FBI admits using surveillance drones to spy on Americans on US soil

Thom Hartmann, Truthout

You need to know this. As if the news of the NSA's phone and internet spying weren't enough to worry us, the FBI has just admitted to using surveillance drones to spy on Americans on US soil. During a Congressional hearing on telephone data collection, FBI director Robert Muller said the agency is in the "initial stages" of developing privacy guidelines, and has only used drones in a "very, very minimal way." However, Americans are skeptical of such a description after being told that sweeping data collection was only a "modest" invasion of our privacy. Democratic Senator Mark Udall, said he is "concerned the FBI is deploying drone technology while only being in the 'initial stages' of developing guidelines to protect Americans' privacy rights." Senator Udall explained that he understands drones have the potential to "more efficiently and effectively perform law enforcement duties," but promised to do everything in his power "to hold the FBI accountable and ensure its actions respect the US constitution." In keeping with the defense of NSA spying, Director Muller urged Congress to consider national security before placing any limits on drone surveillance and data collection. He said, "Are you going to take the dots off the table, make it unavailable to you when you're trying to prevent the next terrorist attack?" Our nation is at a crossroads in deciding how much privacy we are willing to give up in the name of security. As Benjamin Franklin said, "those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Five Poisons of Privatization

Monday, March 11, 2013 by Common Dreams
by Paul Buchheit


It gets more maddening every day. Essential human needs are being packaged into products to be bought and sold. The right to food and water, education, health care, public spaces, and unrestricted speech shouldn't be based on who can pay the most, or on who can generate profits with the slickest marketing pitch.

The free-market capitalism that drives our economy is a doctrine of individuals pursuing profit. Nothing else matters. An executive for Roche, a healthcare company, said "We are not in the business to save lives, but to make money."

With privatization of the common good we risk losing both our heritage and our humanness.

1. The Taking of Public Land

Attempts to privatize federal land were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states.

The assault on our common areas continues with even greater ferocity today, as the euphemistic Path to Prosperity has proposed to sell millions of acres of "unneeded federal land," and libertarian groups like the Cato Institute demand that our property be "allocated to the highest-value use." Mitt Romney admitted that he didn't know "what the purpose is" of public lands.

Examples of the takeaway are shocking. Peabody Coal is strip-mining public lands in Wyoming and Montana and making a 10,000% profit on the meager amounts they pay for the privilege. Sealaska is snatching up timberland in Alaska. The Central Rockies Land Exchange would allow Bill Koch to pick up choice Colorado properties from the Bureau of Land Management, while neighboring Utah Governor Gary Herbert sees land privatization as a way to reduce the deficit. Representative Cliff Stearns recommended that we "sell off some of our national parks." One gold mining company even invoked an 1872 law to grab mineral-rich Nevada land for which it stands to make a million-percent profit.

The National Resources Defense Council just reported that oil and gas companies hold drilling and fracking rights on U.S. land equivalent to the size of California and Florida combined. Much of this land is "split estate," which means the company can drill under an American citizen's property without consent. Unrestrained by government regulations, TransCanada was able to use eminent domain in Texas to lay its pipeline on private property and then have the owner arrested for trespassing on her own land, and Chesapeake Energy Corporation overturned a 93-year-old law to frack a Texas residence without paying a penny to the homeowners. Most recently, the oil frenzy in North Dakota has cheated Native Americans out of a billion dollars worth of revenue from drilling leases.

Away from the mountains and the plains, back in the cities of Chicago and Indianapolis and L.A. and San Diego, our streets and parking spaces have been surrendered to corporations until the time of our great-grandchildren, with some of the highest profit margins in the corporate world.

2. Water for Sale

The corporate invasion of the water market is well underway. In May 2000 Fortune Magazine called water "one of the world's great business opportunities..[It] promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th." Citigroup is on board, viewing water as a prime investment, and perhaps the "single most important physical-commodity based asset class."

The vital human resource of water is being privatized and marketed all over the country. In Pennsylvania and California, the American Water Company took over towns and raised rates by 70% or more. In Atlanta, United Water Services demanded more money from the city while prompting federal complaints about water quality. Shell owns groundwater rights in Colorado, oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is buying up the water in drought-stricken Texas, and water in Alaska is being pumped into tankers and sold in the Middle East.

A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. Various privatization abuses or failures occurred in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

Of course, water monopolization is a global concern, and a life-threatening issue in undeveloped countries, where 884 million people are without safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion people lack the means for basic sanitation. Whether in the U.S. or in the world's poorest nation, the folly of privatizing water is made clear by the profit-seeking motives of business:

1. Water corporations are primarily accountable to their stockholders, not to the people they serve.
2. They will avoid serving low-income communities where bill collection might be an issue.
3. Because of the risk to profits, there is less incentive to maintain infrastructure.

3. Owning Human Life

Monsanto the devil and their agro-chemical partners call themselves the "life industry."

In 1980 a General Electric geneticist engineered an oil-eating bacterium, effective against oil spills, and in the first case of its kind the Supreme Court ruled that "a live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter." Fifteen years later a World Trade Organization decision allowed plants, genes, and microorganisms to be owned as intellectual property.

The results, not surprisingly, have been disastrous. One-fifth of the human genome is privately owned through patents. Strains of influenza and hepatitis have been claimed by corporate and university labs, and because of this researchers can't use the patented life forms to perform cancer research. Thus the cost of life-preserving tests often depends on the whim (and the market analysis) of the organization claiming ownership of the biological entity.

The results have also been otherworldly. In 1996 the U.S. National Institutes of Health attempted to patent the blood cells of the primitive Hagahai tribesman of New Guinea. U.S. companies AgriDyne and W.R. Grace tried to gain ownership of the neem plant, used for centuries in India for the making of medicines and natural pesticides. Other examples of 'biopiracy': The University of Cincinnati holds a patent on Brazil's guarana seed; the University of Mississippi holds a patent on the Asian spice turmeric.

Most tragically, tens of thousands of Indian farmers, charged for seeds that they used to develop on their own, and forced to repurchase them every year, have been driven to suicide after experiencing crop failures and ruinous debt.

Monsanto the devil is at the forefront of GMO seeds and litigation against vulnerable farmers. To date the company has won over half of its patent infringement lawsuits. The Supreme Court is currently weighing the arguments in Bowman vs. Monsanto the devil, which asks if a company can have a claim on a farmer whose crops were derived from a seed already paid for. More significantly, the question is whether a company can claim the rights to a form of life that has been nurtured by communities of farmers for centuries.

4. Owning the Air

In polluted Beijing, wealthy entrepreneur Chen Guangbiao is selling "fresh air" in a soft drink can for about 80 cents.

While Americans are not yet dependent on (real or imagined) breathing supplements, we have relinquished public access to the air in another important way: the 1996 Telecommunications Act led the way to a giveaway of the transmission airwaves to the broadcast media. Through an effective lobbying campaign the communications industry gained all the benefits of a lucrative public space without even a licensing fee. Objected former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, "The airwaves are a natural resource. They do not belong to the broadcasters, phone companies or any other industry. They belong to the American people."

Closely related is our right to freedom of expression on the Internet, which has been repeatedly threatened, despite the presence of existing copyright laws, by aggressive proposals like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Privacy is at risk with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), passed in the House despite objections by Ron Paul and others who recognize the "Big Brother" implications of government monitoring of Google and Facebook accounts. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has facilitated the monitoring of foreign communications in the name of anti-terrorism.

A 2011 UNESCO report offered this worrisome insight: "..the control of information on the Internet and Web is certainly feasible, and technological advances do not therefore guarantee greater freedom of speech."

5. Children as Products

Leading capitalists like Bill Gates and Jeb Bush and Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee, who together have a few months teaching experience, have decided that the business model can pump out improved assembly line versions of our children.

Charter schools simply don't work as well as the profitseekers would have us believe. The recently updated CREDO study at Stanford concluded again that "CMOs (Charter Management Organizations) on average are not dramatically better than non-CMO schools in terms of their contributions to student learning." 

 

Approximately the same percentages of charters and non-charters are showing improvement (or lack of improvement) in reading and math. In addition, poorly performing charters tend not to improve over time.

Nevertheless, charters remain appealing to poorly informed parents. The schools like to represent themselves as equal opportunity educational options, but the facts state the opposite, as many of them have strict application standards that ensure access to the most qualified students. Funding for such schools drains money out of the public system.

Children are viewed as products in another way -- on the school-to-prison pipeline. Many school districts employ "school resource officers" to patrol their hallways, and to ticket or arrest kids who disrupt the academic routine, no matter the age of the offender or the nature of the "offense":

• A twelve-year-old was arrested for wearing too much perfume.
• A five-year-old was handcuffed for committing "battery" on a police officer.
• A six-year-old was called a "terrorist threat" for talking about shooting bubbles at a classmate.

Along with these bizarre instances is the frightening precedent set by a private prison, Corrections Corporation of America, which despite having no law enforcement authority was allowed to participate in a drug sweep at a high school in Arizona.

An Antidote?

A successful society doesn't derive from a few Ayn-Rand-type individuals. It's the other way around, as philosopher John Dewey reasoned in the 1930s. It's easy to forget that our country's greatest success was due to a collaborative effort in the years during and after World War 2, when advances in manufacturing and technology made us the strongest economy the world had ever seen. It was a shared success. The common good was not for sale.

CISPA: An Alternate Future Where Your Personal Privacy No Longer Exists

By Adam Dachis ~ May 7, 2012 ~ LifeHacker

Last week the House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a follow-up bill to SOPA that wants to erode your personal privacy. The bill, itself, is palatable enough that Facebook and Microsoft gave it their seal of approval, and it's already got a kick start towards passing into law. So what would life be like if CISPA were part of our reality?

---

I Am Not Who You Think I AmI am not a child pornographer, but you've probably heard otherwise. Everyone tells the story a little differently. Sometimes my classmates say I chose to drop out of the private college I'd wanted to attend since the day I understood ambition, and others believe my departure was the result of an expulsion. I'm not sure whose choice it was anymore, but ultimately it doesn't matter. You don't actually have to be a bad guy—you just have to be painted like one.

Back in early March 2013, a 12-year-old girl uploaded a copy of Toy Story to share with a friend she met online who lived overseas. That friend shared the movie with others, and suddenly it was heavily downloaded across the globe. The girl who shared it had no idea, but when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) caught wind of her actions, they pressured the government for information. Just a year earlier you'd see internet service providers, web apps, social media services, and most corporations act cautiously before turning over private information about their clients—12 years old or otherwise. Then CISPA passed, and safest thing for any corporation was to provide the government with what they asked. Because cyber security was never clearly defined in the law, the possibility of intellectual property theft was a justifiable cause for investigation. The government took the girl's information and provided it to the MPAA. Days later, a lawsuit was in place. At first I didn't believe this because it sounded so ridiculous, but then I remembered that a similar suit was filed against a 12-year-old girl for downloading music in 2003. And then something impossible happened to me.

I Drew the Wrong CardI never had aspirations of becoming a writer, but my parents were both hard workers and always insisted that I'd be best served in any profession if I spent my time on writing and math. Being the geek that I am, math came easy but I wasn't so fortunate with words. It's one of the reasons I chose my college. It was known for its communications school, and every major was required to study several dimensions of writing. Incoming Freshmen were required to take two essay-writing courses during their first year. Most students were averse. I was excited.

The course options varied from the dull to the dramatic, so I wasted no time registering for an essay class simply labeled "Controversy." Each month we wrote a short argument about subversive topics selected at random. Every student drew a small card from a brown paper bag. Most of my classmates wanted the card that read "legalize marijuana." I wanted more of a challenge, and I got one. My card read, "reform child pornography law."

At first I was a little concerned. It seemed incredibly wrong to even argue against any laws that served to prosecute child pornographers, illustrators, or anything that sought to sexualize children. But after a little research, I discovered that many of the laws were vague and too broadly applied. They were written in a way that allowed the government to prosecute and convict alleged deviants based on flimsy evidence. It wasn't much different from CISPA, which was signed into law highly due to its broad language.



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As I continued my research I found more and more instances of laws with vaguely-defined terms that were designed to be tough on crime. No one bothered to oppose them in fear of being painted weak, or as a lover of terrorism and sexual deviancy. As a result, innocent people ended up in jail as collateral damage. The law had chosen to try and assuage our fears by sacrificing our freedoms as payment. But even worse, it didn't seem to be working. When you cast a wide net, you not only catch too many fish but so many that you can't find the fish you're actually looking for. People who broke the law weren't getting caught because the resources previously utilized to catch them were diverted to finding offenders before they actually offended. It's a nice thought to think we can preemptively prevent a crime, but it just doesn't work.

Nonetheless, you can't write an argument against child pornography laws without feeling at least a little gross. Just the act of Googling "information about child pornography" is enough to unsettle most stomachs, mine included. I made myself feel better by making off-color jokes about the subject in online chats and emails. I even posted a few of them to Facebook. I'd always been very careful about what I shared online, but we have a tendency to only try to protect ourselves when the threat is obvious. I didn't conceal my subversive sense of humor because I didn't believe that anyone would care. I did request for my search history to be tossed out, but it turned out that choice only applied to my account. My history was still being tracked "anonymously" with my IP address.

Perhaps none of this would've mattered if my school's servers hadn't been hacked. You wouldn't think there was much to hack, but the college had a system that allowed students to use their identification cards to make purchases at the bookstore, in the cafeteria, and at any other retailer partner around the city. The college charged all of our purchases to a stored credit card number at the end of each month, and the hacker seemed to be after that data.

Many private colleges—especially the older institutions—are a bit behind on security so this database was an easy target. They never caught the hacker, but s/he sold the data and it became one of the larger identity theft investigations that year. As a result, the federal government took an interest and started an investigation. While the interviews were tense (for those of us who had them) and watching the FBI roam the campus made everyone uncomfortable, the real problem came when they acquired our private data.

Student email, chat logs, search histories, social media posts, and more were handed over to the feds. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Mint, Twitter, AOL, and Yahoo were all in compliance. CISPA made it practical for companies to ignore our privacy and offer up our data because they were shielded from any legal action on our part. It was during the many months that the FBI combed through our stupid conversations and useless posts that they found no hacker in the student body. But they found supposed evidence of drug sales and a few media pirates. They also found a common thread in my data: child pornography.

My Reputation Was Collateral DamageThe first chat began with the school, who chose to inform me of the allegations before I spoke with the authorities. It didn't take long for the other students to hear about my alleged sexual deviancy. They'd heard about the drug dealers and the downloaders, too, but those crimes assumed a certain "bad ass" quality that did little to ruin a reputation. When people believe you might be a sex offender, it doesn't really matter if you are. The damage has already been done. It's the sort of accusation that follows you for life.

Eventually my name was cleared, but not before the school asked me to take a leave of absence until the investigation was complete. I didn't argue. My roommate requested a transfer that was quickly granted. I received looks and threatening notes. My friends had my back, but I could tell that defending me took a toll on them, too. It was best for everyone if I just left.
I didn't think much of CISPA when it passed into law. It seemed like the sort of thing that would only reach people who put themselves in bad situations. I'd never expected that going to college would fall into that category.

It was a bill that never should have passed in the first place. At the time, President Obama had promised to veto CISPA if it ever reached his desk, but even the best-intentioned politicians make compromises. He did the same thing with the National Defense Authorization Act, after all. Perhaps CISPA passed because the internet had just put up a valiant fight against SOPA and PIPA and didn't have the energy to take on yet another piece of frightening legislation. What worries me the most is the ability humans have to adapt. Many were outraged when CISPA was signed into law, but we felt that way about the Patriot Act, too. We adapted. We started ignoring the stories about victims until news organizations saw no reason to provide them anymore. The CISPA stories still manage to get a little press, but nothing has changed. We now have a government that works hand-in-hand with business.

We let this happen. CISPA may not directly affect everyone, but it leaves the possibility of everything we share online becoming an accusation. When we all live in glass houses, anyone can look guilty. It's easy to think you'll never be targeted, but I made that mistake. Hopefully now you'll know better.

This Is Not Yet Our RealityCurrently, CISPA has only passed the House of Representatives. Before it can reach the desk of the president, it must pass the Senate as well. If you oppose CISPA, contact your state senators and let them know how you feel. The web site SOPA Track now provides information about the position of each senator so you can find out where they stand as well as contact them if you disagree. The vote is coming soon. Now is the time to act.

---

Note: This is a fictional narrative based on what we believe the U.S. might be like if CISPA is passed into law, based on an in-depth discussion with Derek Bambauer, Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. This story hasn't happened, but we've created it to illustrate one probable future.

Drones All Over the US Get OK by Congress

Horrible. Now these things will be crashing into the houses they spy on. The government and its corporate financiers are out of control!--jef


Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress
By Shaun Waterman-The Washington Times
Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's ... a drone, and it's watching you. That's what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.

"There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities," said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is "concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies," said attorney Jennifer Lynch.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of "a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones" in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation's skies by 2020.

The highest-profile use of drones by the United States has been in the CIA's armed Predator-drone program, which targets al Qaeda terrorist leaders. But the vast majority of U.S. drone missions, even in war zones, are flown for surveillance. Some drones are as small as model aircraft, while others have the wingspan of a full-size jet.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. use of drone surveillance has grown so rapidly that it has created a glut of video material to be analyzed.

The legislation would order the FAA, before the end of the year, to expedite the process through which it authorizes the use of drones by federal, state and local police and other agencies. The FAA currently issues certificates, which can cover multiple flights by more than one aircraft in a particular area, on a case-by-case basis.

The Department of Homeland Security is the only federal agency to discuss openly its use of drones in domestic airspace.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the department, operates nine drones, variants of the CIA's feared Predator. The aircraft, which are flown remotely by a team of 80 fully qualified pilots, are used principally for border and counternarcotics surveillance under four long-term FAA certificates.

Officials say they can be used on a short-term basis for a variety of other public-safety and emergency-management missions if a separate certificate is issued for that mission.

"It's not all about surveillance," Mr. Aftergood said.

Homeland Security has deployed drones to support disaster relief operations. Unmanned aircraft also could be useful for fighting fires or finding missing climbers or hikers, he added.

The FAA has issued hundreds of certificates to police and other government agencies, and a handful to research institutions to allow them to fly drones of various kinds over the United States for particular missions.

The agency said it issued 313 certificates in 2011 and 295 of them were still active at the end of the year, but the FAA refuses to disclose which agencies have the certificates and what their purposes are.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the FAA to obtain records of the certifications.

"We need a list so we can ask [each agency], 'What are your policies on drone use? How do you protect privacy? How do you ensure compliance with the Fourth Amendment?' " Ms. Lynch said.

"Currently, the only barrier to the routine use of drones for persistent surveillance are the procedural requirements imposed by the FAA for the issuance of certificates," said Amie Stepanovich, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research center in Washington.

The Department of Transportation, the parent agency of the FAA, has announced plans to streamline the certification process for government drone flights this year, she said.

"We are looking at our options" to oppose that, she added.

Section 332 of the new FAA legislation also orders the agency to develop a system for licensing commercial drone flights as part of the nation's air traffic control system by 2015.

The agency must establish six flight ranges across the country where drones can be test-flown to determine whether they are safe for travel in congested skies.

Representatives of the fast-growing unmanned aircraft systems industry say they worked hard to get the provisions into law.

"It sets deadlines for the integration of [the drones] into the national airspace," said Gretchen West, executive vice president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry group.

She said drone technology is new to the FAA.

Supreme Court to rule on whether drug-sniffing dogs violate 4th Amendment

(Considering the NDAA wiped out the 4th amendment, as well as the 5th, 6th and 8th amendments, I would wager that the Roberts Court rules that drug dogs do not violate the 4th amendment--as it no longer applies to US citizens anyway.--jef)

______________________________________________________

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, January 6, 2012

 

 

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case to determine whether the use of police dogs sniffing for drugs outside homes is a violation of the constitutional rights of the residents.

The case involves a Miami homeowner accused of growing marijuana in his house, who contends the dog’s sniffing on his porch was the same as an illegal “search” of his home.

The Fourth Amendment requires police to present evidence to a judge that a crime has occurred, then obtain a warrant before they can search a home.

Miami-Dade police had no search warrant before Franky the dog signaled to his handler that he detected marijuana at the home of Joelis Jardines in December 2006.

Instead, they used Franky’s signal of sitting down as the primary evidence to obtain a warrant.

A subsequent police search found 179 marijuana plants in a hydroponic lab in the house. Jardines was arrested as he tried to flee out the back door.

The trial judge dismissed the evidence against Jardines, saying it was obtained through illegal search and seizure. A state appeals court reversed the ruling and reinstated marijuana charges against Jardines.

The Florida Supreme Court threw out the case again last April, saying lax restrictions on use of police dogs could lead to widespread abuse of homeowners’ privacy.

“There is simply nothing to prevent (police) agents from applying the procedure in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner, or based on whim and fancy, at the home of any citizen,” the Florida Supreme Court majority opinion said.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Bondi argues in her legal filings that a dog breathing air outside a home is not the same as a search.

She also says a ruling that deprives police of using drug-sniffing dogs to gather evidence would seriously interfere with law enforcement.

“And most importantly, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision strips law enforcement of an irreplaceable tool in detecting those who grow marijuana in their living rooms; construct meth labs in their kitchens; hide bodies in their basements; or make bombs in their garages,” Bondi’s petition says.

“Dogs can detect all these activities by the simple act of breathing.”

Eighteen states and the territory of Guam filed briefs to support Bondi’s petition.

The Supreme Court has traditionally held that homes are entitled to greater privacy rights than public spaces or automobiles when police use dogs to search for illegal activity.

The justices are likely to issue a ruling by June.

Surveillance System Tags, Tracks And Follows

Supreme Court strikes down state drug data mining law; rejects generic drug labeling suits

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
By Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday a state law that prohibits the use of prescription drug records for marketing, in a case pitting free-speech rights against medical privacy concerns.

The high court handed a victory to data mining companies IMS Health, Verispan and Source Healthcare Analytics, a unit of Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer, that collect and sell such information and that challenged the law.

(Reporting by James Vicini, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)


Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that generic drug companies cannot be sued under state law over allegations that they failed to provide adequate label warnings about potential side effects.

The justices handed a victory to Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Mylan Inc's UDL Laboratories and Iceland-based Actavis Inc by overturning U.S. appeals court rulings that allowed such lawsuits.

(Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

The Patriot Act and the Quiet Death of the US Bill of Rights c/o Obama

 (Obama, you fraud! It's safe to call him a lying bag of crap, innit? His myriad broken campaign promises are near legendary, as is his complete willingness to sell out the people of this country by taking away more of our rights. Even if a Republican wins in 2012, Obama has to lose. I voted for him in 2008, and that's on me, but I won't do it again..  

The "war on terror" isn't a war against terrorist organizations, it's a war waged by the govt on US  citizens. The govt considers citizens and returning vets to be even more of a threat than terrorists. Chew that for a few minutes. And they use the Patriot Act primarily for the war on drugs, not to fight terrorism. How is that not even questioned when it was brought up?

He is the first candidate I have ever regretted voting for in 20+ years of voting. He has betrayed every US citizen and continues to do so. We can't afford more of Barack Obama. His lies are as bad as anyone else in Washington. It's just too bad that getting rid of one bum opens the door for a 100 more.--jef)

Monday, June 20, 2011 by the California Progress Report
by Zack Kaldveer

With the stroke of an autopen from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the once articulate critic of the Patriot Act signed a four year extension of the most dangerous assault on American civil liberties in US history without a single additional privacy protection.

One would think that this reauthorization would have incited vigorous debate in the halls of Congress and at least a fraction of the breathless 24/7 media coverage allotted the Anthony Weiner “sexting” scandal. Instead, three weeks ago the House (250 to 153) and Senate (72 to 23) approved, and the President signed, an extension of this landmark attack on the Bill of Rights with little notice and even less debate.

Most disturbing was the extension – without modification – of the Act’s three most controversial provisions:

• allows broad warrants to be issued by a secretive court for any type of record, from financial to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation; 

• allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from the secret court (i.e. “roving wiretaps”,) known as the FISA court, without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped; 

• allows the FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person (“lone wolf” measure ) for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist.

Also in need of reform, are what's called National Security Letters (NSLs) – which allow the FBI, without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records deemed “relevant” to a government investigation. The FBI issues about 50,000 a year and an internal watchdog has repeatedly found the flagrant misuse of this power.


The Long Record of Patriot Act Abuses
Any meaningful debate over whether to reauthorize any and all of these provisions without significant additional privacy protections should include a few key questions. One, have these provisions made us significantly safer (i.e. are there documented incidences they have led to capturing terrorists plotting against us?)? Two, is there any evidence that they have been abused? Three, is their claimed usefulness somehow jeopardized by the kinds of modest reforms privacy rights groups (and others) advocate? And finally, have we created a dangerous constitutional precedent?


Thanks to the relentless work by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) - and information uncovered by the Freedom of Information Act - there is little to no evidence that these provisions, as written, have made us any safer. Yet there’s a long list of incidences of unadulterated government abuse and malpractice for a host of purposes other than fighting terrorism. In other words, the threat this Act, and these particular provisions pose to the basic Constitutional rights of American citizens is not hypothetical, but documented fact.


Consider what we know:

• The FBI admitted in a recent report to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that it violated the law at least 800 times on national security letters, going well beyond even the loose safeguards in the original provision. According to the report the FBI “may have violated the law or government policy as many as 3,000 times” between 2003 and 2007, according to the Justice Department Inspector General, while collecting bank, phone and credit card records using NSLs.

• As Adam Sewer of the American Prospect notes: 

“It's no secret that the FBI's use of NSLs - a surveillance tool that allows the FBI to gather reams of information on Americans from third-party entities (like your bank) without a warrant or without suspecting you of a crime - have resulted in widespread abuses. All that the FBI needs to demand your private information from a third-party entity is an assertion that such information is "relevant" to a national security investigation -- and the NSLs come with an accompanying gag order that's almost impossible to challenge in court.”

•  NSLs were used by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to demand that libraries turn over the names of books that people had checked out. In fact, there were at least 545 libraries that received such demands in the year following passage of the Patriot Act alone.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) uncovered "indications that the FBI may have committed upwards of 40,000 possible intelligence violations in the 9 years since 9/11." It said it could find no records of whether anyone was disciplined for the infractions.

• Under the Bush Administration, the FBI used the Patriot Act to target liberal groups, particularly anti-war, environment, and anti-globalization, during the years between 2001 and 2006 in particular; Obama has continued that process--he's even doubled-down on it.

• According to a recent report by the ACLU, there have been 111 incidents of illegal domestic political surveillance since 9/11 in 33 states and the District of Columbia. The report shows that law enforcement and federal officials work closely to monitor the political activity of individuals deemed suspicious, an activity common during the Cold War – including protests, religious activities and other rights protected by the first amendment. The report also noted how the FBI monitors peaceful protest groups and in some cases attempted to prevent protest activities.

• According to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases. Sixty-five percent were drug related.

John Whitehead, author of Renewing the Patriot Act While America Sleeps, described our post Patriot Act reality in appropriately stark terms, writing, 

“Suddenly, for the first time in American history, federal agents and police officers were authorized to conduct black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence. The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited.”

And now - according to the New York Times - new guidelines from the Justice Department will allow FBI agents to investigate people and organizations "proactively" without firm evidence for suspecting criminal activity. The new rules will free up agents to infiltrate organizations, search household trash, use surveillance teams, search databases, and conduct lie detector tests, even without suspicion of any wrongdoing.


In other words, the Constitutional “precedent” set by the Patriot Act appears to be serving to accelerate the rapid disintegration of civil liberties in this country.


Of equal concern is what we still don’t know about how the government might be using the Act, highlighted by recent statements made by US Senators regarding what they termed “secret Patriot Act provisions”. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), an outspoken critic of the recent reauthorization, stated, "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act they will be stunned and they will be angry." As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Wyden is in a position to know, as he receives classified briefings from the executive branch.


In recent years, three other current and former members of the US Senate - Mark Udall (D-CO), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Russ Feingold (D-WI) - have provided similar warnings. We can't be sure what these senators are referring to, but the evidence suggests, and some assert, that the current administration is using Section 215 of the Patriot Act - a provision that gives the government access to "business records" - as the legal basis for the large-scale collection of cell phone location records.


The fact that in 2009 Sprint disclosed that law enforcement made 8 million requests in 2008 alone for its customer’s cell phone GPS data for purposes of locational tracking should only add to these legitimate privacy concerns.


Security Versus Privacy: A False Dichotomy
The Patriot Act was sold as an indispensable weapon in the government’s arsenal to fight and “win” the “War on Terror”. We were assured that the sole purpose of these unprecedented powers granted government were to locate and catch terrorists - not raid the homes of pot dealers and wiretap peace activists. Monitoring political groups and activities deemed “threatening” (i.e. environmentalists, peace activists), expanding the already disastrous and wasteful war on drugs, and eavesdropping on journalists isn’t about fighting terrorism, it’s about stifling dissent and consolidating power – at the expense of civil liberties.


How ironic that the very “tool” hailed as our nation’s protector has instead been used to violate the very Constitutional protections we are allegedly defending from “attack” by outside threats. What was promised as a “temporary”, targeted law to keep us safe from terror has morphed into a rewriting of the Bill of Rights.


John Whitehead explains: 

“The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments–the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments–and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.”

It’s almost as if Benjamin Franklin had the Patriot Act in mind when he famously stated, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."


Noted privacy and security expert Bruce Schneier expanded on this false dichotomy, writing, “…those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither,” concluding "If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy.”


The fact that the odds of EVER being killed or maimed in a terrorist attack are a fraction of that posed by being hit by lightning, we should always approach government demands for increasingly intrusive and ripe for abuse authority with a healthy dose of skepticism and a large grain of salt.


The long, documented record of government overreach and abuse since 9/11 begs a larger question, “Can we truly defeat “the terrorists” by succumbing to fear and embracing a less free and more authoritarian society (which are ostensibly primary goals of terrorists)?”


Constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald further illuminates this false “security versus privacy” dichotomy promulgated by those with inherent conflicts of interest, writing:

 “The problem is never that the U.S. Government lacks sufficient power to engage in surveillance, interceptions, intelligence-gathering and the like. Long before 9/11 -- from the Cold War -- we have vested extraordinarily broad surveillance powers in the U.S. Government to the point that we have turned ourselves into a National Security and Surveillance State. Terrorist attacks do not happen because there are too many restrictions on the government's ability to eavesdrop and intercept communications, or because there are too many safeguards and checks. If anything, the opposite is true: the excesses of the Surveillance State -- and the steady abolition of oversights and limits -- have made detection of plots far less likely. Despite that, we have an insatiable appetite -- especially when we're frightened anew -- to vest more and more unrestricted spying and other powers in our Government, which -- like all governments -- is more than happy to accept it.”

Candidate Obama Versus President Obama
President Obama’s now ardent embrace of the same provisions he so eloquently criticized as a candidate - while aggressively opposing any of the reforms he once advocated on behalf of – has come to epitomize a disturbing shift in this country since 9/11.


The eloquent, pro-civil liberties “candidate Obama” branded the Patriot Act "shoddy and dangerous" and pledged to end it in 2003. In 2005, he pledged to filibuster a Bush-sponsored bill that included several of the recently extended provisions, calling them "just plain wrong".
In perhaps his most forceful critique, he stated, "Government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document -- through library books they've read and phone calls they've made...We don't have to settle for a Patriot Act that sacrifices our liberties or our safety -- we can have one that secures both."


Now, channeling none other than George W. Bush himself, President Obama warns that any delay of the complete and absolute renewal of the Act - or even the addition of a single privacy protection - would endanger American lives.


Thus, what was once viewed as the signature of Bush/Cheney radicalism is now official, bipartisan Washington consensus – serving to codify our country’s continued departure from its commitment to the basic tenets articulated in the Bill of Rights.


Attempted Reforms Ignored, Rejected
Efforts to address the most dangerous and far reaching components of the Patriot Act have been repeatedly offered by Senators and House members alike – to no avail. The reforms sought have been modest in nature, targeted in scope, and critical to reining in government abuse – without weakening national security.


For example, this year, Senator Bernie Sanders offered an amendment - supported by the American Library Association, the ACLU and the National Association of Booksellers - which would have prevented the government from gaining access to Americans' reading records in libraries and bookstores without a traditional search warrant.


Similarly, former Senator Russ Feingold, during a previous Patriot Act extension fight, sought to require the government to specify more clearly the targets of their investigations and their connections to terrorism, keep the FBI from using its authority to engage in broad-based data-mining of Americans’ phone, library and business records, more effective checks on government searches of Americans’ personal records, reform the FISA Amendments Act by repealing the retroactive immunity provision for the same telecom companies that continue to make billions off overcharging the very customers they betrayed, and prevent “bulk collection” of the contents of Americans’ international communications.


Not only have such attempts been rejected year after year, many aren’t even granted a Congressional hearing or vote. Just as disturbing is the failure of the mainstream media to dedicate any significant time and attention to an issue that so clearly warrants a vigorous national debate – such as how to strike the proper balance between civil liberties and national security.


The Bill of Rights Under Siege
Some important questions demand answers: Does increasingly intrusive and even unconstitutional anti-terrorism measures actually make us any safer (or less so)? If so, what is the price we are willing to pay for that additionally security?


Since 9/11 an undeniable pattern has emerged, from illegal search and seizures to warrantless wiretapping to the GPS tracking of cell phones to airport body scanners to the redefinition of Habeas Corpus to the increasing use of rendition for the purposes of torturing prisoners yet to be charged with a crime to military tribunals replacing courts of law, among many others.

What were once considered unassailable civil liberties granted to ALL citizens are under siege. The consequences of such a loss would be profound. Without the fundamental reform of the Patriot Act I fear this loss will be a permanent, and the American experiment will forever be altered.


Moving Forward: Building a Left/Right Coalition
So what to do? From a purely ideological perspective, the potential exists for growing a left/right coalition around a mutual commitment to the Bill of Rights. Already, more than 400 local, county and state resolutions have been passed in opposition to the Patriot Act. But, interest and opposition energy has largely waned over time. This must change.


On the left, while there still remains significant opposition (as evidenced by the recent votes in the House and Senate), a much larger and vocal effort existed when President Bush was abusing the same powers that exist now – no doubt in part due to sharing party affiliation with the new President. We must make the case to these voters that regardless of who sits in the White House, these are powers that NO branch of government, or intelligence agency, deserves.


On the right, it is common place to vocally declare allegiance to the Constitution and the principles of freedom and liberty. Yet, the Patriot Act – which desecrates those very principles – is close to a non-issue, with more focus on the alleged grave threat posed by expanding health care. This group’s inherent distrust of President Obama – warranted or not – may serve to enhance the likelihood of convincing these voters that the Patriot Act represents a clear and present danger to everything they espouse.

Also working in our favor is the broad based, ideologically diverse “Patriot Act Reform” coalition that already exists, including the ACLU (an excellent source of Patriot Act related information), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the CATO Institute, the Liberty Coalition, the American Library Association, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. While impressive, this coalition must be vastly expanded.

Irrational fears of terrorism, hyped by political, military and corporate interests, are at the root of our nation's current "civil liberties" crisis. We must counter this growing “fear industrial complex” with a “people’s majority” dedicated to preserving the Bill of Rights and protecting the privacy of American citizens. This challenge - and responsibility - should begin in earnest today.

The Always-Expanding Bipartisan Surveillance State

Friday, May 20, 2011 by Salon.com

by Glenn Greenwald

 

When I wrote earlier this week about Jane Mayer's New Yorker article on the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, the passage I hailed as "the single paragraph that best conveys the prime, enduring impact of the Obama presidency" included this observation from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin: 

"We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."  

There are three events -- all incredibly from the last 24 hours -- which not only prove how true that is, but vividly highlight how it functions and why it is so odious.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. . . .

From its inception, the law's increased surveillance powers have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as infringements on free speech rights and protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.

Some Patriot Act opponents suggest that Osama bin Laden's demise earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the law, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power. But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

"Now more than ever, we need access to the crucial authorities in the Patriot Act," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress -- with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) -- has extended the Patriot Act without any changes.  And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings:  to ensure "as little debate as possible" and "to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government."  Indeed, we wouldn't want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over "the expanded power the law gives to the government."  Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture:  that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find -- yet again -- that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.

Next we have a new proposal from the Obama White House to drastically expand the scope of "National Security Letters" -- the once-controversial and long-abused creation of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to obtain private records about American citizens without the need for a subpoena or any court approval -- so that it now includes records of your Internet activities:

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. . .
Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL." . . .

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval -- "they" being the Democratic White House.

Most critically, the government's increased ability to learn more and more about the private activities of its citizens is accompanied -- as always -- by an ever-increasing wall of secrecy it erects around its own actions.  Thus, on the very same day that we have an extension of the Patriot Act and a proposal to increase the government's Internet snooping powers, we have this:

The Justice Department should publicly release its legal opinion that allows the FBI to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release the memo.

The suit was prompted in part by McClatchy's reporting that highlighted the existence of the memo and the department's refusal to release it. Earlier this year, McClatchy also requested a copy and was turned down.

The decision not to release the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration -- in particular the Office of Legal Counsel -- has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration was. By turning down the foundation's request for a copy, the department is ensuring that its legal arguments in support of the FBI's controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept secret.

What's extraordinary about the Obama DOJ's refusal to release this document is that it does not reveal the eavesdropping activities of the Government but only its legal rationale for why it is ostensibly permitted to engage in those activities.  The Bush DOJ's refusal to release its legal memos authorizing its surveillance and torture policies was unquestionably one of the acts that provoked the greatest outrage among Democratic lawyers and transparency advocates (see, for instance, Dawn Johnsen's scathing condemnation of the Bush administration for its refusal to release OLC legal reasoning: "reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens.  The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector "partners") knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them).  Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret -- including even the "laws" they secretly invent to authorize their actions  -- while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.

This dynamic threatens to entrench irreversible, absolute power for reasons that aren't difficult to understand.  Knowledge is power, as the cliché teaches.  When powerful factions can gather unlimited information about citizens, they can threaten, punish, and ultimately deter any meaningful form of dissent:  J. Edgar Hoover infamously sought to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide by threatening to reveal King's alleged adultery discovered by illicit surveillance; as I described earlier today in my post on New York's new Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was destroyed in the middle of challenging Wall Street as the result of a massive federal surveillance scheme that uncovered his prostitution activities.  It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private affairs of citizens -- as we have been inexorably doing -- is to vest them with truly awesome, unlimited power.

Conversely, allowing government officials to shield their own conduct from transparency and (with the radical Bush/Obama version of the "State Secrets privilege") even judicial review ensures that National Security State officials (public and private) can do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability.  That is what the Surveillance State, at its core, is designed to achieve: the destruction of privacy for individual citizens and an impenetrable wall of secrecy for those with unlimited surveillance power.  And as these three events just from the last 24 hours demonstrate, this system -- with fully bipartisan support --- is expanding more rapidly than ever.

(And throw in the Kentucky vs King SCOTUS decision in which the Police don't have to have a warrant to enter your home now if they "suspect" something. By extension, that means neither do the FBI, NSA, etc. Both parties want to control us not protect our rights. Anybody pissed off yet?--jef)

IPhones Track Everywhere You Go; Franken Presses Apple re. Privacy (2 articles)

By Tim F., Balloon Juice
Posted on April 20, 2011

Since the iOS4 update last June, iPhones track everywhere you go and store it in an easy-to-hack-or-subpoena format. It is practically invisible to most users and you can’t disable it or get rid of the data. Why? Apple won’t say.

Whatever. Me and my $15 cell phone will live happily on stale twinkies and soup cans with torn-off labels for years after your idevices calmly direct the rest of you to check out a nearby ‘reprocessing center’ for AWESOME EXCLUSIVE DEALS on the iPad3.

***Update***

Via commenter Joel, here is a more clear explanation of the problem from the people who discovered it.

What’s so bad about this?

The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine. Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it.

The more fundamental problem is that Apple are collecting this information at all. Cell-phone providers collect similar data almost inevitably as part of their operations, but it’s kept behind their firewall. It normally requires a court order to gain access to it, whereas this is available to anyone who can get their hands on your phone or computer.

By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Sen. Franken presses Apple on privacy

Posted at 4:59 PM on April 20, 2011 by Brett Neely

After security researchers revealed today that Apple's best-selling iPhone and iPad devices contain a hidden file that secretly records the location of its user, DFL Sen. Al Franken wrote a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs demanding an explanation.

Franken wrote:

"Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user's home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken--over the past months or even a year."

He went on to ask that Apple provide information on how the location data is being collected and used and why consumers weren't told that their personal information was being collected.

As head of the newly-formed Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, Franken is in a position to keep this issue alive, including calling public hearings, if he's not happy with Apple's response to the letter.

Coincidentally, Apple released its most recent quarterly results today. The company said it sold over 18 million iPhones and over four million iPads.

You can read the entire letter Franken wrote to Jobs here.

Warrant needed to snoop on your emails, court finally rules

By Daniel Tencer - Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

After many years of legal uncertainty, a federal appeals court has finally declared that emails have the same Fourth Amendment protections as regular mail and telephone calls.
"Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication, it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection," the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled (PDF).

If the ruling is not overturned by the Supreme Court, it will put an end to the practice of law enforcement agents using court orders, rather than warrants, to gain access to emails. Court orders require a much lower standard than warrants.

Kevin Bankston of the digital rights group EFF told Wired.com he expects Internet service providers will comply with the ruling, meaning they will start requesting warrants when law enforcement requests access to emails.

Privacy advocates say law enforcement has been using a loophole in the 1986 Stored Communications Act to get emails without a warrant. Under that law, information stored on servers is subject only to a court order.

As Wired notes, the law was written at a time when emails -- then still a novelty -- weren't stored on remote servers. But today's email services, such as Hotmail and Gmail, use servers to store all emails, giving law enforcement warrantless access.

A group of businesses, including Microsoft, Google and AOL, have been lobbying the US to update its laws so that all emails require a warrant.

At issue in the Sixth Circuit's ruling was the criminal case of Steven Warshak, founder of the company that sells Enzyte "male enhancement" pills. Warshak was given a 25-year sentence in 2008 after being convicted of 93 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Warshak appealed the ruling, saying his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when investigators failed to obtain a warrant for his emails. In its ruling Tuesday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Warshak and effectively declared parts of the Stored Communications Act to be unconstitutional.

However, the court also said that law enforcement agents "acted in good faith" in using the Stored Communications Act to obtain the emails, so it will not vacate Warshak's conviction. ZDNet reports that he may see a lesser sentence as a result.

"Today's decision is the only federal appellate decision currently on the books that squarely rules on this critically important privacy issue, an issue made all the more important by the fact that current federal law ... allows the government to secretly obtain emails without a warrant in many situations," the EFF said in a statement.

"We hope that this ruling will spur Congress to update that law ... so that when the government secretly demands someone's email without probable cause, the email provider can confidently say: 'Come back with a warrant.'"

Facebook apps transmitted personal info to Advertisers

Newspaper report: Facebook apps transmitted personal information to tracking companies
By The Associated Press
Monday, October 18th, 2010

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 10 popular Facebook applications have been transmitting users' personal identifying information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies (link).

The newspaper said Monday that the breach also includes users who set all their information to be completely private. And in some cases, it says, the apps provided access to friends' names. Wrote The Journal:

Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. 

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook's rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.

"A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user's Internet browser or by an application," a Facebook spokesman told the paper. Such knowledge "does not permit access to anyone's private information on Facebook."

"Our technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information," the Facebook official added.

A Facebook spokesman told the Journal on Sunday that the company would introduce new technology to contain the breach. It's not clear how long the breach went on.

The paper says Facebook also has taken immediate action to disable all applications that violated their terms.

Most apps are made by independent software companies, not by Facebook.

Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’

By David Kravets  September 21, 2010  |



The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.

The Justice Department is demanding a federal appeals court rehear a case in which it reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month, without a court warrant. The authorities then obtained warrants to search and find drugs in the locations where defendant Antoine Jones had travelled.

The administration, in urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a three-judge panel’s August ruling from the same court, said Monday that Americans should expect no privacy while in public.

“The panel’s conclusion that Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public movements of his Jeep rested on the premise that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of his or her movements in public places, ” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Smith wrote the court in a petition for rehearing.

The case is an important test of privacy rights as GPS devices have become a common tool in crime fighting, and can be affixed to moving vehicles by an officer shooting a dart. Three other circuit courts have already said the authorities do not need a warrant for GPS vehicle tracking, Smith pointed out.

The circuit’s ruling means that, in the District of Columbia area, the authorities need a warrant to install a GPS-tracking device on a vehicle. But in much of the United States, including the West, a warrant is not required. Unless the circuit changes it mind, only the Supreme Court can mandate a uniform rule.

The government said the appellate panel’s August decision is “vague and unworkable” and undermines a law enforcement practice used “with great frequency.”

The legal dispute centers on a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning a tracking beacon affixed to a container, without a court warrant, to follow a motorist to a secluded cabin. The appeals court said that decision did not apply to today’s GPS monitoring of a suspect, which lasted a month.

The beacon tracked a person, “from one place to another,” whereas the GPS device monitored Jones’ “movements 24 hours a day for 28 days.”

The government argued Monday that the appellate court’s decision “offers no guidance as to when monitoring becomes so efficient or ‘prolonged’ as to constitute a search triggering the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

The appeals court ruled the case “illustrates how the sequence of a person’s movements may reveal more than the individual movements of which it is composed.”

The court said that a person “who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”

Spy satellite used in the U.S. to Spy on US Citizens

vidlink