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DAVID K. SHIPLER — June 22, 2011, Chevy Chase, Md.:
THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime.
In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers until 2015, and the F.B.I. expanded agents’ authority to comb databases, follow people and rummage through their trash even if they are not suspected of a crime.
None of these are landmark decisions. But together they further erode the privilege of privacy that was championed by Congress and the courts in the mid-to-late-20th century, when the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement was applied to the states, unconstitutionally seized evidence was ruled inadmissible in state trials, and privacy laws were enacted following revelations in the 1970s of domestic spying on antiwar and civil rights groups.
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Read more on NYTimes at http://nyti.ms/kGV2wJ.
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Ken Dilanian, January 30, 2011: “Reporting from Washington —The FBI disclosed to a presidential board that it was involved in nearly 800 violations of laws, regulations or policies governing national security investigations from 2001 to 2008, but the government won’t provide details or say whether anyone was disciplined, according to a report by a privacy watchdog group.
The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain about 2,500 documents that the FBI submitted to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board.
The board was created in 1976 to monitor U.S. intelligence gathering. Intelligence agencies are required to submit reports to the board about suspected violations of civil-rights-related laws or presidential orders.”
Read more at: http://lat.ms/hNEFA6.
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Rachel Slajda, January 27, 2011: “Following on the heels of a House Republican’s alteration-free one-year extension of the expiring Patriot Act provisions, Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has introduced his own extension that would add some restrictions to the so-called library provision.
That’s great, says the ACLU. But it’s not enough.
Leahy’s proposed legislation, which closely echoes legislation he proposed last Congress, would extend the two expiring provisions — one that authorizes “roving surveillance” and another that allows the feds to pull “tangible records” like library, Internet and bank records — for two more years.
The second provision, known alternately as the library provision, Section 215 and the FISA provision, allows the federal government, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, demand any “tangible” records that they believe would help a terrorism investigation. There’s not a high bar to get court approval for those records, and feds may impose a gag order on the library, ISP or bank — meaning the subject of a records search may never know their records were pulled.”
Read more at http://bit.ly/gNxEEi.
Filed under: News, Patriot Act, TPM | Leave a Comment
Eric Lipton, January 28, 2011: WASHINGTON — Representative Darrell Issa calls it a way to promote transparency: a request for the names of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, business executives, journalists and others who have requested copies of federal government documents in recent years.
Mr. Issa, a California Republican and the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says he wants to make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests and do not delay them out of political considerations.
But his extraordinary request worries some civil libertarians. It “just seems sort of creepy that one person in the government could track who is looking into what and what kinds of questions they are asking,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists. “It is an easy way to target people who he might think are up to no good.”
Mr. Issa sent a letter on Tuesday asking 180 federal agencies, from the Department of Defense to the Social Security Administration, for electronic files containing the names of people who requested the documents, the date of their requests and a description of information they sought. For those still pending after more than 45 days, he also asked for any communication between the requestor and the federal agency. The request covers the final three years of Bush administration and the first two years of President Obama’s.”
Read more at http://nyti.ms/hynSBq.
Filed under: FOIA, New York Times, News | Leave a Comment
Noam Cohen — January 9, 2011: The news that federal prosecutors have demanded that the microblogging site Twitter provide the account details of people connected to the WikiLeaks case, including its founder, Julian Assange, isn’t noteworthy because the government’s request was unusual or intrusive. It is noteworthy because it became public.
Even as Web sites, social networking services and telephone companies amass more and more information about their users, the government — in the course of conducting inquiries — has been able to look through much of the information without the knowledge of the people being investigated.
For the Twitter request, the government obtained a secret subpoena from a federal court. Twitter challenged the secrecy, not the subpoena itself, and won the right to inform the people whose records the government was seeking. WikiLeaks says it suspects that other large sites like Google and Facebook have received similar requests and simply went along with the government.
Read more at http://nyti.ms/fOVp2y.
Filed under: FBI, New York Times, News, Surveillance | Leave a Comment
Representative Ron Paul — January 4, 2011: The year 2011 brings in a host of opportunities and challenges to America. Will we accelerate toward economic insolvency by continuing the policies that have created this crisis, or will a new Congress elected on the energy of the Tea Party movement find the courage to change course?
With the new Republican majority in the House I will have the opportunity as a subcommittee chairman to take a careful look at our domestic monetary policy. I’m excited by the prospect of real oversight of the Federal Reserve, but I also hope to focus on the important ways in which our foreign policy and monetary policy are related. Just last week the Financial Times reported that the limited oversight of the Federal Reserve allowed by the passage of a watered-down version of my Audit the Fed bill revealed that approximately 55 percent of the loans made available under the largest Federal Reserve bailout program – termed “auction facility” – went to foreign banks. This is just but one example of the real cost to Americans of maintaining its empire overseas and it cries out for more transparency and oversight.
Read more at http://bit.ly/hiAEiw.
Filed under: Patriot Act, The Hill's Congress Blog | Leave a Comment
Steve Lohr — January 1, 2011: Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises.
Some officers played the role of prisoners, acting like gang members and stirring up trouble, including a mock riot. The latest in prison gear got a workout — body armor, shields, riot helmets, smoke bombs, gas masks. And, at this year’s drill, computers that could see the action.
Perched above the prison yard, five cameras tracked the play-acting prisoners, and artificial-intelligence software analyzed the images to recognize faces, gestures and patterns of group behavior. When two groups of inmates moved toward each other, the experimental computer system sent an alert — a text message — to a corrections officer that warned of a potential incident and gave the location.
The computers cannot do anything more than officers who constantly watch surveillance monitors under ideal conditions. But in practice, officers are often distracted. When shifts change, an observation that is worth passing along may be forgotten. But machines do not blink or forget. They are tireless assistants.
Read more at http://nyti.ms/f498k5.
Filed under: New York Times, Surveillance | Leave a Comment
Al Franken – December 22, 2010: In today’s net neutrality action by the Federal Communications Commission there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that, thanks to Commissioners Copps and Clyburn — not to mention a nationwide network of net neutrality activists — the proposal approved today is better than the original circulated by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. For instance, the FCC has now stated that it does not condone discriminatory behavior by wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T — an important piece that was missing from the first draft.
The bad news is that, while it’s no longer worse than nothing, the rule approved today is not nearly strong enough to protect consumers or preserve the free and open Internet. And with so much at stake, I cannot support it.
I’m still very concerned that it includes almost nothing to protect net neutrality for mobile broadband service — often the only choice for broadband if you live in rural or otherwise underserved areas. And I’m particularly disappointed that the FCC isn’t specifically banning paid prioritization — the creation of an Internet “fast lane” for corporations that can afford to pay for it.
Read more at http://huff.to/gtN8Jp.
Filed under: Huffington Post, Internet, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Kytja Weir – December 22, 2010:
First, commuters got stopped at Metro stations for random bag searches, now they will be stopped for their signatures to fight those same searches.
The D.C. Bill of Rights Coalition and the Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition are planning to ask riders at Union Station on Wednesday evening to join their petition opposing Metro’s new bag searches.
The transit agency began checkpoints to randomly screen riders’ belongings for explosives Tuesday morning after announcing the new policy last week. Additional checkpoints could occur anywhere in the system at any point.
The two civil liberties groups argue that such searches violate the Fourth Amendment. “The guys who put together the Constitution had a point: we shouldn’t be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures,” said Pat Elder, a co-founder of the D.C. group.
Read more at http://bit.ly/gO5xz3.
Filed under: Examiner.com, News, Searches | Leave a Comment
