Sleepycatz

Adios Alberto - Hola Autocracy

Alberto Gonzales resigned today as United State Attorney General. After nearly a year of growing criticism over his AG, Mr. Bush continued to defend his long time friend saying: “It’s sad that we live in a time that a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeding [sic] from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political purpose.” Many have hailed this resignation as a victory, or good news. They are wrong.

Alberto Gonzales led the most politicized and corrupt Justice Department seen in our times. His selective enforement of the law, his shielding of his political friends, and his contempt for congressional oversight made a mockery of the ideals of American justice. As Mr. Gonzales leaves on September 17th, he will leave unfettered by the notion that he has done anything wrong. No court, no committee, no prosecutor will have stepped up to hold him accountable. The legislature by their lack of legal action has sanctioned his. And the next Attorney General who decides that she/he will not pursue illegality in the White House or will use his/her powers the enrich their party may look back to the record of Alberto Gonzales and be assured that as long as you assert that your president is king, and that you are simply his vassal, you are inviolate. You need not be concerned that you will be judged against those same laws your swore to uphold. For as we now know, laws are for the common people and political opponents.

Security Through Absurdity

Earlier this week, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell gave a lengthy and somewhat duplicitous interview with the El Paso Times. Mr. McConnell made available a number of interesting assertions and revelations. For instance, this is the first time a government official acknowledged that private firms (such as AT&T and Verizon) had been aiding the intelligence establishment. The involvement of these firms had remained a secret until now. This confirmation will surely allow the EFF lawsuit against AT&T to continue. But McConnell also made some pretty odd assertions. In order to justify the government’s need to exempt eavesdropping from court reviews and the warrant process, the NID asserts that the 4th amendment just generates too much paperwork:

And now you’ve got to write it all up and it goes through the signature process, take it through (the Justice Department), and take it down to the FISA court. So all that process is about 200 man hours for one number.

As Ryan Singel has pointed out, based upon available figures from 2006 in which 2176 FISA warrants were approved, this means the NSA spent 436,200 hours on FISA warrants last year — an incredible number — around 53,275 workdays. This means the NSA employs one of the largest army of lawyers in country or Mr. McConnell is simply exaggerating to make his case more plausible. As it would be unthinkable to believe that our government would ever ever make up facts to justify its actions, I recommend all law students begin to flood the NSA with their resumes.

Throughout the interview McConnell stresses that foreign intelligence gathering should be unfettered by laws. Here, he’s essentially stating what both policy and law have reflected for nearly 50 years. FISA was never meant to apply to foreign surveillance - the original laws specifically exempts gathering on foreign soil. We are led to believe that a recent court ruling stated that a warrant was required if a called passed through American facilities, but not terminated in this country, and the law needed ‘updating’ due to this ruling. But McConnell’s duplicity seems to know no bounds. The law passed allows surveillance on American soil, against Americans, for any reason as long as he and the Mr. Gonzoles believe one of the parties is outside the country. By reiterating the need for foreign intelligence gathering, McConnell tries to give the impression that somehow American’s are exempt from warrantless surveillance. He even suggests that he insisted upon it:

[in the FISA update] I was after three points, no warrant for a foreigner overseas, a foreign intelligence target located overseas, liability protection for the private sector and the third point was we must be required to have a warrant for surveillance against a U.S. person. And when I say U.S. person I want to make sure you capture what that means. That does not mean citizen. That means a foreigner, who is here, we still have to have a warrant because he’s here . . .

McConnell tries to spin himself and the intelligence community as simply professional and law abiding. But given what we know about the previous year’s Terrorists Surveillance Program, we know this is not the case. What we know of the program strongly indicates that it was carried out in violation of FISA and several other federal laws. During that time little effort was made to modify FISA or share information about the program. It would appear that FISA didn’t need ‘updating’ until TSP became public. In other words, McConnell is saying now that you know about our illegal activities, we need to make them legal so those pesky courts can’t annoy us.

McConnell then goes on to employ the greatest trope used used by the security state:

The fact we’re doing it [discussing surveillance] this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they’re using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q. So you’re saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A. That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it’s a democratic process and sunshine’s a good thing.

Yes, for some reason, it’s a democratic process - damm founding fathers, and their checks and balances.

This is without a doubt the most absurd argument put forth by this administration in the entire surveillance state debate. The “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you” message is designed to stop all critical inquiry into our government’s actions. It is intimidation through hyperbole. The argument suggests that our intelligence community is either 1) greatly under estimating their adversaries, 2) engaging in acts which would be abhorrent to the people they are serving, or 3) both.

Around the world, America is viewed as a technological powerhouse. We have the largest and most sophisticated intelligence gathering operations in the world. Anyone who has ever reviewed the basics of American surveillance during the Cold War would come away inspired by American ingenuity and technology. Yet, this administration suggests that the same terrorists which they claim have a vast global well organized network would not think that America was eavesdropping on their phone calls? Do they really believe that these terrorists networks are unfamiliar with the basics of guerrilla warfare? The premise of which states that a weaker force should always use their opponents strengths against them — for instance, an opponent with vast electronic eavesdropping capabilities may be overwhelmed by false intelligence planted electronically. If we are to believe the ‘wiretapping is too secret to talk about’ argument, then we are to believe that our own intelligence community is comprised of unimaginative dunces spending all their time filling out warrant requests and scrutinizing every utterance as a real threat against America. If this is the case no amount of secrecy will prevent attacks against this country. It is far more likely that the intelligence community requires such secrecy because it is engaged in acts which violate the law and founding principles of this country. It is more likely that this administration is more interested in surveilling political opponents at home then they are eavesdropping on threats abroad. It it more likely that the intelligence community is building a national surveillance state rather then protecting the laws they were sworn to enforce.

Mr. McConnell was absolutely correct about about one thing, “sunshine is a good thing”, but dawn remains far off for the moment.

The More You Know

Carol, my intrepid wife, stenciled the above image on the front of our coffeehouse last week in protest of the Protect America Act of 2007. Of course the more we actually learn about the act the worse it seems. It has now become apparent that expiration date of the act is not the six months, reported in the major media, but eighteen months — allowing Mr. Bush to exert monarchical powers throughout the rest of his term. Susan Landau has pointed out that

To avoid wiretapping every communication, NSA will need to build massive automatic surveillance capabilities into telephone switches. Here things get tricky: Once such infrastructure is in place, others could use it to intercept communications.

She is absolutely correct to suggest that these systems, once in place, are ripe for exploitation by third parties. It should also be noted that to build these systems will take great deal of time and effort, and until they are in place it should be assumed that the NSA is simply capturing all phone data it must on a switch related to an investigation it’s performing. Additionally, once the infrastructure is in place to perform this type of automatic monitoring the chances that it will be misused are great and the chances that it will be dismantled are nil.

The Cult of Deimos

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed S.1927 - The Protect America Act. The act passed early Saturday morning by the Senate gives the president unfettered power to surveil any person, or persons, within the United States as long as he ‘believes’ that his is also surveilling someone outside the country as well. The act specifically exempts any such surveillance from judicial oversight. With no requirement of a warrant, and no one allowed to oversee the orders of surveillance, the president may now legally spy on any American citizen he likes. Marty Lederman has some excellent analysis of the act at Balkinization.

So how did we arrive at this point? A place where our government betrays its founding principle — the checks and balances of power — in the middle of the night, and where our own leaders are given the absolute power to intrude into our private affairs legally? The reason and cause is simple: fear. Democrats voted for the act because they feared that the president would accuse them of liking terrorists if they didn’t. Or worse, if a terrorist attack occurred the president would blame them for the attack. Republicans voted for the act because they were afraid of appearing unsupportive of the president, and, also, feared the accusation of liking terrorists.

Fear has become the overwhelming force which drives our country. We righteously worship it. Like supplicants at the alter of a jealous God will will do anything to appease it. We will offer up our rights and liberties; we will sacrifice our democratic heritage; we will allow our country to wage endless wars, and we will consume giant sport utility vehicles or any other goods to assuage the God of fear. Like any cult, fear has its high priests and deacons: like those who claim that western civilization is but a single terrorist attack away from collapse and ruin or those who suggest that debate or discussion is, in the very least, capitulation. For fear, as a master, cannot tolerate rational discussion and dissent, it survives and breeds through ignorance, hyperbole, and the all too human desire for power.

In 1955, poet Allen Ginsberg penned his masterpiece Howl. In his epic, Ginsberg hearkens post-war America to Moloch, the God of industrialized conformity and decay, which demands the sacrifice of our lives and those of our children. Today, post-9/11, our new lord has become Deimos — child of Aries and Aphrodite (War and Lust) and brother of Phobos (terror). But today we have no great poet or statesmen to calm the fever of our devotion to Deimos. They are all at the alters awaiting their turns to make sacrifice or offer prayers of protection. Deimos, like Moloch, can never be appeased. He will always want more; the next offering must always be greater then the previous. As with all cults, followers will eventually fade, and the priests will keep the pyres burning for years beyond necessity. But the God, and his priests, will never return the sacrifices made by the people in their moment of faith.

What are We Fighting For?

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This evening, the Democrat controlled Senate voted to give Mr. Bush unprecedented powers of surveillance. In a vote of 60-28 — in the middle of the night — they decided to cave in to the fear that this administration has bullied the American people with for the past six years. As the measure was passed at the last minute we — the people — have no real idea what is in the legislation, congressional records are published the next business day; however, we can assume that Mr Bush got his 120 day pass to conduct surveillance without review, and got approval for the Attorney General to be the sole arbiter of who is to be targeted by the new found power. It goes without saying that the existing FISA law did not require any changes until Mr. Bush was found ignoring it.

It is, however, the constant fear mongering which the Republican party has used over and over and over which allowed then to push through another midnight theft of our rights as free people. The question which begs — requires — an answer of these people is what in God’s name are we protecting from the terror you constantly say is at our doorstep? Is it simply the freedom to buy tube socks for $1.69? Is it the freedom to choose between Walmart and Target? Or is it the freedoms and rights handed down to us by our democracy: the right to redress one’s government, the right of habeas corpus, the right to criticize one’s government, the right to be secure in one’s person and papers, and the greatest of those principles: the right to know that we are a nation of laws and not men. Those who mongered for this legislation, and the cowards who voted for it, will fall back on the simplistic mantra of protection, security, the freedom to live. Liberty and freedom are not satisfied by mere existence. Great statesmen understood this throughout our our history. ‘They hate us for our freedoms’, Mr. Bush once said. It now seems that he and the congress have decided to mitigate that hatred by eliminating those freedoms that they believe spur our enemies on. What are we fighting for?

The fact of the matter is, that we are all now suspects in our own country — we are now all subject to a level of scrutiny which would have shocked our founders. The content of our phone calls, our e-mails, our Internet usage, our banking records, our charge records, our day to day lives are now subject to collection and use by our own government to do with as they please. Given that this administration has politicized nearly every function of government, can there be any doubt how they will make use of this collected data?

In order to let the listeners know of our disgust at their prying eyes and ears, I suggest a minor, perhaps annoying protest. Send an encrypted e-mail to your congressman, the NSA, the CIA, or simply to anyone whose mail routes through the AT&T network. Use a simple symmetric encryption algorithm, like blowfish or AES, and encrypt a message such as:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The NSA, and others, will no doubt be able to decipher your cryptogram, but at the expense of time and processing power. It may take quite a few days of processing time to break your simple message of Constitutional Law. If you want to be more clever send them a photo of your cat or a tree and embed your message with stenography - believe me they’ll detect the message is there. If you want your message to receive priority processing, just include something like Koran, jihad, death, etc in the subject line or add a mail header.

Given the new found power of our Chief, it is best that we all begin encrypting our personnel correspondence sooner then later. Here are some resources to help you out:

GPG - symmetric and asymmetric encryption application

Steghide - simple stenographic application

Truecrypt - file system encryption

Hushmail - free e-mail service with encryption
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iD8DBQFGtCXsDnQGI4lCC44RAlg1AKDbh9ciTvPxZTdLYa2YjOMg2tcq8QCeMTSz
MZ8RLIigXg3xNwRIcIWNVzE=
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Update: ABC apparently pulled their link: Here’s a current one

Update 2: Some other notable discontent is being registered about this action:

What Would Lincoln Do has an apt post.

The ever delicate Liz at Blondsense echo my feelings as well

Security through Surveillance

A recent article int the NY Times has revealed that the Department of Homeland Security is funding the development of software to sniff out anti-government bias in the written word. The software will be first used on foreign and domestic newspapers to, presumably, detect those who are disloyal, and thus a threat to US security. As the article points out:

Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush’s use of the term “axis of evil,” the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Yes, apparently, holding a position contrary to the president on Global Warming is an indicator of anti-Americanism. We can all be certain that this technology will be quickly applied to Internet blogs and e-mail traffic once it is ready — or more likely in a test deployment to assess its capabilities. Of course DHS attempts to put the best face on ths program:

Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said.

Kelly’s argument, however, is as disingenuous as most surveillance proclamations have been. By stating that they are not directly tying such data sets to specific people - but instead tying them to anonymous (or aliased) blogs, or rotating IP addresses, the DHS can easily get around this law.

Why the Department of Homeland Security — which is charged with the physical protection of our country — is investing our tax dollars into a system to monitor hidden biases in newspapers is far beyond the logic any sane person.

The greatest irony in the NYT story is when, reporter, Eric Lipton quotes Andrei Sitov, Washington bureau chief of the Itar-Tass news agency. Sotov dismays that this technology may be used to stifle criticism of the president or the administration. “This is what makes your country great, the open society where people can criticize their own government,” Sitov said. When Tass, the former arm of Soviet propaganda, suggests that our government maybe going too far in sniffing out dissent; well, that expresses some level of irony I lack the language skills to descibe.

h/t Homeland Studipity

Stress Positions

In 1788, Alexander Hamilton, in defending the Constitution, wrote:

The observations of the judicious Blackstone in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital: “To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls “the BULWARK of the British Constitution.”2

Hamilton was arguing that America could not nor could ever forgo the basic rights of English common law; thus, there was no need to include a Bill of Rights into the proposed Constitution. Ten score and eighteen years later, we have shamefully betrayed the hope and convictions of America’s founding fathers. Today, our government will revoke the Great Writ, and endorse the practice of torture; all in the name of partisan politics. America has lost the greatness that it once held - the greatness which drew hopeful immigrants from around the world in order to make a better life, and escape tyranny. America’s greatness was never to be found in its shopping aisles, its financial markets, or its factories; it was found in America’s laws, its philosophy, and its rejection of tyranny. When one man, be him president, pope, or king, can deprive anyone of due process and liberty that man must instantly be labeled a tyrant. It is far too easy to blame only our representatives who, out of desperation and fear, acquiesce to such a tyrant. Much of the blame - or responsibility - lies within our own fears and apathy. Our country was founded by men of enormous courage. At a time when most of the world was ruled by kings and potentates, our leaders decreed that our country would not be governed by one man, but by all men; that power would never be concentrated in a single office, but shared among branches of government - that our land would not be subjected to the whims of imperial power. That courage has faded over the years, and today it is nearly invisible in our government and newscasts. Those of us who speak up are shouted down with cries of traitor or go unheard, drowned out by the constant calls for strength and protection. Somewhere we hope that there lives that small still voice in our nation conscious that will cry out against tyranny and fear, but we also know that, by then, it may be too late. Arbitrary imprisonment and torture are self perpetuating engines. A man is tortured until he implicates co-conspirators; another is arrested and tortured, and so on and so on. The soils of Chile, Ukraine, and Cambodia bear the blood of this awful truth. The scratch stained walls in the prisons of Soviet Russia, China, and Iran are the murals testifying to ultimate, arbitrary, state power. America now claims the right to perpetrate what we once condemned. Our greatness is lost. The only question that remains is whether we shall recover it, or shall we follow the history of other corrupt empires.

As always Glen Greenwald has the details