Verbosities

F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets - New York Times

The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target in turn was in contact with. The bureau recently stopped the practice in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said Friday after being asked about it.

The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists.

The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it is also thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program.

Here's a little clarity on why the government doesn't want to go through the FISA courts for warrants. Simply put, it's because they don't want to confine eavesdropping to those people who they can identify as a potential threat. They want to monitor their mom, their lawyer, their minister and their bookie as well. Because there's no presumption of possible lawbreaking in this "Friends & Family" theory of wiretapping, there's little chance FISA would grant these warrants in the first place.

It's that last part of the clip above that sounds especially Kafkaesque to me. They're using this wiretapping to figure out who they should be wiretapping.

Fantastic.

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Right-wing blogs can be confusing. Take this post, reprinted in its entirety, from today's offerings at Power Line (Scott Johnson, author - links as he has them):


Power Line: Osama bin Scheuer

Michael Scheuer is the former CIA analyst who headed the CIA's bin Laden desk (Alec Station) during the Clinton administration and then worked as an advisor to the CIA's bin Laden unit until his retirement from the agency after the 2004 election. Yesterday bin Laden recommended Scheuer's book to those who want to understand why the United States is "losing the war" against al Qaeda. (Bin Laden didn't name the book, but he was certainly referring to Imperial Hubris.) In the article "The CIA examines itself," Gabriel Schoenfeld fills in some background and tries to figure what the recenly released OIG report on the CIA's performance reveals about Scheuer. I noted Scheuer's role in the bureaucratic war against the Bush administration in "Three years of the Condor."

The part that bugs me is the ad hominem connection of Osama bin Laden, Michael Scheuer and Bill Clinton. The salient details that underly this post seem to be:

1) Scheuer was in charge of CIA's bin Laden unit while Clinton was in office
2) He remained as an advisor to that same unit under Bush
3) On his way out the door, he "anonymously" wrote a book called Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
4) Osama bin Laden singled out this book in his latest tape as something he feels expresses the current state of US/Islamic affairs

Imperial Hubris' thesis sits on two ideas. One, that the 9/11 Commission didn't address the fundamental flaws and negligence demonstrated by the intelligence community's attention to OBL in pre-9/11 days - and two, that it is our foreign policy and not "our freedoms" that causes al-Qaeda's rage.

After reading the two articles linked in the Power Line post, it's obvious that some combination of Scheuer's lack of vision in his CIA role and the bureaucratic nightmare that is the administration's (I'm not letting Bush off the hook for this one, because this implicates every president sitting in the Oval since the first time al-Qaeda manifested an attack on Americans or Europeans at home or abroad) handling of setting intelligence priorities is what gets these righty bloggers bent out of shape. Okay, point taken. Our intelligence capabilities for assessing the al-Qaeda threat then (and hell, probably now) were abysmal and likely cost us thousands of American lives on 9/11.

I get that. Scheuer is no hero. He's quite possibly a guy on whose shoulders some non-insignificant piece of blame for our failures six years ago should come to rest. That's a legitimate beef. Less legitimate, but still not unexpected from Weekly Standard contributors is the denial of Scheuer's thesis that it was our foreign policy and not our "freedoms" that gets these guys tweaked.

Here's the part I don't get: what is "Osama bin Scheuer" supposed to mean? That Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, were actively working with OBL to destroy America? That perhaps the failures of Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, are equally as vile and criminal as OBL's conspiratorial undertakings? That Scheuer, and by association Bill Clinton, are complicit in pushing the al-Qaeda propaganda that weighs our imperialism over our Indigo Girls as a factor for the fomentation of terrorism?

Seriously, help me out here. This makes no sense to me. bin Laden's 1998 fatwa stated that our sin against Islam is "occupying the lands... in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula," and nearly ten years later he reinforces that notion by pointing specifically to an American's analysis that happens to agree (which, by the way, is no sin, nor is it unpatriotic) with his original statements as a primer all Americans should read to understand why al-Qaeda really hates us.

So why, then, is OBL's identification of an American author's ability to correctly analyze the situation a sin worthy of an ad hominem attack on his credibility?

Scheuer got it wrong then, and that's a tragedy. That he thoroughly understands and coherently expresses what is, by direct account of one of the principals involved, a factually correct analysis of the situation should be laudable. Why tar and feather the guy for this? Hit him for his past sins, sure, but what's it with trying to slap the guy around when he gets one right?

Christ, what an asshole.

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DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2007®

As former Vice President Al Gore waits to hear if he has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless effort on climate change, a new video will air this weekend capturing Gore on a fuel-guzzling private jet!

FOXNEWS host Sean Hannity is set to unleash the damning video this Sunday night, network sources reveal.

Developing...

They're not going to be happy until he's riding bicycles everywhere and somehow discovers how to piss pure ethanol.

Christ, what an asshole.

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Surprise! The Department of Homeland Security ran a pilot of some new data mining software (called ADVISE) with real data. They weren't supposed to do this, you know, because "the ADVISE tool could misidentify or erroneously associate an individual with undesirable activity such as fraud, crime or terrorism."


mail.com - DHS Ends Criticized Data-Mining Program

(T)he DHS inspector general and privacy office concluded that between 2004 and 2007, three pilot tests of ADVISE used personally identifiable information without first issuing required privacy impact assessments. The privacy office said this "created unnecessary privacy risks."

[snip]

Among the data the privacy office found had been plugged into ADVISE pilot projects were:

--The no-fly list of people barred from domestic air travel and the list of people who require special inspections before flying.

--More than 3.6 million shipping records from a commercial data provider with names of cargo shippers and consignees.

--Terrorist Screening Center lists of people who tried to cross the U.S.-Canadian border at a port-of-entry.

--Classified intelligence reports about illicit traffic in weapons of mass effect.

--Lists of foreign exchange students, immigrants under investigation and people from special interest countries.

Although Knocke said ADVISE "was never used in an operational environment" and DHS had assured Congress in 2006 it was not operational, the inspector general found that "on at least one occasion, the data was used to produce classified intelligence information."

This is where you can start calling "bullshit" on the old trope that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

Wrong.

Caring about governmental encroachment on our civil liberties isn't a personal concern. Do I believe the government is trying to listen in on my phone calls - and I mean me, personally? Nope. But do I think that a law-abiding legitimate businessman of Iraqi descent living in Dearborn, Michigan (let's call him Mahmoud) has more reason to believe he's being profiled? Absolutely.

B-b-b-b-but, you say, if he's not doing anything illegal...

Wrong again, that's not how data mining programs work. Mahmoud from Dearborn fits a profile. His "type" becomes exponentially more likely to be stopped at the airport, questioned by the IRS over faith-based tithing, detained by immigration before and after trips to visit family overseas, and listened to while he's on the phone.

Now, I've got no problem with this if there's reasonable suspicion to criminal activity (or plotting of such), as long as there's oversight (say, from the FISA court, as intended). But this administration would have you believe their ability to handle the terror problem is hamstrung by oversight, and you and your children are less safe as a result.

Bullshit.

The FISA court provided an agile rubber-stamp oversight body through which the government's ability to wiretap legitimate targets was not hindered. This administration wanted the ability to shroud their data collection efforts in secrecy, and got Congress along to allow for this end-run around FISA.

Who's the loser in all this? It starts with Mahmoud, who might soon end up on the no-fly list or worse, with no ability to contest his status, understand how he got put on that list, or take the government to court to right the wrong. Beyond that, when Mahmoud loses, we all end up worse off. If it's Mahmoud today, who's to say that the next "threat" doesn't come from another "type" that needs to be aggressively profiled? What happens if the data mining leads to statistically identifying those prone to drunk driving or child molestation? Who among is isn't for stopping child molestation before it happens? Better keep an eye on those people*.

The founding fathers couldn't have been more clear about the rights of this country's citizens and from where those rights were granted. Here's a hint for you - they aren't granted to you by the state.

*By the way, the only people who will never in a million years be profiled by data mining efforts are gun nuts. Mark my words, we could have a rise of radical racist militias and a profile by which to identify them, but they'd sterilize women likely to get abortions before they ever go to take the guns of the people who might use them to kill other Americans.

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Threat Level - Wired Blogs

Judge Marrero found, in a 106 page opinion, that the gag order provisions couldn't be struck down without affecting the rest of the statute so he found that the entire NSL provision was unconstitutional. He also stuck down a provision that prescribed the standards courts should use in judging the FBI's arguments for keeping gag orders. Marrero wrote that Congress had overstepped its bounds in setting out those standards.

The judge also made it clear that the scope of the FBI's powers, which were not challenged by the ACLU, concerned the court:

But as powerful and valuable it may be as a means of surveillance and as crucial the purpose it serves, the NSL nevertheless poses profound concerns to our society, not the least of which, as reported by the OIG, is the potential for abuse its employment. Through the use of NSLs, the government can unmask the identity of internet users engaged in anonymous speech in online discussions. It can obtain an itemized list of all the emails sent and received by the target of the NSL, and it can then seek information on individuals communicating with that person. It may be even be able to discover the websites an individual has visited and queries submitted to search engines.

This is the second time the NSL statute has been struck down in this case. After the last decision, the Administration loosened the gag order provision, which in the original Patriot Act, could not be contested and lasted in perpetuity.

I guess when Bush tells you to STFU forever and ever, that might be able to be challenged in court. Of course, watch the Kafkaesque legal teams at the DOJ get this one tossed on appeal just like the FISA suit, under the "if you can't prove we fucked you, you're not able to sue us" legal doctrine. Beautiful stuff.

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The Bob Dylan "Subterranean Homesick Blues" sign generator.

Kinda fun putting words in Dylan's mouth, but I can't imagine these belonging to him. Check out my contribution above.

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Townhall.com::Hugh Hewit::Hillary Voted Against The Reform Of The FISA

I bring up Senator Clinton's recent vote against FISA reform because German authorities today arrested three would-be terrorists:

[snip]

It is Hillary's position that surveillance of the communications of these three with cooperating cells recently moved into the United States ought to require a warrant.

[snip]

If Hillary wins the presidency, her Adminstration (sic) will be populated with people hostile to the aggressive suppression of the terrorist threat via legal means like the surveillance techniques permitted by the reformed FISA and the traditional exercise of the presidnet's (sic) Article II authority to conduct war.

Oh so very close Hugh. Let me take a swipe at rewording that last paragraph for you - this time with appropriate spelling and capitalization.

If Hillary wins the presidency, her administration will be populated with people hostile to the aggressive suppression of the terrorist threatwarrantless wiretapping of American citizens via legal means like the surveillance techniques permitted by the reformed FISAand will likely work to reconstruct the court's role in presenting the American people with the oversight necessary to respect the fourth amendment and will hopefully return the theories of executive powers to the traditional exercise of the president's (sic) Article II authority to conduct war responsibly, instead of theorizing that endless war endows the president with inherent Commander-in-Chief powers that lift the office above all oversight, checks, and balances.

Regardless, thanks to Hugh Hewitt for reminding me that someone out there has a "hostile" view of the unitary executive theory, and will engage in "aggressive suppression" of governmental engagement in further warrantless wiretapping.

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Craig ouster marks new GOP strategy - Patrick O'Connor - Politico.com

The rush to judge Idaho Sen. Larry Craig this week was most severe among his own Republican colleagues.

Craig officially ended his 17-year tenure in the Senate on Saturday after party leaders abandoned him in the midst of a sex scandal over a June incident with an undercover police officer in an airport bathroom.

His swift condemnation marks a growing imperative among congressional Republicans to punish their own after the party was battered by a string of scandals over the past three years.

File this away for the next Ted Stevens-esque bribery/corruption scandal, and we'll see if it's a "growing imperative" to call a spade a spade in the GOP or not.

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