FBI Hid Patriot Act Abuses 243
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired is reporting that the FBI hid Patriot Act abuses with retroactive and flawed subpoenas, and used them to illegally acquire phone and credit card records. There were at least 11 retroactive, 'blanket' subpoenas that were signed by top counter-terrorism officials, some of which sought information the FBI is not allowed to have. The FBI's Communication Analysis Unit also had secret contracts with AT&T, Verizon and MCI, and abused National Security Letters by issuing subpoenas based on fake emergencies."
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
None.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whew. Much better.
But really. It's all for the greater good.
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Yarp.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
-nB
In Soviet Amerika (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, those cagey bees! The party has found you.
Can we just start calling the FBI by it's proper name? Is that Stasi, NKVD or the KGB.
Just a thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a thought.
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Only now, it's not for the COBN3Ts... But rather, evil banks and corporations.
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Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
What bothers me about your comment is you would consider our founding fathers terrorism to be shameful.
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Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Look at every constitutional revolution or rebellion we can say we agree with (French, American, etc) and try to
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kinda like when Israel and the US were the only abstaining votes at the UN when they were deciding what the definition should be... US backed Israel because most definitions would have applied to them, and us.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not directly perhaps, but they frequently did not wear uniforms and hid among civilians, putting them at risk. At the very least, that made them "unlawful combatants" by modern terminology. Also, the boatload of tea dumped into Boston harbour was hardly a military target.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It was not a military target, but that was before the war began.
A better argument would go to Washington's (in)famous crossing of the Deleware and attacking Trenton on Christmas (Eve?), violating the rules of war as they existed at the time.
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
Against other Europeans it most certanly did. Parlays, breaks for lunch, meeting on the field of honor, not targeting officers, etc. All poor tactics, but adhered to by the British because of the rules of war.
They were dicks once they won the wars to be sure.
I never did. However, I fail to understand how one would be offended by the concept. Did they not target the civilian population (Loyalists)? Isn't that the only true definition of a terrorist, one who targets a civilian population to sway their political opinion?
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Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, I suspect that the Civil War provides better examples of very deliberate terrorism. Both sides committed acts and I don't know of either side acting to stop its own. (And I'm not even going to get into the distinction between terrorism and "total war", there.)
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And yet there is this bizarre belief that all those who oppose American invasions are "terrorists".
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All a matter of perspective. (Winning also helps, as the winners are the ones that write the history books.) One man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter".
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Other quesions? If not, move along, Lavrenij Pavlovich does not like people looking into his practices.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
None.
Funny you should say this. I'm getting ready to write a piece on how it seems more and more, incompetency and failure are rewarded while honesty and hard work are denigrated.
Using this administration is much too easy. Look at all the generals who have been honest about their assessments of how poorly run the occupation of Iraq has been, the mismanagement and theft of billions of dollars, the lack of equipment for troops and a whole host of other issues irrespective of the lies that were used to justify the occupation. Where are those generals now? Forced into retirement.
How about Katrina? "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie." Brownie completely fails at his job and gets rewarded by being a consultant to examine why he failed doing his previous job.
Outside the administration, look at Countrywide Financial or Citigroup. Countrywide's CEO uses insider information to sell his stock before the subprime mess hits and makes millions. Investors are left holding the bag, wondering if the company is going to go bankrupt.
Citigroup's former CEO, Charlie Prince, got multi-million bonuses for running the company into the ground, wiping out years worth of profits and having to have the company rescued by foreign governments lest it collapsed.
HP, Enron, and a whole host of other companies follow the same pattern. Reward the incompetent failures with buckets of money and act as if they're doing people a favor, all the while, the folks who do the real work, the grunts on the front line, get the shaft. Every time.
Naw, I'm not bitter. What would make you think that?
Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)
And people wonder why geezers like me are cynical. There was a book several decades ago called The Peter Principle [wikipedia.org]. The premise was "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." It explains why things are so messed up.
The last Governor [wikipedia.org] here in Illinois is in a Federal prison for bribery and other misconduct, another example of what you illustrate well in your comment.
heehee (Score:2)
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Mozillo(the former Countrywide CEO that you are talking about) made a planned sale of stock(and soon to expire options) meeting the standards of Countrywide's compensation committee and the SEC. He spent 30 plus years building the company and sold when the stock was doing incredibly well, but it's not like he was hiding anything(because there are rules in place preventing him from hiding anything
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The money has to come from somewhere - so you present a false and dishonest argument with the statement "... unless you hate people making large sums of money..." - and the answer is YES - in cases like these, I hate people being rewarded for incompetence while many, many others are being deprived in exchange for hard work.
Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)
Follow this link [atimes.com] about halfway down to see a list of officers, including generals, as of late 2005, who were forced out because of their honest views. Since that time, others, including the most recent resignation of Admiral Fallon, can be added to the list.
Certainly there are those in the above list who retired rather than wait to be forced out but the concept was the same: these were people who had long, distinguished track records of getting the job done but when they gave their honest opinions, they were told to leave or were forced out.
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Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The case is closed - the government will abuse any power it has access to.
As Bruce Schneider says, what we do not need is security at the expense of liberty and privacy - we need liberty, security, *and* privacy.
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Welcome to the bottom of that slope. Enjoy!
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, though, I think he meant Schneier.
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
It's not hard to find the answer:The problem is when the government no longer derives its power from the consent of the governed. As in, the governed are manipulated into allowing a shift of power from them to the government.
And the beat goes on. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Insightful? Sure.
Informative? Maybe.
Funny? Hell no.
/sigh... well, there goes that karma.
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I don't know why the FBI even bothers to try to hide its wrongdoing
If the Senate (and the President) have their way, this new FISA bill that provides RETROACTIVE immunity to the Telco's from prosecution will obviate any need for secrecy. I applaud the House for _their_ version, which renews most of the FISA provisions yet leaves out this Telco immunity nonsense.
As I have read, heard, and understand, the current FISA (and general litigation) provisions already protect businesses from legal action so long as they were complying with lawful requests for information by govern
Re:And the beat goes on. (Score:4, Insightful)
The pre-existing FISA laws maintain a desirable level of what Antonin Scalia (and apparently others) called "calculated inefficiency".
Here's a great quote I found trying to find out more about what Scalia was talking about (different justice, same sentiment):
"In his famous Myers dissent Justice Louis D. *Brandeis said: "The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three department, to save the people from autocracy" (p. 293). This is a classic expression of the eighteenth century hope that freedom could be secured by calculated inefficiency in government. A more modern hope is that freedom would be better served with more efficiency and more democratic accountability. We are still haunted by an ancient riddle: How far can we build up effective government before it topples over into despotism? How much inefficiency can we afford without slipping into disaster?" (bold=mine)
http://www.answers.com/topic/separation-of-powers?cat=biz-fin [answers.com]
I think that really says it all.. the FBI, et al, want unfettered access to basically everything, and there are probably some in the organization who are pushing for it, and their heart really is in the right place, but that's just not good enough. How efficient can they become before it "topples over into despotism"? I'd rather not find out.
Re:And the beat goes on. (Score:4, Insightful)
Quoting the AP article:
I quote again, from the article:
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[dialing the NSA now]
Needed with 1 in 300 being a terrorist (Score:5, Interesting)
With one out of three people being a terrorist, I think we should all be gratefull that they are doing whatever it takes to get their jobs done:
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html?=main [aclu.org]
Seriously, I said all along that they didn't care anything about catching terrorist...that it was just smoke and mirrors to monitor us. And low and behold, they will get to monitor us legally, as one out of three of us is a terrorist.
If this doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what will.
Transporter_ii
Re:Needed with 1 in 300 being a terrorist (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, fsck. Guess I'll have to quit my job, move to Montana and live out in the middle of the woods where no one can find me...wait? What did you say? The Unabomber. Sh*t. Time to move to Australia. Is there a big demand for sysadmins in Australia?
The number wouldn't be that high (Score:2)
Still, someone figure out how many terrorist were at the Super Bowl.
Transporter_ii
Re:Needed with 1 in 300 being a terrorist (Score:5, Interesting)
Stupid? yep. Irresponsible? Yep. Terrorism? Only if damned near everyone I knew in highschool is a terrorist for doing similarly stupid and destructive crap.
Re:Needed with 1 in 300 being a terrorist (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, like the TV show Cops.
1 in 300 =/ 30 in 1000 (Score:3, Insightful)
So what they're essentially saying is that it must be true that out of a typical high school graduating class of 1,000 or, 30 people -- the equivalent of an entire classroom of kids, is a terrorist. (Just using the high school as an example to show scale, don't mean to imply anything about age or whatnot).
1 in 300 is equivalent to a bit more than 3 in 1000 not 30. Not only the author of the comment but at least 4 other people who modded him 'insightful' missed this order of magnitude mistake. Oops. I wonder if any of them are working on the terrorist watch list?
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Saddam and other dead terrorists (Score:2)
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Re:Needed with 1 in 300 being a terrorist (Score:5, Interesting)
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Happens all the time. (Score:2, Informative)
The FBI should know better.
Re:Happens all the time. (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose here is to make the American public toe the line, and for that purpose, convictions are not necessary. The mere threat of action, with the associated social embarrassment and financial hardship, will do nicely.
Power. Will. Be. Abused. (Score:5, Insightful)
By removing checks and balances (which is currently done in almost all democracies all over the world for no reason) we see an upsurge of abuse.
So nothing to see here, please move along.
This is why we have the second amendment (Score:5, Interesting)
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With great power comes great responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
To that end, the expansion of police powers at the top levels of the government is not necessarily a bad thing. When we look at 9/11 and the failure of communication between various law enforcement agencies, it is clear that we cannot have a law enforcement system where one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. The Patriot Act, for all its faults, is trying to address this need by opening up and sharing the law enforcement databases so that vital information is not overlooked or ignored simply because it is not available. The implementation has left a lot to be desired, though.
When we start to expand federal powers, such as like and under the Patriot Act, great care must be taken to provide oversight capable of taking the power wielder to task. Normally, you'd expect this to be Congress. But much more fundamentally, you would expect the President (the Chief Executive) to show some restraint and good sense in the execution of the expanded powers. What we have unfortunately seen is that the President has not seen fit to restrain the DHS and has not forced common sense and common decency as policy. Rather, the departments have run wild creating new and more intrusive rights for themselves at the expense of American freedoms.
We say we are the beacon of the world, but we have not lived up to that moniker here at home, and we have destroyed our good name abroad. We must start our transformation immediately back into that beacon, and we must start at home.
Re:With great power comes great responsibility (Score:4, Informative)
No, we do not. Most of what you say I agree with, but this I do not.
'Crime Prevention' is a misnomer that has given police departments carte blanch to do many of the things we see above. The government must investigate crime, and prosecute those responsible in a fair trial.
I have yet to see a police or law enforcement that has 'crime prevention' in it's charter, because it is impossible. Just as 'preventing terrorism' is, or 'suicide prevention'. If someone wants it to happen bad enough, no law enforcement agency can prevent it. Giving them the tools to 'prevent' what got us here to begin with. Give them the tools to find out what happened. Nothing more.
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When we look at 9/11 and the failure of communication between various law enforcement agencies, it is clear that we cannot have a law enforcement system where one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. The Patriot Act, for all its faults, is trying to address this need by opening up and sharing the law enforcement databases so that vital information is not overlooked or ignored simply because it is not available
The problem with this is, rather than try and fix communication issues, they decided the solution was more monitoring by more agencies to allow more things to be communicated. The previous survailence laws were plenty sufficent to do what the government needed with a bit of re-orginization. Law Enforcement agencies should have shared their info with each other and Military Intelligence/CIA. The non Law Enforcement intelligence should stay on it's side of the wall, though.
Why am I _not_ surprised about this news ? (Score:2)
say it ain't so! (Score:2)
What bugs me more is that people cry foul over this but turn around and what these goons to run their medical needs as if that won't be an invasion of privacy and rights in itself.
When are people going to learn, letting the government do things you can do is wrong, letting them do the rest unsupervised is wrong, and expecting them to do it right in either case without public oversight is just stupidity.
The problem the FBI faces is
Allow only NSA to have this capability (Score:5, Insightful)
OTH, the DOJ has ALWAYS abused their powers. ALWAYS. WHy? We have combined the ability to arrest, with the mentality to be a guarddog, the ethics of a Republican, and now with the ability to listen in on all. No wonder that they will lie, cheat and steal to achieve their goals. This is a group that now believes the ends justify the means. Very bad set-up. That is why DOJ must not have these spying abilities.
Finally, the DOD is now looking through our lines. The problem is not that they are likely to use it against a citizen, but that they will use the knowledge to affect their future. IOW, they can now listen in on conversations between gov. ppl. This is part of the industrial-military complex that also needs to be stopped.
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Whats the point anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whats the point anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
"I come in peace", it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this...
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No", said Ford,
"Odd", said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did", said Ford. "It is."
"So", said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them", said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes", said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But", said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard", said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."
Re:Whats the point anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
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Jump to Conclusion (Score:2)
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In corporate America, government checks on you. (Score:2)
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I don't see a whole lot of green and blue on this map. Greece is doing pretty good. Granted, it's disappointing that USA ranks right up their with Russia and China, but you can't really expect much privacy anywhere unless you take steps to ensure it yourself (GPG, Tor, Freenet, etc).
IMHO the trend we're seeing is the downside of moving to an information-based society: if information is free for the taking, you betcha they're going to
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Swine (Score:2)
It's OK, though (Score:3, Insightful)
The Homeland Security people say they've laid a serious hurtin' on the terrorists, they just can't tell us anything about it for obvious reasons. And there have been no more attacks on American soil, which absolutely proves that they're doing everything right because otherwise all those terrorists they keep telling us about would be eating our babies right this very minute.
So it's all OK and we should just quit worrying, because even though they legalized everything short of grabbing people off the street and exporting them to other countries for torture (Oh, wait a minute...) it would all be in our best interest because they're the good guys.
So I guess what I'm saying is: lay off the FBI, because they know best and you guys are just making their job harder by pointing out that they're abusing their powers. And that's just wrong. Better we live on our knees than die on our feet and all that, because if there's another attack then the terrorists have won and the United States will have turned into a police state for nothing.
And wouldn't that suck...
FBI HID Patriot Act Abuses (Score:2, Funny)
There is a balance... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:telco immunity vindicated? (Score:5, Informative)
There's a big difference between being asked for communications to or from an internet account or phone and being given unfettered access to all provider traffic.
Re:telco immunity vindicated? (Score:4, Insightful)
If their legal council couldn't bother to verify what was going on before bending over and accepting this, then there's a whole other issue that needs to be dealt with. But that's besides the point. They (the telcos) did something heinously wrong, and now they deserve to be punished.
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Re:telco immunity vindicated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:telco immunity vindicated? (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument goes something like this:
The claim is that if companies had the right/obligation to say something to the effect of "Hmmm
And, if they tell you what they've been up to, then the terrorists will know what our capabilities are, and we'll never catch them.
It really is an astonishingly scary example of exactly why the erosion of the checks and balances that everyone said would happen, were a bad idea in the first place. The government gave themselves sweeping (and, arguably unconstitutional) powers after 9/11 -- at the time, everyone said it would lead to abuses. It has.
The current strategy of the government is to prevent it from coming under scrutiny, and to ensure those that they recruited to help with this stuff have no consequences -- because if you were allowed to know everything that would happen, you'd be appalled and they'd look like even more like people who ran rough shod over the laws. They don't want everyone to know what they've been doing.
Cheers
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No it isn't, that is what laws are for. Break the law and you have done something illegal, it is no more difficult than that. That is why companies have legal departments. Appeared valid to their legal department? ALL of their legal departments? Nonsense.
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If you have nothing to hide, please post your Social Security number, date of birth, home address, mother's maiden name, ISP username and password, and telephone number here.
I, for one, have quite a bit to hide, thanks.