The full force of fascism in America

Glenn Greenwald

Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis

[updated below (with video) - Update II - Update III - Update IV]

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.

In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.

Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

UPDATE: Here is the first of the videos, from the house that had just been raided:

Jane Hamsher has more here, and The Minnesota Independent has a report on another one of the raided houses, here.

UPDATE II: Here is the video we took from the second house as the raid was occurring. We were barred from entering but spoke with neighbors outside as well as with Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota Lawyer's Guild, regarding these raids:



Over at FDL, Lindsay Beyerstein spoke with the property owner whose house -- the fourth one we now know of -- was being raided while the raid was in progress, and Lindsay has details here ("About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house. One of my roommates said 'I want to see a warrant' and she was immediately detained"). Meanwhile, Indy Media of Twin Cities -- an association of independent journalists in the area -- just told me that several of their journalists have been detained while trying to cover these raids. Their site, with ongoing updates, is here.

The Uptake also has several reports of the various raids, including video of the raid at the property whose owner Bernstein spoke with as the raid occurred. That video includes an interview with a lawyer from the National Lawyer's Guild who was detained and put in handcufffs, explaining that the surrounded house is one where various journalists are staying. Additionally, a photojournalist with Democracy Now was detained at that house as well. So, both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred.

UPDATE III: FDL has the transcript of part of my discussion about these raids with the National Lawyer Guild's Minnesota President -- here.

The Uptake has this amazing video interview with the Democracy Now producer who was detained today. As the DN producer explains, she was present at a meeting of a group called "I-Witness" -- which videotaped police behavior at the 2004 GOP Convention in New York and helped get charges dismissed against hundreds of protesters who were arrested. The police surrounded the St. Paul house where they were meeting even though they had no warrant, told them that anyone who exited the house would be arrested, and then -- even though they finally, after several hours, obtained a warrant only for the house next door -- basically broke into the house, pointed weapons at everyone inside, handcuffed them, searched the house, and then left. Here is a blog post from one of the members of I-Witness asking for help during the time when they were forced to stay inside the house (see the second post -- it reads like a note from a hostage crying out for help). This is truly repugnant, extreme police behavior designed to intimidate protesters, police critics and others, and it ought to infuriate anyone and everyone who cares about basic liberties.

Original article posted here.

Fascism strikes at the RNC scooping up Amy Goodman and producers of Democracy (Gone)

Preparing the minions for the next false flag and the assault on the last bastion of freedom

U.S. at risk of cyberattacks, experts say

(CNN) -- The next large-scale military or terrorist attack on the United States, if and when it happens, may not involve airplanes or bombs or even intruders breaching American borders.

Cyberattackers shut down one Georgian government site and defaced another with images of Adolf Hitler.

Instead, such an assault may be carried out in cyberspace by shadowy hackers half a world a way. And Internet security experts believe that it could be just as devastating to the U.S.'s economy and infrastructure as a deadly bombing.

Experts say last week's attack on the former Soviet republic of Georgia, in which a Russian military offensive was preceded by an Internet assault that overwhelmed Georgian government Web sites, signals a new kind of cyberwar, one for which the United States is not fully prepared.

"Nobody's come up with a way to prevent this from happening, even here in the U.S.," said Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Tulip Systems, an Atlanta, Georgia, Web-hosting firm that volunteered its Internet servers to protect the nation of Georgia's Web sites from malicious traffic.

"The U.S. is probably more Internet-dependent than any place in the world. So to that extent, we're more vulnerable than any place in the world to this kind of attack," Burling added. "So much of what we're doing [in the United States] is out there on the Internet, and all of that can be taken down at once." Watch experts discuss threat »

"This is such a crucial issue. At every level, our security now is dependent on computers," said Scott Borg, director of the United States Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit research institute. "It's a whole new era. Political and military conflicts now will almost always have a cyber component. The chief targets will be critical infrastructure, and the attacks will emerge from within our own computer systems."

Hackers mounted coordinated assaults on Georgian government, media, banking and transportation sites in the weeks before Russian troops invaded. Known as distributed denial of service, the attacks employ multiple computers to flood networks with millions of simultaneous requests, overwhelming servers and crippling Web sites.

Hackers shut down the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, for 24 hours and defaced the Georgian parliament site with images of Adolf Hitler. Saakashvili blamed Russia for the attacks, although the Russian government said it was not involved.

Web sites and computer networks have been targeted by hackers for decades, although large-scale, coordinated cyberattacks are still a relatively new phenomenon. Some Internet-security experts believe that the Georgia conflict marks the first time a known cyberattack has coincided with a ground war, but others said that similar computer attacks have accompanied military operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The challenge to U.S. security experts is that such attacks can be mounted anonymously, and relatively cheaply, from anywhere in the world. Georgia's attackers employed "botnets," or malicious automated programs that take root undetected in far-flung computers and barrage their targets with useless data. By last Friday, some of those botnets were originating from Comcast Internet addresses in the United States, Burling said.

"It only takes a couple of experts; it doesn't take a whole cyber infantry division to pull something like this off," said Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence for SecureWorks, an Atlanta-based computer security firm. "For a very small investment in resources, you can have a huge impact."

In the United States, government computer networks parry millions of attempted intrusions every day, Internet-security experts say. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security created a National Cybersecurity Center this year to coordinate federal cyberdefense efforts and quicken responsiveness. However, a recent Homeland Security Department intelligence report, obtained by The Associated Press, concluded that there are no effective means to prevent a coordinated attack on U.S. Web sites.

"When it comes to our government IT security, we're pretty strong in protecting against [attacks]," Homeland Security spokesman William R. Knocke told CNN. "But I wouldn't say ... we're 100 percent impenetrable."

So what would a cyberattack on the United States look like? And where is the U.S. most vulnerable? It depends on who you talk to.

Borg does not believe that the U.S. is susceptible to the kind of attacks launched at Georgia.

"We can command so much bandwidth that it's hard to overwhelm our servers," he said. "We are vulnerable to more sophisticated attacks, but right now most of the people who want to do us harm don't have those capabilities."

The Web sites of key government security agencies, such as the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, are difficult to bring down, experts said. So are the computer networks of large American banks. But experts say a successful, large-scale attack on U.S. computer systems could hobble electric-power grids, transportation networks and industrial-supply chains.

"You'd see some disruption of essential services, like electricity. You'd definitely see espionage," said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Would it be decisive? No. Nobody's going to win a conflict with the United States in cyberspace. But would it be disruptive and irritating? Yes."

Federal researchers who launched an experimental cyberattack last year in Idaho caused a generator to self-destruct, prompting fears about the effect of a real attack on the nation's electrical supply.

And a May report by the Government Accountability Office found that the Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies power to almost 9 million people in the southeastern U.S., had not installed sufficient cybersecurity measures. Spokesman Jim Allen said the TVA, the nation's largest publicly owned utility company, is "on track" to correct the problems.

What frustrates computer-security experts is that the features that make the Internet such an invaluable resource -- its openness and interconnectedness -- also make it easier for hackers to do harm. As a staple of 21st-century warfare, cyberattacks will become increasingly sophisticated, forcing governments and private industry to build ever-stronger firewalls and other defenses, experts said.

Also, vague international laws and a lack of accountability will continue to make tracking down and prosecuting cyberattackers difficult.

"We don't know quite what the rules are for this kind of conflict. If it's spying, it's illegal. But is it an act of war? And who do you arrest?" Lewis asked. "We're much safer [in the U.S.] than we were a year ago. But we still have a long way to go."

Original article posted here.

The fascists plotting to crush the last bastion of freedom

Law Professor: Counter Terrorism Czar Told Me There Is Going To Be An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act

Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig details government plans to overhaul and restrict the Internet

Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that "There’s going to be an i-9/11 event" which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an "i-Patriot Act" if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled "2018: Life on the Net", Lessig stated:

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn't necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You've got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said "of course there is".

Watch Lessig reveal the details at 4.30 into the following video:

Lessig is the founder of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. He is founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications. These are clearly not the ravings of some paranoid cyber geek. The Patriot Act, as well as its lesser known follow up the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as USA Patriot Act II, have been universally decried by civil libertarians and Constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum. They have stripped back basic rights and handed what have been described by even the most moderate critics as "dictatorial control" over to the president and the federal government. Many believed that the legislation was a response to the attacks of 9/11, but the reality was that the Patriot Act was prepared way in advance of 9/11 and it sat dormant, awaiting an event to justify its implementation. In the days after the attacks it was passed in the House by a majority of 357 to 66. It passed the Senate by 98 to 1. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was even allowed to read the legislation. Now we discover that exactly the same freedom restricting legislation has already been prepared for the cyber world. An i-9/11, as described by Lawrence Lessig, would provide the perfect pretext to implement such restrictions in one swift motion, as well as provide the justification for relegating and eliminating specific content and information on the web. Such an event could come in the form of a major viral attack, the hacking of a major city's security or transport systems, or some other vital systems, or a combination of all of these things. Considering the amount of unanswered questions regarding 9/11 and all the indications that it was a covert false flag operation, it isn't hard to imagine such an event being played out in the cyber world. However, regardless of any i-9/11 or i-Patriot Act, there is already a coordinated effort to stem the reach and influence of the internet. We have tirelessly warned of this general movement to restrict, censor, control and eventually completely shut down the internet as we know it, thereby killing the last real vestige of free speech in the world today and eliminating the greatest communication and information tool ever conceived. Our governments have reams of legislation penned to put clamps on the web as we know it. Legislation such as the PRO-IP Act of 2007: H.R. 4279, that would create an IP czar at the Department of Justice and the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act of 2007: S. 522, which would create an entire ‘Intellectual Property Enforcement Network’. These are just two examples. In addition, we have already seen how the major corporate websites and social networks are decentralizing and coming together to implement overarching identification, verification and access systems that have been described by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as "the beginning of a movement and the beginning of an industry.” Some of these major tech companies have already joined efforts in projects such as the Information Card Foundation, which has proposed the creation of a system of internet ID cards that will be required for internet access. Of course, such a system would give those involved the ability to track and control user activity much more effectively. This is just one example. In addition, as we reported yesterday, major transportation hubs like St. Pancras International, as well as libraries, big businesses, hospitals and other public outlets that offer wi-fi Internet, are blacklisting alternative news websites and making them completely inaccessible to their users. These precedents are merely the first indication of what is planned for the Internet over the next 5-10 years, with the traditional web becoming little more than a vast spy database that catalogues people’s every activity and bombards them with commercials, while those who comply with centralized control and regulation of content will be free to enjoy the new super-fast Internet 2. We must speak out about this rampant move to implement strict control mechanisms on the web NOW before it is too late, before the spine of the free internet is broken and its body essentially becomes paralyzed beyond repair.

Original article posted here.

Your police state

One Million Terrorists?

by Paul Craig Roberts

The Bush Regime's "terrorist" protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now one million names on the "terrorist" watch list.

One of them is that of former Assistant US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Mr. Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent "terrorist" protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim terrorist.

What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an Assistant US Attorney General from a terrorist?

Mr. Robinson said: "If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced."

"Hundreds of thousands of people" on a watch list that they have no business being on?

Yes. "Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

And this is America, not Nazi Germany?

How can Airport "Security" possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high level American government official from a terrorist?

Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government's account of that episode)?

How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush Regime's line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America's tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.

One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn't need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.

What we are witnessing with the one million person "watch list" is bureaucracy run amok. One Million Terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water and riffling your belongings in your luggage.

Show your ID.
Take off your shoes.
Take off your belt.
Take off your jacket.
Empty your pockets.

Don't complain about being searched without a warrant or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused – the fate of many American citizens.

The morons who comprise the US government call the "watch list" one of the government's "most effective tools in the fight against terrorism."

What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.

The "watch list" has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.

The ACLU says that "putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning."

It is worse than that. What the "watch list" or "no-fly list" is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of "safety from terrorists," Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.

Original article posted here.

Shrinking internet privacy

YouTube ordered to reveal its viewers

NEW YORK (AP) -- Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

A judge ordered YouTube to produce data on which of its videos get viewed most often and by whom.

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.

The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user's real name or e-mail address.

Lawyers for Google Inc., which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data -- equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books -- would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users' privacy.

The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer's computer.

Stanton ruled this week that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.

Stanton rejected a request from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code -- the technical secret sauce -- powering its market-leading search engine, saying there's no evidence Google manipulated its search algorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.

The court has yet to rule on Google's requests to question comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Viacom's Comedy Central.

Viacom is seeking at least $1 billion in damages from Google, saying YouTube has built a business by using the Internet to "willfully infringe" copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon.

The lawsuit was combined with a similar case filed by a British soccer league and other parties.

Together, the plaintiffs are trying to prove that YouTube has known of copyright infringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolve the immunity protections that service providers have when they merely host content submitted by their users.

Though Google said giving the plaintiffs access to YouTube viewer data would threaten users' privacy, Stanton referred to Google's own blog entry in which the company argued that the IP address alone cannot identify a specific individual.

In a statement, Google said it was "disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."

Google did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek to narrow it.

Stanton's ruling made only passing reference to a 1988 federal law barring the disclosure of specific video materials that subscribers request or obtain.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Stanton should have considered that law along with constitutional free-speech rights, including a right to read or view materials anonymously.

He said a user's ID can sometimes include identifying information such as a first initial and last name.

Viacom said it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any data provided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."

This is not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of user information it had been stockpiling. While gathering evidence for a case involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requests made by their users.

After Google resisted, a federal judge ruled that Google was obliged to turn over only a sample of Web addresses in its search index, not the actual search terms requested.

Original article posted here.

Attacking the internet

Uncle Sam's cyber force wants you

By William J Astore

Recently, while I was on a visit to Salon.com, my computer screen momentarily went black. A glitch? A power surge? No, it was a pop-up ad for the US Air Force, warning me that an enemy cyber attack could come at any moment - with dire consequences for my ability to connect to the Internet. It was an Outer Limits moment. Remember that eerie sci-fi show from the early 1960s? The one that began in a blur with the message, "There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission ..." It felt a little like that.

And speaking of air force ads, there's one currently running on TV and on the Internet that starts with a bird's eye view of the Pentagon as a narrator intones, "This building will be attacked 3 million times today. Who's going to protect it?" Two army colleagues of mine nearly died on September 11, 2001, when the third hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, so I can't say I appreciated the none-too-subtle reminder of that day's carnage. Leaving that aside, it turns out that the ad is referring to cyber attacks and that the cyber protector it has in mind is a new breed of "air" warrior, part of an entirely new Cyber Command run by the air force.

Using the latest technology, our cyber elite will "shoot down" enemy hackers and saboteurs, both foreign and domestic, thereby dominating the realm of cyberspace, just as the air force is currently seeking to dominate the planet's air space - and then space itself "to the shining stars and beyond".

Part of the air force's new "above all" vision of full-spectrum dominance, America's emerging cyber force has control fantasies that would impress George Orwell. Working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and other governmental agencies, the air force's stated goal is to gain access to, and control over, any and all networked computers, anywhere on Earth, at a proposed cost to you, the American taxpayer, of US$30 billion over the first five years.

Here, the air force is advancing the now familiar George W Bush-era idea that the only effective defense is a dominating offense. According to Lani Kass, previously the head of the air force's cyberspace task force and now a special assistant to the air force chief of staff, "If you're defending in cyber [space], you're already too late. Cyber delivers on the original promise of air power. If you don't dominate in cyber, you cannot dominate in other domains."

Such logic is commonplace in today's air force (as it has been for Bush administration foreign policy). A threat is identified, our vulnerability to it is trumpeted, and then our response is to spend tens of billions of dollars launching a quest for total domination.

Thus, on May 12, the Air Force Research Laboratory posted an official "request for proposal" seeking contractor bids to begin the push to achieve "dominant cyber offensive engagement". The desired capabilities constitute a disturbing militarization of cyberspace:

Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root access to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms. Robust methodologies to enable access to any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware ... [T]echnology ... to maintain an active presence within the adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected ... [A]ny and all techniques to enable stealth and persistence capabilities ... [C]apability to stealthily exfiltrate information from any remotely-located open or closed computer information systems ...

Stealthily infiltrating, stealing and exfiltrating: sounds like cyber-cat burglars, or perhaps invisible cyber-SEALS, as in that US Navy "empty beach at night" commercial. This is consistent with an air force-sponsored concept paper on "network-centric warfare", which posits the deployment of so-called "cyber-craft" in cyberspace to "disable terminals, nodes or the entire network as well as send commands to 'fry' their hard drives".

Somebody clever with acronyms came up with D5, an all-encompassing term that embraces the ability to deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy an enemy's computer information systems.

No one, it seems, is the least bit worried that a single-minded pursuit of cyber "destruction" - analogous to that "crush ... kill ... destroy" android on the 1960s TV series Lost in Space - could create a new arena for that old Cold War nuclear acronym MAD (mutually assured destruction), as America's enemies and rivals seek to D5 our terminals, nodes and networks.

Here's another less-than-comforting thought: America's new cyber force will most likely be widely distributed in basing terms. In fact, the air force prefers a "headquarters" spread across several bases in the US, thereby cleverly tapping the political support of more than a few members of the US Congress.

Finally, if, after all this talk of the need for "information dominance" and the five Ds, you still remain skeptical, the air force has prepared an online "What Do You Think?" survey and quiz (paid for, again, by you, the taxpayer, of course) to silence naysayers and cyberspace appeasers. It will disabuse you of the notion that the Internet is a somewhat benign realm where cooperation of all sorts, including the international sort, is possible. You'll learn, instead, that we face nothing but ceaseless hostility from cyber-thugs seeking to terrorize all of us everywhere all the time.

Ugly babies, icebergs and computers
Computers and their various networks are unquestionably vital to our national defense - indeed, to our very way of life - and we do need to be able to protect them from cyber attacks. In addition, striking at an enemy's ability to command and control its forces has always been part of warfare. But spending $6 billion a year for five years on a mini-Manhattan Project to atomize our opponents' computer networks is an escalatory boondoggle of the worst sort.

Leaving aside the striking potential for the abuse of privacy, or the potentially destabilizing responses of rivals to such aggressive online plans, the air force's militarization of cyberspace is likely to yield uncertain technical benefits at inflated prices, if my experience working on two big air force computer projects counts for anything. Admittedly, that experience is a bit dated, but keep in mind that the wheels of procurement reform at the Department of Defense (DoD) do turn slowly, when they turn at all.

Two decades ago, while I was at the Space Surveillance Center in Cheyenne Mountain, the air force awarded a contract to update our computer system. The new system, known as SPADOC 4, was, as one air force tester put it, the "ugly baby". Years later, and no prettier, the baby finally came online, part of a Cheyenne Mountain upgrade that was hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. One air force captain described it in the following way:

The SPADOC system was ... designed very poorly in terms of its human machine interface ... [leading to] a lot of work-arounds that make learning the system difficult ... [Fortunately,] people are adaptable and they can learn to operate a poorly designed machine, like SPADOC, [but the result is] increased training time, increased stress for the operators, increased human errors under stress and unused machine capabilities.

My second experience came a decade ago, when I worked on the air force mission support system or AFMSS. The idea was to enable pilots to plan their missions using the latest tools of technology, rather than paper charts, rulers and calculators. A sound idea, but again botched in execution.

The air force tried to design a mission planner for every platform and mission, from tankers to bombers. To meet such disparate needs took time, money and massive computing power, so the air force went with Unix-based SPARC platforms, which occupied a small room. The software itself was difficult to learn, even counter-intuitive.

While the air force struggled, year after year, to get AFMSS to work, competitors came along with PC-based flight planners, which provided 80% of AFMSS's functionality at a fraction of the cost. Naturally, pilots began clamoring for the portable, easy-to-learn PC system.

Fundamentally, the whole DoD procurement cycle had gone wrong - and there lies a lesson for the present cyber-moment. The Pentagon is fairly good at producing decent ships, tanks and planes (never mind the typical cost overruns, the gold-plating and so on). After all, an advanced ship or tank, even deployed a few years late, is normally still an effective weapon. But a computer system a few years late? That's a paperweight or a doorstop. That's your basic disaster. Hence the push for the DoD to rely, whenever possible, on COTS, or commercial-off-the-shelf, software and hardware.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying it's only the Pentagon that has trouble designing, acquiring and fielding new computer systems. Think of it as a problem of large, by-the-book bureaucracies. Just look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's computer debacle attempting (for years) to install new systems that failed disastrously, or for that matter the ever more imperial Microsoft's struggles with Vista.

Judging by my past experience with large-scale air force computer projects, that $30 billion will turn out to be just the tip of the cyber-war procurement iceberg and, while you're at it, call those "five years" of development 10. Shackled to a multi-year procurement cycle of great regulatory rigidity and complexity, the air force is likely to struggle but fail to keep up with the far more flexible and creative cyber world, which almost daily sees the fielding of new machines and applications.

Loving big 'cyber' brother
The US military is the ultimate centralized, bureaucratic, hierarchical organization. Its tolerance for errors and risky or "deviant" behavior is low. Its culture is designed to foster obedience, loyalty, regularity and predictability, all usually necessary in handling frantic life-or-death combat situations. It is difficult to imagine a culture more antithetical to the world of computer developers, programmers and hackers.

So expect a culture clash in militarized cyberspace - and more taxpayers' money wasted - as the Internet and the civilian computing world continue to outpace anything the DoD can muster. If, however, the air force should somehow manage to defy the odds and succeed, the future might be even scarier.

After all, do we really want the military to dominate cyberspace? Let's say we answer "yes" because we love our big "Above All" cyber brother. Now, imagine you're Chinese or Indian or Russian. Would you really cede total cyber dominance to the United States without a fight? Not likely. You would simply launch - or intensify - your own cyber-war efforts.

Interestingly, a few people have surmised that the air force's cyber war plans are so outlandish they must be bluster - a sort of warning shot to competitors not to dare risk a cyber attack on the US, because they'd then face cyber obliteration.

Yet it's more likely that the air force is quite sincere in promoting its $30 billion "mini-Manhattan" cyber-war project. It has its own private reasons for attempting to expand into a new realm (and so create new budget authority as well). After all, as a service, it's been somewhat marginalized in the "war on terror". Today's air force is in a flat spin, its new planes so expensive that relatively few can be purchased, its pilots increasingly diverted to "fly" Predators and Reapers - unmanned aerial vehicles - its top command eager to ward off the threat of future irrelevancy.

But even in cyberspace, irrelevancy may prove the name of the game. Judging by the results of previous US military-run computer projects, future air force "cyber-craft" may prove more than a day late and billions of dollars short.

William J Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac, 2005). His email is wastore@pct.edu.

Original article posted here.

14 Year Old Student Arrested by Police for Citing Free Speech Provisions of Bill of Rights (video)

A perfect example of the fraudulence that is Al CIAda and the honeypot enticements and entrapments from the government masking itself as terrorists

Research into Islamic terrorism led to police response

22 May 2008

By Melanie Newman

A masters student at the University of Nottingham who was arrested under the Terrorism Act under suspicion of possessing extremist material was studying terrorism for his dissertation, Times Higher Education can reveal.

Academics and students have expressed concerns about the police’s handling of the case, which saw police searching campus property.

Rizwaan Sabir, a 22-year-old who was studying in the politics department, was arrested along with a 30-year-old member of staff. Both were released without charge on 20 May after having been held in custody for six days.

Mr Sabir’s lawyer, Tayab Ali of McCormacks solicitors in London, told Times Higher Education that as preparation for a PhD on radical Islamic groups, Mr Sabir had downloaded an edited version of the al-Qaeda handbook from a US government website. It is understood that Mr Sabir sent the 1,500-page document to the staff member - who was subsequently arrested - because he had access to a printer. Mr Ali said: “The two members of the university were treated as though they were part of an al-Qaeda cell. They were detained for 48 hours, and a warrant for further detention was granted on the basis that the police had mobile phones and evidence taken from computers to justify this.”

The case highlights concerns that new anti-terrorism legislation allowing detention for 28 days without charge would lead to people’s being held for extended periods on the “flimsiest of evidence”, Mr Ali said.

“Why did it take so long for the police to reach the conclusions they did?” Mr Ali asked. “These are not unqualified police, they are the top counterterrorism command for the region. They should know the difference between a book that is useful for terrorism and one that is not.”

Academics at Nottingham have expressed deep concerns about the arrest’s implications for academic freedom. Bettina Rentz, a lecturer in international security and Mr Sabir’s personal tutor, said: “This case is very worrying. The student downloaded publicly accessible information and provoked this very harsh reaction. Nobody tried to speak to him or to his tutors before police were sent in. The whole push from the Government is on policy relevance of research, and in this case the student’s research could not be more policy relevant.”

Alf Nilsen, research fellow in law and social sciences, said: “What we’re seeing here is a blatant attack on academic freedom – people have been arrested for being in possession of legitimate research materials. How can we exercise our academic freedom if we are at risk of being arrested for possession of subversive material? This sets a very alarming precedent. Academic freedom on campus should be guaranteed for all staff and students regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.”

Dr Nilsen added: “I perceive the current incident at Nottingham to be occurring in tandem with several other attempts by UK authorities to increase surveillance of the academy and, in particular, non-Western students and staff, and moreover as an episode that is symptomatic of a more general curtailment of civil liberties in UK society, which seems to particularly affect and victimise non-Western citizens.”

Students at Nottingham are circulating a petition asking for the university to guarantee that the freedom of academics and students will be protected. It asks the university to acknowledge its “disproportionate response” to the possession of legitimate research materials.

A spokesman for Nottingham confirmed that the police had been called after material was found on the computer used by a junior clerical member of staff. “There was no reasonable rationale for this person to have that information,” he said. “The police were called in on the basis of reasonable anxiety and concern. In response to that, the police made a connection with a student who, we understand, was impeding the investigation and arrested that person.”

He added that the edited version of the al-Qaeda handbook was “not legitimate research material” in the university’s view.

A Nottinghamshire police spokesman said the police had applied for a warrant to extend the detention. “The judge was satisfied with the evidence presented and granted the extension,” he said.

Original article posted here.

Higher education or higher scrutiny?

ACLU Asks Harvard’s Police Why Gaza Rally Was Photographed

by David Abel

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has denounced Harvard University for photographing protesters at a political rally last month near Harvard Square during which university police arrested two people.

Officials at the ACLU also want Harvard to explain why an undercover officer was taking photographs at the rally, what the university intends to do with the photos, and whether it is sharing information with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, as have universities around the country.

“The concern we have is that Harvard police were gathering intelligence about a lawful political protest on public property,” said John Reinstein, the ACLU’s legal director. “A university is a place where we would expect there’s room for political discussion, where appropriate protests would be allowed, as part of academic freedom. We want to find out the scope of the university’s activities.”

In a statement, Joe Wrinn, a Harvard spokesman, said the university is not participating with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces and that it does not have a political intelligence unit or an undercover unit.

“The detective who made the arrest in question is well known throughout the University community,” Wrinn said. “The arrested parties were not arrested for protesting, but for their disorderly conduct, which occurred within a university building.”

He added that Harvard does not have a policy on filming protests. “We film when there is potential for violence, property damage, vandalism, HUPD arrest, or other circumstances require it,” he said.

Asked what the university does with the photographs, Wrinn said the campus police department “has a policy of not discussing security details publicly.”

The ACLU’s accusations were first reported by the Harvard Crimson.

The rally, held in support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, occurred March 3 on a sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue. In a police report, Harvard detective Thomas Karns wrote that he was conducting “plain clothes surveillance” and “photographing the demonstrators for intelligence gathering.”

One of the protestors, Patrick Keaney, 38, a mechanic from Boxborough, asked Karns whether his photos “had gotten his good side,” according to the report.

Keaney was with another protestor, Lisa Nieves, 29, of Jamaica Plain, who had a camera and began snapping pictures of Karns.

“I put my hood up so that she would not be able to photograph my face,” Karns wrote in the report. “Miss Nieves bent down and attempted to shove the camera near my face, when I put my head down. I told Miss [Karns] that she was now on private property and not to take my picture. She said I had taken her picture and that she could take mine.”

Karns wrote that he then entered the Holyoke Center on Massachusetts Avenue and Nieves followed him and persisted in trying to take his picture. He repeated that she was on private property and then identified himself as a Harvard police officer, according to his report.

“I told her I wanted to know who she was and why she was taking my photograph,” he wrote.

Karns wrote he put his hand up in front of him and Nieves “walked into it on two occasions.” He wrote she began screaming that he was assaulting her. “She yelled this several times, until a crowd gathered,” he reported.

Karns then arrested her on charges of disturbing the peace. When he placed handcuffs on her right wrist, Keaney linked arms with her in an effort to prevent the officer from cuffing her left wrist, wrote Karns, who also arrested Keaney on charges of interfering with the arrest of Nieves.

The two are being represented by the ACLU. Reinstein said prosecutors dropped the charges against Nieves but that Keaney still faces the charges.

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Original article posted here.

Maybe why "things have turned around in Iraq"

AP president: US arrests journalist in Iraq to 'control' information

David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt to control information.

"To say the least, we see things very differently," Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.

Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have served a broader strategy of information control."

Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."

Curley told the National Press Club, "When a matter of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the public's rights of access to government and a government effort to infringe or even narrow those rights, journalists cannot pretend to be disinterested observers."

"This is the moment to make it clear to all the presidential candidates how important reversal of the Ashcroft directive is to us and to the people," Curley continued. "We need to ask the candidates at every opportunity ... whether they are willing to appoint an attorney general willing to follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law that protects the people's right to know what their government is doing."

This video is from The Associated Press<, broadcast March 18, 2008.

Original article posted here.

Freedom of speech in the UK about as miserable and ethereal as freedom of speech in the US

Muslim man who sold DVDs glorifying the 9/11 atrocities jailed under new terror laws

Bilal Mohammed was sentenced under the terrorism act for possessing videos in support of 9/11

A Muslim who possessed DVDs glorifying the 9/11 atrocities has become one of the first people to be jailed under a section of the Terrorism Act.

Bilal Mohammed, 27, was sentenced under Section 2 of the 2006 Act but his case is the first time the section has been used independently.

A court heard how he possessed nine videos and CDs in support of 9/11 and the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

He routinely took trips around the country to set up stalls where he sold some of his material including in London, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield and Halifax.

He admitted one count of possessing terrorist publications with a view to selling or distributing them. The items were found to glorify the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism and were likely to encourage people to engage in terrorist acts.

He was sentenced to three years but after serving 14 months in custody following a raid on his home last January, he could be out in as little as three months.

Leeds Crown Court heard on Wednesday how Mohammed, of Halifax, was born in his hometown and is a British citizen.

Judge James Stewart QC said: "All of the material was designed, in my judgement, to induce young British Muslims to be recruited to the terrorist cause, the purpose being to destroy the very fabric of the society in which they have thrived."

The court heard how a covert surveillance on Mohammed and accomplice Rizwan Ditta, 29, found that he had travelled nationwide to sell the "recruiting agents"

Prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said the one that was sold was called "21st Century Crusaders", which effectively exhorted Muslims to take up jihad.

Mr Sharp, who said conversations between Mohammed and Ditta had been bugged, said: "They talk about the Middle East and agree a desire to see the end of Israel.

"They also talked about robbing drug dealers to obtain cash for 'the cause'."

The court was shown excerpts from some of the DVDs he disseminated, including "The Manhattan Raid", "19 Martyrs" and "Hamas training and ideology".

The Manhattan Raid was produced by the media production house of al-Qaeda and was released in September 2006 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the atrocities.

One shocking detail of the video showed Muslims at a training camp using cardboard cut-outs as human victims with the Christian crucifix as the target.

The 19 Martyrs goes into detail about the lives of the hijackers and in some of the material distributed, Osama bin Laden and training camps are depicted.

Mr Sharp said: "All the material is broadly in two parts with the first showing what some might say a partisan history and the problems besetting Muslims.  "The second part invariably features bin Laden and training camps, implicitly saying that this is a good thing for the committed young male Muslim to be doing and explicitly calls for young men to join up."

James Ward, defending Mohammed, said that he was not a jihadist and meant to educate people in both sides of the debate of whether Britain and the US should have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.

He added that Mohammed was against the occupation of those countries but was reckless as to whether the material he distributed could have encouraged people to commit terrorist acts.

Judge Stewart told Mohammed: "Many in the UK and elsewhere were and are opposed to the British and American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"But when extremist views are disseminated against our own government's policy, society says enough is enough.

"But many young minds have been affected by this, we will never know."

His accomplice Ditta was jailed for four years in December after admitting to owning a publication which showed how to make a suicide vest, contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act.

Original article posted here.

Between a rock and a hard place: We should know the basis of fingering a suspect in Antrax scare but confidential sources SHOULD remain as such

US reporter gets last minute stay from hefty contempt fines


WASHINGTON (AFP) — A former reporter for USAToday newspaper who was ordered to pay hefty fines starting at midnight Tuesday for refusing to name confidential sources for a story, has been granted a stay, court sources said.

"It is ordered that the motion for a stay pending appeal be granted," a clerk at the US court of appeals in Washington told AFP, reading from the order.

"Appellant has satisfied the stringent standards required for a stay pending appeal," the clerk read, hours before the first payment of 500 dollars (325 euros) was due.

Reporter Toni Locy was last week ordered by US District Court Judge Reggie Walton to pay a daily fine of 500 dollars, rising in steps to 5,000 dollars, for refusing to name the sources for a story she wrote about Steven Hatfill, the former army bioweapons scientist named a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The judge also ordered that Locy pay the fines with no help from her employer, friends, family or even anonymous supporters.

Gannett, the parent company of USAToday, on Monday filed a motion with the court of appeals for an emergency stay of the contempt citation, and a coalition of about two dozen media companies and non-profit journalism organizations also filed an 'amicus brief' in support of Locy the same day.

Hatfill, meanwhile, filed a response on Tuesday, seeking to bar the stay.

The former army scientist was named a "person of interest" by investigating authorities in the United States after anthrax-laced letters were sent to several lawmakers and television offices in October 2001.

Five people, including two post office workers in Washington, died of anthrax inhalation.

In the original complaint Hatfill filed against Locy in August 2003, he alleged that "the Justice Department had violated the Privacy Act by making unauthorized disclosures about him to the news media -- that is, by intentionally 'leaking' investigative information," his response to the motion for a stay said.

Locy has said in court that she could not remember all her sources, and was ordered to pay the rising fines, on her own, until such time as she did name them.

She also faced prison if she failed to name the confidential sources by early April.

"We've never seen anything like this," Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said of the rising fines imposed on Locy, and the judge's order that she pay them on her own.

"The only authority the judge tried to base it on were cases that had to do with whether a lawyer who was found in contempt of court could have a client reimburse him. So we think he based it on a pretty poor precedent and, yes, there isn't anything like it in any other contempt case," Leslie told AFP.

"It is troubling that courts are going to allow this kind of examination of a reporter's work product," he added.

Locy, who is currently a professor of journalism at West Virginia University, said she was delighted to be given a stay and would now "let the appellate process play out."

No date has been set for the appeal hearing.

Original article posted here.

Watch out! (Nearly) A million little pieces (of terrorists)

ACLU calls out US over 'absurd bloating' of terror watch list

Nick Juliano

More that 900,000 people are currently listed as suspected terrorists on the US government's "do not fly" list, and that number will grow to beyond 1 million by summer, says the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, stated in a press release from the group. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

The ACLU has launched a new Web site to track the growth of the watch list, which it says includes thousands of innocent Americans, including prominent politicians and authors as well as people with common names.

The group says its count is "extrapolated from a September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month." As of Wednesday afternoon, the ACLU said there were about 917,500 names on the list.

Having such an unwieldy list does little to protect against terrorism, the ACLU argues, and it violates the constitutional rights of innocent people on the list who are hassled by airport security.

"Homeland Security's handling of the watch lists is typical of this administration's blundering approach to the war on terror," said ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Tim Sparapani. "Create sprawling new systems for sifting through the population, throw an indiscriminately broad range of names into the mix, fairly or not, and treat the rights of innocent people as an afterthought."

Original article posted here.

The Moron's fearmongering in full bloom. Are you #%cking petrified?? You are? The please rip up the Constitution and let the Moron protect you.

More on the charade that passes for law

Senate Moves to Shield Telecoms on Eavesdropping

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate voted Tuesday to shield from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After nearly two months of stops and starts, the Senate rejected by a vote of 31 to 67 an amendment that would have stripped a grant of retroactive immunity to the companies. President Bush has promised to veto any new surveillance bill that does not protect the companies that helped the government in its warrantless wiretapping program.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecom companies by people alleging violations of wiretapping and privacy laws.

Telecom immunity must still be approved by the House; its version of the surveillance bill does not provide immunity.

The government's post-9/11 Terrorist Surveillance Program circumvented a secret court created 30 years ago to oversee such activities. The court was part of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law written in response to government abuse of its surveillance authority against Americans.

The surveillance law has been updated repeatedly since then, most recently last summer. Congress hastily adopted a FISA modification in August in the face of dire warnings from the White House that changes in telecommunications technology and FISA court rulings were dangerously constraining the government's ability to intercept terrorist communications.

Shortly after its passage, privacy and civil liberties groups said the new law gave the government unprecedented authority to spy on Americans, particularly those who communicate with foreigners.

That law expires Feb. 15, the deadline against which the Senate is now racing to pass a new bill.

In a separate voice vote Tuesday, the Senate expanded the power of the court to oversee government eavesdropping of Americans. The amendment would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to monitor whether the government is complying with procedures designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans whose telephone or computer communications are captured during surveillance of a foreign target.

The House approved its own update last fall, and differences between the two remain to be worked out, approved by both houses, and delivered to the president for his signature.

Original article posted here.

Freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the Pentagon.

Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system". by Brent Jessop

The 2003 Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006. A detailed explanation of the major thrust of this document and the significance of information operations or information warfare was described by me here. Computer Network Attack From the Information Operation Roadmap: The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system". "When implemented the recommendations of this report will effectively jumpstart a rapid improvement of CNA [Computer Network Attack] capability." - 7 "Enhanced IO [information operations] capabilities for the warfighter, including: ... A robust offensive suite of capabilities to include full-range electronic and computer network attack..." [emphasis mine] - 7 Would the Pentagon use its computer network attack capabilities on the Internet? Fighting the Net "We Must Fight the Net. DoD [Department of Defense] is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to "fight the net." " [emphasis mine] - 6 "DoD's "Defense in Depth" strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will "fight the net" as it would a weapons system." [emphasis mine] - 13 It should come as no surprise that the Pentagon would aggressively attack the "information highway" in their attempt to achieve dominance in information warfare. Donald Rumsfeld's involvement in the Project for a New American Century sheds more light on the need and desire to control information. PNAC Dominating Cyberspace The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was founded in 1997 with many members that later became the nucleus of the George W. Bush administration. The list includes: Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz among many other powerful but less well know names. Their stated purpose was to use a hugely expanded U.S. military to project "American global leadership." In September of 2000, PNAC published a now infamous document entitled Rebuilding America's Defences. This document has a very similar theme as the Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap which was signed by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. From Rebuilding America's Defenses: "It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies... are creating a dynamic that may threaten America's ability to exercise its dominant military power." [emphasis mine] - 4 "Control of space and cyberspace. Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new "international commons" be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the "infosphere" will find it difficult to exert global political leadership." [emphasis mine] - 51 "Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and "combat" likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, "cyber-space," and perhaps the world of microbes." [emphasis mine] - 60 For more on Rebuilding America's Defences read this. Internet 2 Part of the Information Operation Roadmap's plans for the internet are to "ensure the graceful degradation of the network rather than its collapse." (pg 45) This is presented in "defensive" terms, but presumably, it is as exclusively defensive as the Department of Defense. As far as the Pentagon is concerned the internet is not all bad, after all, it was the Department of Defense through DARPA that gave us the internet in the first place. The internet is useful not only as a business tool but also is excellent for monitoring and tracking users, acclimatizing people to a virtual world, and developing detailed psychological profiles of every user, among many other Pentagon positives. But, one problem with the current internet is the potential for the dissemination of ideas and information not consistent with US government themes and messages, commonly known as free speech. Naturally, since the plan was to completely dominate the "infosphere," the internet would have to be adjusted or replaced with an upgraded and even more Pentagon friendly successor. In an article by Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet.com, he describes the emergence of Internet 2. "The development of "Internet 2" is also designed to create an online caste system whereby the old Internet hubs would be allowed to break down and die, forcing people to use the new taxable, censored and regulated world wide web. If you're struggling to comprehend exactly what the Internet will look like in five years unless we resist this, just look at China and their latest efforts to completely eliminate dissent and anonymity on the web." Conclusion The next article will examine the Pentagon's use of psychological operations or PSYOP and the final article in this series will examine whether or not there are any limits to using information operations on the American public or foreign audiences. Original article posted here.

Never enough to spy on

Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring

Intelligence Agencies to Track Intrusions

By Ellen Nakashima

President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies -- including ones they have not previously monitored.

Until now, the government's efforts to protect itself from cyber-attacks -- which run the gamut from hackers to organized crime to foreign governments trying to steal sensitive data -- have been piecemeal. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems. As part of that effort, the Department of Homeland Security will work to protect the systems and the Pentagon will devise strategies for counterattacks against the intruders.

There has been a string of attacks on networks at the State, Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security departments in the past year and a half. U.S. officials and cyber-security experts have said Chinese Web sites were involved in several of the biggest attacks back to 2005, including some at the country's nuclear-energy labs and large defense contractors.

The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems -- traditionally overseas. The prospect of aiming that power at domestic networks is raising concerns, just as the NSA's role in the government's warrantless domestic-surveillance program has been controversial.

"Agencies designed to gather intelligence on foreign entities should not be in charge of monitoring our computer systems here at home," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Lawmakers with oversight of homeland security and intelligence matters say they have pressed the administration for months for details.

The classified joint directive, signed Jan. 8 and called the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23, has not been previously disclosed. Plans to expand the NSA's role in cyber-security were reported in the Baltimore Sun in September.

According to congressional aides and former White House officials with knowledge of the program, the directive outlines measures collectively referred to as the "cyber initiative," aimed at securing the government's computer systems against attacks by foreign adversaries and other intruders. It will cost billions of dollars, which the White House is expected to request in its fiscal 2009 budget.

"The president's directive represents a continuation of our efforts to secure government networks, protect against constant intrusion attempts, address vulnerabilities and anticipate future threats," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. He would not discuss the initiative's details.

The initiative foreshadows a policy debate over the proper role for government as the Internet becomes more dangerous.

Supporters of cyber-security measures say the initiative falls short because it doesn't include the private sector -- power plants, refineries, banks -- where analysts say 90 percent of the threat exists.

"If you don't include industry in the mix, you're keeping one of your eyes closed because the hacking techniques are likely the same across government and commercial organizations," said Alan Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda-based cyber-security group that assists companies that face attacks. "If you're looking for needles in the haystack, you need as much data as you can get because these are really tiny needles, and bad guys are trying to hide the needles."

Under the initiative, the NSA, CIA and the FBI's Cyber Division will investigate intrusions by monitoring Internet activity and, in some cases, capturing data for analysis, sources said.

The Pentagon can plan attacks on adversaries' networks if, for example, the NSA determines that a particular server in a foreign country needs to be taken down to disrupt an attack on an information system critical to the U.S. government. That could include responding to an attack against a private-sector network, such as the telecom industry's, sources said.

Also, as part of its attempt to defend government computer systems, the Department of Homeland Security will collect and monitor data on intrusions, deploy technologies for preventing attacks and encrypt data. It will also oversee the effort to reduce Internet portals across government to 50 from 2,000, to make it easier to detect attacks.

"The government has taken a solid step forward in trying to develop cyber-defenses," said Paul B. Kurtz, a security consultant and former special adviser to the president on critical infrastructure protection. Kurtz said the initiative's purpose is not to spy on Americans. "The thrust here is to protect networks."

One of the key questions is whether it is necessary to read communications to investigate an intrusion.

Ed Giorgio, a former NSA analyst who is now a security consultant for ODNI, said, "If you're looking inside a DoD system and you see data flows going to China, that ought to set off a red flag. You don't need to scan the content to determine that."

But often, traffic analysis is not enough, some experts said. "Knowing the content -- that a communication is sensitive -- allows proof positive that something bad is going out of that computer," said one cyber-security expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the initiative's sensitivity.

Allowing a spy agency to monitor domestic networks is worrisome, said James X. Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We're concerned that the NSA is claiming such a large role over the security of unclassified systems," he said. "They are a spy agency as well as a communications security agency. They operate in total secrecy. That's not necessary and not the most effective way to protect unclassified systems."

A proposal last year by the White House Homeland Security Council to put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of the initiative was resisted by national security agencies on the grounds that the department, established in 2003, lacked the necessary expertise and authority. The tug-of-war lasted weeks and was resolved only recently, several sources said.

Original article posted here.

Warrant? Why bother?

The End of Privacy

By Elliot Cohen

Amid the controversy brewing in the Senate over Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the Bush administration appears to have changed its strategy and is devising a bold new plan that would strip away FISA protections in favor of a system of wholesale government monitoring of every American's Internet activities. Now the national director of intelligence is predicting a disastrous cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S. if this scheme isn't instituted.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has already been spying on the e-mail, voice-over-IP, and other Internet exchanges between American citizens since as early as and possibly earlier than Sept. 11, 2001. The National Security Agency has set up shop in the hubs of major telecom corporations, notably AT&T, installing equipment that makes copies of the contents of all Internet traffic, routing it to a government database and then using natural language parsing technology to sift through and analyze the data using undisclosed search criteria. It has done this without judicial oversight and obviously without the consent of the millions of Americans under surveillance. Given any rational interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, its mass spying operation is illegal and unconstitutional.

But now the administration wants to make these illegal activities legal. And why is that? According to National Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell, who is now drafting the proposal, an attack on a single U.S. bank by the 9/11 terrorists would have had a far more serious impact on the U.S. economy than the destruction of the Twin Towers. "My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens," said McConnell. So the way to prevent this from happening, he claims, is to give the government the power to spy at will on the content of all e-mails, file transfers and Web searches.

McConnell's prediction of something "horrendous" happening unless we grant government this authority has a tone similar to that of the fear-mongering call to arms against terrorism that President Bush sounded before taking us to war in Iraq. Now, Americans are about to be asked to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights because of a vague and unsupported prediction of the dangers and costs of cyber-terrorism.

The analogy with the campaign to frighten us into war with Iraq gets even stronger when it becomes evident that along with the establishing of American forces in Iraq, the cyber-security McConnell is calling for was, all along, part of the strategic plan, devised by Dick Cheney and several other present and former high-level Bush administration officials, to establish America as the world's supreme superpower. This plan, known as the Project for the New American Century, unequivocally recognized "an imperative" for government to not only secure the Internet against cyber-attacks but also to control and use it offensively against its adversaries. The Project for the New American Century also maintained that "the process of transformation" it envisioned (which included the militarization and control of the Internet) was "likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." All that appears to be lacking to make the analogy complete is the "horrendous" cyber-attack - the chilling analog of the 9/11 attacks - that McConnell now predicts.

Apparently, the Bush administration had hoped to continue its mass surveillance program in secret, but as many as 40 civil suits were filed against AT&T and other telecoms, threatening to blow the government's illegal spying activities wide open. Unable to have these cases dismissed in appellate court by once again playing the national-security card, the administration drafted and tried to push through Congress a version of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 that gave retroactive immunity to telecom corporations for their assistance in helping the government spy en mass on Americans without a court warrant. The administration's plan was to use Congress' passage of this provision of immunity to nullify any cause of civil action against the telecoms, thereby pre-empting the exposure of the administration's own illegal activities.

Two versions of the FISA bill emerged, one from the Senate Intelligence Committee drafted largely by Cheney himself, which contained the immunity provision, and another from the Senate Judiciary Committee that did not contain the provision. Although Senate Majority leader Harry Reid inauspiciously chose the former to bring to the Senate floor, the bill was surrounded by much controversy. There had been well organized grass-roots pressure to stop it from passing, and the House had already passed a version that did not include the retroactive immunity provision. Thus, in the face of a filibuster threat by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Reid postponed the discussion until the January 2008 session.

Now Reid has tried to put off the FISA Amendments Act once again by asking Republicans to extend, for one more month, the Protect America Act of 2007, an interim FISA reform act that is due to sunset in February. However, Cheney has urged Congress to pass his version of the FISA Amendments Act now. "We can always revisit a law that's on the books. That's part of the job of the elected branches of government," Cheney said. "But there is no sound reason to pass critical legislation ... and slap an expiration date on it."

Cheney's point about the possibility of later revisiting the FISA Amendments Act after it becomes law may foreshadow replacing it in the coming months with a law based on McConnell's plan, which is due to emerge in February. This would mark a gradual descent into divesting Americans entirely of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy - first by blocking their ability to sue the telecoms for violating their privacy and then by giving the government the same legal protection. After all, the FISA Amendments Act still requires the government to get warrants for spying on American citizens even if it does not afford adequate judicial oversight in enforcing this mandate. McConnell's proposal, on the other hand, would make no bones about spying on Americans without warrants, thereby contradicting any meaningful FISA reform.

President Bush has already made clear he would veto any FISA bill that did not give retroactive immunity to the telecoms. However, if McConnell's soon to be unveiled spy-at-will plan is turned into law, a separate law giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms would be unnecessary. All Bush and Cheney would need to do to protect themselves from criminal liability would be to make the new spy-at-will law retroactive in effect from the inception of the illegal NSA surveillance program. This would also be sufficient to deflate the civil suits filed against the telecoms because the past illegal spying activities that these companies conducted on behalf of the government would then become "legal." Indeed, the Bush administration has already done this sort of legal retro-dating and nullifying of civil rights and gotten it through Congress. For example, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 conveniently gave Bush the power to decide whether someone - including himself - is guilty of torture, irrespective of the Geneva Conventions, and it made this authority retroactive to Nov. 26, 1997.

Whatever the final disposition of FISA in the coming weeks or months, the administration is now bracing to take a much more aggressive posture that would seek abridgement of civil liberties in its usual fashion: by fear-mongering and warnings that our homeland will be attacked by terrorists (this time of the menacing hacker variety) unless we the people surrender our Fourth Amendment right to privacy and give government the authority to inspect even our most personal and intimate messages.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the resolve of the Bush administration. But it would be a bigger mistake for Americans not to stand united against this familiar pattern of government scare tactics and manipulation. There are grave dangers to the survival of democracy posed by allowing any present or future government unfettered access to all of our private electronic communications. These dangers must be carefully weighed against the dubious and unproven benefits that granting such an awesome power to government might have on fending off cyber-attacks.

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Elliot D. Cohen, PhD, is a media ethicist and critic. His most recent book is "The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship." He is a first-prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.

Original article posted here.