In September 2013, in response to a question from Senator Chuck Grassley, the NSA revealed the 12 known cases it had on record over the past decade or so of intentional abuses of the NSA surveillance data, by individuals spying on people they clearly shouldn’t have been spying on. Many of these examples were classified as “LOVEINT” (a play on the traditional SIGINT — for signals intelligence) for people who looked up the private information of those in whom they had a romantic interest. Of course, as we’ve noted, many of these cases were only discovered after the people self-reported the violation — and some of that happened years later, suggesting many such abuses go undiscovered.
Well, more than a year has gone by and guess whether or not Holder fulfilled that promise? If you guessed no, you’d be right. Grassley has now sent a new letter asking just when he can actually expect an answer, and suggesting it ought to happen soon.
Category: Ignorant or unreasonable
Senator Wyden Follows Up With Eric Holder On All Of The Requests The DOJ Has Totally Ignored
As Attorney General Eric Holder is about to leave office, Senator Ron Wyden has sent him a letter more or less asking if he was planning to actually respond to the various requests that Wyden had sent to Holder in the past, which Holder has conveniently ignored. Wyden notes, accurately, that the government’s continued secrecy on a variety of issues “has led to an erosion of public confidence that has made it more difficult for intelligence and law enforcement agencies to do their jobs.”
First up, an explanation of what legal authority the government was using for extrajudicial executions via drones and the like in areas not declared as war zones. Holder ignored that. Wyden would like an answer. As you may recall, the administration has dragged its feet on this issue for a while, and when a court told the DOJ to release the memo, it released a document that just pointed to another secret memo.
Turns Out New Senate Intelligence Boss Was Simply Full Of It In Claiming Feinstein Couldn’t Distribute The CIA Torture Report
The new head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr, has long been known as a staunch defender of anything the CIA/NSA decide to do. That’s why we still find it odd that he’s now in charge of overseeing them, a job that was created to try to prevent their abuses. In the past, Burr has even argued that all hearings by the committee should be held in secret, to prevent any information from ever getting out. So, perhaps it wasn’t that surprising when he kicked off his new role by claiming that his predecessor, Senator Dianne Feinstein, had somehow broken all sorts of protocol in actually distributing copies of the committee’s 6000+ page report on the CIA’s torture program and how the CIA lied to Congress about it. Burr was demanding all the copies back, while supposedly acting furious that it had been distributed. He claimed that it “was not a valid disclosure” and that it was done without approval.
As part of that complaint, he went to the Senate Parliamentarian (basically the referee who makes the calls on all the arcane and sometimes ridiculous rules of the Senate), asking for a determination that Feinstein had violated the rules in distributing the report. Instead, he got the opposite. The Parliamentarian has noted that Feinstein did nothing wrong in distributing the report.
Defendants Settle With Student Arrested for Possessing Arabic Flashcards
Jane Doe 3 [a TSA supervisor]: You know who did 9/11?
George: Osama bin Laden.
Jane Doe 3: Do you know what language he spoke?
George: Arabic.
Jane Doe 3: Do you see why these cards are suspicious?
David v. Goliath: pro se defendant prevails over copyright shakedown cartel
It all boils down to evidence. If there is no evidence whatsoever, an attentive and diligent judge won’t allow a case assigned to him to linger – he will rule summarily in defendant’s favor. That’s exactly what happened today. An experienced cardsharper Malibu Media (M. Keith Lipscomb) didn’t convince the judge that the proof of infringement (or, more precisely, the lack thereof) elevates to a necessary level of controversy that requires a jury trial.
The most hilarious part is that the defendant wasn’t even represented — he fought pro se instead. This tells volumes about the quality of Malibu’s “investigation” and “proof.” What we witness is a bluff on a massive scale, nothing more.
Homeland Security Totally Misunderstands Trademark Law; Seizes Perfectly Legal Sporting Goods Anyway
Homeland Security’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement group (ICE) has a history of seizing stuff without understanding even the most basic concepts around intellectual property. After all, these are the same meatheads who seized some blogs for alleged copyright infringement, and then had to return some of them over a year later, after they realized it was a mistake. ICE also has a history of using big sporting events to kiss up to the multi-billion dollar sports organizations by shutting down small businesses, protecting Americans from unlicensed underwear. And, of course, what bigger sporting event is there than the Super Bowl. Every year they make a bunch of seizures related to the Superbowl, and this year was no different.
ICE agents gleefully were patrolling Phoenix looking for clothes to seize. But there was just one, rather large, problem with how they went about it. It appears that the people in charge of all this, didn’t know the first thing about the “law” they were supposedly enforcing. Seizing counterfeits is about stopping trademark infringement. But not everything using a trademark is infringing. Trademark, after all, is a form of a consumer protection law, designed to protect people from buying one thing, believing it’s another. If there’s no likelihood of confusion, then ICE isn’t supposed to be seizing it (and, yes, there is also dilution of trademark, but ICE isn’t supposed to be seizing products that dilute someone’s trademark — just those that are “counterfeit”). But that’s not, apparently, how ICE sees things
Michael Hayden: September 11th Gave Me Permission To Reinterpret The 4th Amendment
Michael Hayden, the former CIA and NSA director, has revealed what most people already suspected — to him, the Constitution is a document that he can rewrite based on his personal beliefs at any particular time, as noted by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic. Specifically, he admits that after September 11th, 2001, he was able to totally reinterpret the 4th Amendment to mean something entirely different:
In a speech at Washington and Lee University, Michael Hayden, a former head of both the CIA and NSA, opined on signals intelligence under the Constitution, arguing that what the 4th Amendment forbids changed after September 11, 2001. He noted that “unreasonable search and seizure,” is prohibited under the Constitution, but cast it as a living document, with “reasonableness” determined by “the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves in history.”
He explained that as the NSA’s leader, tactics he found unreasonable on September 10, 2001 struck him as reasonable the next day, after roughly 3,000 were killed. “I actually started to do different things,” he said. “And I didn’t need to ask ‘mother, may I’ from the Congress or the president or anyone else. It was within my charter, but in terms of the mature judgment about what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable, the death of 3,000 countrymen kind of took me in a direction over here, perfectly within my authority, but a different place than the one in which I was located before the attacks took place. So if we’re going to draw this line I think we have to understand that it’s kind of a movable feast here.”
Battle Over Google Subpoena Threatens Critical Online Free Speech Protections
A high-profile battle over whether Google must respond to an unusual and dangerous subpoena raises fundamental concerns about federal free speech law and the protections it affords hosts of online content, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued in an amicus brief filed today.
Attorney General Jim Hood of Mississippi issued the 79-page subpoena in October, seeking information about Google’s policies and practices with respect to content it hosts, Internet searches, and more. The invasive request appeared to be based primarily on allegedly unlawful activities of third parties who use Google’s services. Then in December, journalists reported that documents disclosed in the Sony hack outlined a Hollywood plot against Google, including plans to pressure Hood into aggressively investigating the search engine giant. In the face of these developments, and the Attorney General’s unwillingness to narrow the request, Google sought protection from a Mississippi federal court.
“Despite the dramatic storyline, this all comes down to well-established law protecting hosts of Internet content from liability for much of what their users say and do on their platforms: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “If CDA 230 was disregarded, and online service providers were required to respond in full to subpoenas like this one, they would inevitably face extraordinary legal costs. That would be enough for most businesses to get out of the interactive content business all together, as everything from comments on news stories to sharing of home videos could be a recipe for expensive litigation.”
In the amicus brief filed today, EFF argues that Congress’ express intent was to encourage the development of new communications technologies by holding online speakers responsible for what they say—instead of the soapboxes where they say it. It’s a principle that has allowed the Internet and the myriad online communities it contains to thrive.
“CDA 230 is perhaps the most valuable law we have for protecting innovation and online speech,” said EFF Frank Stanton Legal Fellow Jamie Williams. “The Mississippi subpoena is an obvious violation of federal statute, and the court should grant Google the protection that Congress intended.”
US Ambassador: No, net neutrality will NOT allow the UN to seize control of the internet from us
An op-ed in the Washington Post by policy wonk Larry Downes last week argued: “The public utility approach would provide opponents of a free and open Internet ample opportunity to call out US efforts as hypocritical, unnecessarily undermining our authority.”
Comcast also argued in a filing with the FCC that “reclassification could have broader implications globally and weaken the United States’ positions regarding international Internet regulation.” New rules “could undermine the United States’ resistance to greater oversight of the Internet by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union.”
S.F. Cops Arrest Public Defender for Publicly Defending
The officer’s explanation to the lawyer at the time was that if she didn’t stop objecting to what he wanted to do, “I will arrest you for resisting arrest.” That either made sense to him or he just didn’t care. That’s bad either way.
Jami Tillotson is a public defender in San Francisco, and was with a client who was appearing at the courthouse for a misdemeanor theft charge. After the appearance, her client and another man were apparently stopped in the hallway by five police officers, led by Sgt. Brian Stansbury (he’s the one in the suit). Tillotson noticed this and, not surprisingly, came over to find out what was going on.
‘Cause that’s what we do, you know. If we represent someone and notice something that might affect their legal rights—like, let’s say, if they have been stopped by police officers and we happen to be in the area—we like to find out what is going on. It’s actually kind of our job. We might even object, if something’s objectionable. Just FYI.
The facts aren’t 100% clear, but here’s a summary based on the reports and video. Police claim these two guys are “persons of interest” in another crime. The sergeant says he just wants to take their pictures and then they’ll be “free to go.” Tillotson says no thanks, and that’s when he states that “if you continue to do this [object], I will arrest you for resisting arrest.” She says, “please do,” and he does. He then takes pictures of the men as Tillotson is led away in handcuffs, and she spent the next hour cuffed to a wall in a holding cell.