Spying

By Dave Lindorff

I was a speaker last night at an anti-war event sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County, Progressive Democrats of America and Democrats For America in Lincroft, NJ, near the shore. It was a great group of activist Americans who want to see this country end the Iraq War, turn away from war as a primary instrument of policy, and start dealing with the pressing human needs of the country and the world.

Yet even in this group of committed people, one woman stood up during the question-and-answer session and said, “I want to get involved in writing emails to members of Congress urging them to cut off funding for the war and other things, but if I do that won’t I end up getting put on a `watch list’” or something?”

Fascism Anyone?
Laurence W. Britt | Free Inquiry.com

Free Inquiry readers may pause to read the “Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” on the inside cover of the magazine. To a secular humanist, these principles seem so logical, so right, so crucial. Yet, there is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of these principles. It is fascism. And fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.

A New Rush to Spy
NYTimes Editorial

There is apparently no limit to the Bush administration’s desire to invade Americans’ privacy in the name of national security. According to members of Congress, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to give the F.B.I. broad new authority to investigate Americans — without any clear basis for suspicion that they are committing a crime.

Opening the door to sweeping investigations of this kind would be an invitation to the government to spy on people based on their race, religion or political activities. Before Mr. Mukasey goes any further, Congress should insist that the guidelines be fully vetted, and it should make certain that they do not pose a further threat to Americans’ civil liberties.

U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules
By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson | WashingtonPost.com

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

It's not like CIFA is really going away. More like its just being folded under another layer of secrecy in the stucture of the National Security State...

Controversial military counterspy office closed
Aug 4, 2008 6:24 PM (1 day ago) By PAMELA HESS, AP
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The Pentagon on Monday officially dissolved an intelligence office that once created a controversial database about potential threats to military bases, shifting it to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Pentagon's six-year old Counterintelligence Field Activity's personnel, budget, and most of its mission has been folded into the newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center.

Human intelligence is military parlance for using people, rather than gadgets, to spy. Counterintelligence refers to actions taken to protect an organization against espionage.

The counterintelligence field office budget was secret, but it was created to protect DoD personnel, resources, and information against foreign influence and manipulation, as well as to detect and neutralize espionage against the department. As such it had law enforcement powers within the Defense Department. Those powers will not transfer to the new center.

By Nick Juliano, Raw Story

President Bush seems to be slowly turning the nation's massive surveillance apparatus upon its citizens, and some worry that administration assurances to protect civil liberties are nothing but empty promises.

With his update to a decades-old executive order governing the Intelligence Community, Bush is giving the Director of National Intelligence and the 16 agencies of the US Intelligence Community more power to access and share sensitive information on Americans with little to no independent oversight. The update to Executive Order 12333, first issued by former President Ronald Reagan, introduces a more prominent role for the Attorney General in approving intelligence gathering methods, calls for collaboration with local law enforcement agencies, eases limits on how information can be shared and urges cooperation between the IC and private companies.

TSA ramps up program to psychologically screen airline passengers
Nick Langewis and David Edwards | Raw Story

In addition to having your bags scanned, taking off your shoes and emptying your pockets on the way to your plane, prepare to have an on-the-spot psychoanalysis as well.

The TSA is in the process of training "behavior detection officers" to seek out involuntary physical and physiological signs of "stress, fear or deception" among air passengers to help determine who to subject to additional screening at airport security checkpoints.

Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power
Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate.
Editor's note: This article is part of a Salon investigative series on spying inside the United States by the Bush administration. Research support for the article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.
By Tim Shorrock
Read the article.

By Maria Allwine, Baltimore Sun

As one of the members of the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance who has been spied on by the Maryland State Police, I feel it important that people understand we in the Pledge of Resistance are the most peaceful, nonterrorist-type folks you could ever hope to meet. We are committed to raising awareness about the destructive forces of violence in our society and our country, which is one of the reasons we have protested the invasion of Iraq since before it occurred. It is because we love and value this country so much that we work to make it better, and we start by insisting that those in power obey its laws. It is because we are profoundly anguished by our government's illegal actions and what it has done to us and to our brothers and sisters around the world that we continue our peaceful work.

Trash the Fourth Amendment, Win a Corporate Sponsor for Your Convention.

One possible use of the power handed to the Bush administration as a result of this law would be for election fraud. This would be done through manipulation of vote counts as they’re transmitted over the phone lines, under the guise of attempting to intercept communication between terrorists. This is how Eliot D. Cohen explains it in a recent article posted at the Election Defense Alliance: READ MORE.

By Marc Ash, t r u t h o u t

Dear Senator Obama, I just slogged through a lecture by The New York Times about how it is the "far left" that is most offended by your vote to ratify retroactive immunity for the US telecommunications companies that provided aid and comfort to George W. Bush's illegal program of domestic spying. Further, The Times implied, "mainstream Democrats" take a more mature and pragmatic view. The piece seemed to read like public relations material. But that's silly - it was news, of course.

In fairness, the political center moves around more than a set of goalposts on the White House lawn. So, the relevancy of the Times's argument has a limited shelf life regardless. The real issue is twofold.

Trust and the Law

By gg

Obama's Letter Begins:

"Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies
must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down
terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and
the privacy and civil liberties of the American people."

This statement on its face is very true and very reasonable.
Obama continues:

"There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the
cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that
authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the
communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the
required court orders."

This statement is also very obvious and reasonable.

Obama continues:

"That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act,
which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without
sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil
liberties of innocent Americans."

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

Leave it to George Bush to point out a little-noticed aspect of the FISA bill that he likes, but you should hate.

In his chortle over the Democratic cave-in on FISA, Bush said, “It will ensure that those companies whose assistance is necessary to protect the country will, themselves, be protected from lawsuits for past—or future—cooperation with the government.”

The news lies between those dashes.

Opponents of the FISA bill, from the ACLU to Russ Feingold, have been focusing on retroactive immunity for AT&T and Verizon and the other telecom companies.

But what may be even more alarming is the prospective immunity that telecom companies and Internet service providers and others are guaranteed by this bill.

Here are some of the relevant passages:

They tossed out the Fourth Amendment. They believe that an out-of-control dictatorial president should be free to order the government and communications corporations to spy on you with no warrant, with no probable cause, and with no accountability. Therefore, you should feel no qualms about spying on them: everywhere they go, including in their homes: get them on video. We want to see Youtubes of them sleeping! Do not give them a moment outside of the gaze of the public they have betrayed!

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal by approving a bill to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.

Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which the White House had threatened would have prompted a presidential veto. With those amendments defeated, the Senate then passed the same bill passed last week by the House, which means it is that bill, in unchanged form, that will be sent to the White House — just as the White House demanded. READ THE REST.

Hoffman for Senate
info@HoffmanForSenate.us

Ogunquit, Maine: The Hoffman for Senate Campaign released the following statement by Herb Hoffman, Independent candidate for the United States Senate.

"Today, the United States Senate will vote to suspend the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution when it approves the FISA bill. Not only will the passage of this bill nullify the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons' which is guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, it will simultaneously add to the nullification of the Constitutionally established balance of powers. I refer to the "immunity clause" for the telecom industry by which over 40 legal suits will not be able to be heard before a court of law."

This is it.

Today the Senate will be debating FISA and retroactive immunity.

By tomorrow, it's likely that voting will be done.

And what we do together over the next 24 hours will determine what the legislation looks like.

I've offered an amendment to strip retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation.

On Monday you joined thousands of Americans online by calling your Senators (with the help of our friends at FireDogLake) and asking them to vote "NO" on any bill containing retroactive immunity.

There's still time for more calls to be made.

http://tools.advomatic.com/7/fisa

I promise you that your voices are being heard in the halls of the Senate.

I promise you that I will continue to fight alongside you until the last vote is counted.

Help me now to ensure that my next email to you will be a celebration of our commitment to the rule of law.

Thanks once again,

Chris Dodd

What Every American Needs to Know (and Do) About FISA Before Tuesday, July 8th from Tim Ferriss on Vimeo.