FBI investigating hacking of celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson

I find it intriguing that this comes out at the same time Rupert Murdoch's media empire is alleged to have hacked famous people in the UK.  Possibly no connection - there's no mention of who the suspect might be - but it is an interesting coincidence. Read the rest of this post...

CIA tried to discredit liberal blogger, at request of Bush White House

This is far more serious than some are intimating. In America you do not sic the CIa on your political opponents. And worse, the CIA should know not to agree to do it. While thhe NYT report says CIA officials caught a document that targeted the blogger, and deleted the reference, the damage and crime was done: the White House had already asked CIA to spy on an American, and CIA did it. It's not enough to delete tbe offending information. This is a crime. And a rather serious one. The President needs to launch a formal investigation now, into what happened here, and whether any other Americans were illegally targeted. I know President Obama isn't a huge fan of accountability. But this goes to the core of who we are. It's beyond wrong.

UPDATE: Juan Cole is calling for a congressional investigation.

I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned.

It's interesting that the CIA is claiming they "search their records" and can't find anything on this. Well duh. Do you really think they were stupid enough to make a record of an obviously illegal request from the White House? And, as noted, the illegal memo on Cole was redacted. Doesn't the CIA have backup servers? This merits an investigation, from Congress and from the Obama White House. This is an incredibly serious allegation. Read the rest of this post...

Obama & the Embeds (DOJ edition)

This is another case, unfortunately, of a self-inflicted Embed, or perhaps something worse.

The trail starts with this recent item at Scott Horton's No Comment blog, entitled "Obama's War on Whistleblowers":

As a young lawyer, Obama represented a whistleblower; as a presidential candidate, he pledged to “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government.” But as president, Obama has unleashed the most aggressive assault on whistleblowers Washington has ever seen—surpassing even George W. Bush. The latest example comes in a remarkable prosecution of Steven Kim, a well-known scholar of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Steven Kim is, among other things, a consultant with the State Dept. His crime? Speaking to Fox News about likely North Korean reactions, in a report that, according to former prosecutor and current professor Ruth Wedgwood, “contains completely unremarkable observations about what a country would do if it was sanctioned for its poor behavior.”

Horton makes all the appropriate points about why this prosecution, by the Obama DOJ, should never have been brought. And he's clearly right. But I'd like to focus here:

Assistant Attorney General David Kris brought the charges.

So there are roughly two explanations for these charges — either (1) the Obama administration wants them brought as part of its explicit policy, or (2) someone in the DOJ is acting Bush–like, draped in the Obama flag. (You know how that goes; convince your boss that an action is reasonable, then pursue it unreasonably, hoping to stay under the radar.)

The key, of course, is David Kris. And it didn't take much checking to tell part of the tale. Kris was in the Bush DOJ as "Associate Deputy Attorney General for national security issues" from 2000 to 2003, when he left to become a VP at Time Warner.

While at Bush Justice, he was considered a strong advocate of the administration's positions regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the USA PATRIOT Act. He appeared before Congress, while at DOJ and after leaving, to express those views.

It's also true that David Kris is respected as a careful lawyer and noted for his public 2006 opposition, on legal grounds, to the NSA domestic spying program. (See Marty Lederman's discussion for more on that; and note that Lederman is currently in the Obama DOJ as well.)

Nevertheless, Kris remains true to his muscular FISA and PATRIOT Act views.

So which is it? An overly aggressive Bush lawyer re-embedded by Obama during one of his team-of-rivals moments? Or an Obama lawyer doing just what the boss wants done?

I don't have an answer; it depends on why you think Kris was hired. On the one hand, David Kris is the inverse of someone as servile as David Woo. On the other hand, Kris has a Bushian track record, balking only where many others balked — at that still-undetailed NSA spying program.

And frankly, I'm not sure either answer does our guy many favors, unless you like Bush's idea of muscular. Embed? It's getting hard to tell.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post's series on 'A hidden world, growing beyond control'

Dana Priest and William R. Arkin from the Washington Post have written a three-part series, Top Secret America, on our nation's national security and intelligence system. The first line sets the tone:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

This series had been creating a lot of buzz before it was even published. And, no doubt, it will create much more now. Among the findings:

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Feel safe? One expert consulted in this series state that there's no way to tell if we're safer now.

The first installment is well worth reading. Read the rest of this post...

Judge: Bush overstepped wiretapping authority

It'd be nice to think that this will amount to something in the end, but I just don't really think it will. Sadly.

A federal judge has rejected the Bush administration's justification for warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists and ruled that federal agents had eavesdropped illegally on a U.S.-based Islamic charity.

The ruling Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco focused on the surveillance of a single organization, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation - the only plaintiff in dozens of wiretapping lawsuits around the nation that had evidence its calls were intercepted.

But Walker's reasoning struck at the heart of the program President George W. Bush authorized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, allowing agents to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant.

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Media Matters' archive of James 'Alleged Wiretapper' O'Keefe stories

He's the guy charged with trying to put a bug in Democratic Senator Landrieus' office. Lots of updates from Media Matters.

Oh, and this just in: FOX is largely ignoring the story. Surprise! Read the rest of this post...

Did China hack into Google's domestic spying software?

Kind of sounds like it.

This appears to indicate that the state-sponsored Chinese hackers have hacked into the portion of the Google infrastructure that deals with government warrants, intercepts, national security letters and other modalities pertinent to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. That, if true, could be very problematic, one would think....

[I]f Google’s Mountain View HQ search warrant search interface/computer was hacked, we are probably talking about the same computer used by the Google Legal Department to perform queries in response to DOJ warrants, subpoenas, national security letters, and FISA orders.

More background on China's foray into Google's computers. Read the rest of this post...

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009

WIRED:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.

The manager also revealed the existence of a previously undisclosed web portal that Sprint provides law enforcement to conduct automated “pings” to track users. Through the website, authorized agents can type in a mobile phone number and obtain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the phone.

The revelations, uncovered by blogger and privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, have spawned questions about the number of Sprint customers who have been under surveillance, as well as the legal process agents followed to obtain such data.

Read the rest of this post...

Did the FBI have files on Walter Cronkite?

They're not sure. Which is rather troubling in and of itself. Read the rest of this post...

Politico: Obama DOJ punts on warrantless taps' legality

I'm not sure to what to make of this. Another case, seemingly, of splitting the baby in half. Read the rest of this post...

Obama admin. adopts Bush policy on state secrets in brief to Supreme Court

At some point, someone is going to start noticing that the Obama administration seems to file a lot of legal briefs that are remarkably similar to legal briefs filed by the Bush administration. You may all recall a certain brief on DOMA filed in June, for example.

Today, we learn that the Obama legal team is adopting Bush's position on the "state secrets privilege":

A Supreme Court filing from the Obama administration last month has set off alarm bells on the left.

The filing was a friend-of-the-court brief, and it mostly dealt with an excruciatingly technical question about the attorney-client privilege. But its last five pages were about the state secrets privilege, which was not at issue in the case. That privilege, a favorite tool of the Bush administration, allows the government to shut down lawsuits by invoking national security.

The Obama administration’s brief argued, though no one had asked, that the state secrets privilege was rooted in the Constitution.

The federal government files friend-of-the-court briefs in the Supreme Court all the time, and it is not unusual for it to alert the court to related issues, usually to make sure that the court’s ruling is no broader than it needs to be.

But the filing has raised eyebrows and suspicions among liberals already disappointed that the Obama administration has not rejected a number of legal doctrines associated with the Bush administration.

Include me in that group of liberals already disappointed. And, of course, we get the perfunctory, don't worry about it statement from an Obama spokesperson:

Mr. Miller, the Justice Department spokesman, cautioned against reading too much into the recent filing. “The brief says nothing about either the scope of the privilege or the ability of Congress to legislate in the area,” Mr. Miller said.

Right. Don't read too much into it. The brief is only the legal position of the United States of America. And, they're only claiming that it has a basis in the constitution.

Oh, don't forget, Congress can fix DOMA, too. Read the rest of this post...