REDUX: Domestic surveillance a key legacy of 9/11

c/o MontrealGazette

“Thanks to new laws and technologies, authorities track and eavesdrop on Americans as they never could before, hauling in billions of bank records, travel receipts and other information. In several cases, they have wiretapped conversations between lawyers and defendants, challenging the long-established legal principle that attorney-client communication is inviolate.”

:::MORE HERE:::

Here is second life for news that matters. 

• Children ‘should be taught data rights’
• 10 Ways the government watches you
• Appeals court may let NSA lawsuits proceed
• A flurry of federal data security and data breach notification bills introduced into Congress
• EPIC Files for Rehearing in Airport Body Scanner Case
• Network analysis can uncover your personal details even if you choose to hide them
• Maine Voter Data Breached
• USCIS hears suggestions and feedback on I-9 Central
• Flickr Nails Photo Privacy With New Geofence Feature
• Govt Will Not Declassify 2001 Opinion on Surveillance
• Gaddafi Hired International Firms to Spy on Libya Uprising

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

NSTIC blueprint for online national ID profile goes live Friday

View Draft Strategy Here… “Identity Ecosystem” starts on pg. 12


BTC – It’s called National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace or NSTIC.  It is a policy “blueprint” for the incorporation of a national online identity number.  NSTIC will be available for public evaluation Friday via WhiteHouse.gov.  Public comments concerning the new centralized identity number will be taken for 3 weeks.  Interaction is expected to take place online using Open Government crowdsourcing tools from IdeaScale.

According to Electronic Frontier Foundation identity counsel, Lee Tien, concerning the number, “[It’s] very much an issue in the US as part of the Cyber Security effort.”

White House considerations of a comprehensive identity number system for internet users became more transparent in public discussions over Cyber Security with Civil Liberty and National Security staffer, Tim Edgar last week in San Jose, Calif during the CFP 2010 conference.

International concerns over right of dissent and current uses of a nationalized internet identity number were raised by the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association and UK identity and privacy advocates, NO2ID.   Amid concerns were that integrating every users online data into one hub could destroy a persons identity if it were hacked, stolen or compromised in a way where identity was mistaken or misappropriated.   It was also communicated that a priority of newly elected coalition government was to repeal all current motions towards centralizing identity data and consolidating public records of the individual into one card.

National ID in the form of : online enumeration in NSTIC

Sheila Dean’s Podcast

http://beatthechip.podOmatic.com/swf/jwplayer44.swf

The United Kingdom is not the only country in the world which could mandate an online identity number registry.  Egypt  is working to try a nationalized online payment system which requires a national identity number.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

EFF updates on Amendment 1 Gizmodo case & "Panoptoclick" Papers

BFF 2 Privacy *EFF* cracks the case again … c/o The EFFector Deeplinks blog

EFF UNVEILED RESULTS FROM THE “PANOPTICLICK” BROWSERPRIVACY PROJECT, which demonstrated that more than 8 in 10 people use browsers with unique, trackable signatures. Having a distinct browser signature means your individual movements on the web may be easier to track, and several companies are already selling products that claim to use browser fingerprinting to help websites

identify users and their online activities. :::MORE HERE:::

SEE ALSO: Gizmodo iPhone Warrant Affidavit Released, Impropriety of Search Confirmed

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Waking Up Orwell: the lost & desert island episodes

BTC – Our weekly online radio digest, Waking Up Orwell (WUO) has overcome many mishaps to reach the remote location it is at today. What no one really realized was how many hits we were actually getting on podOmatic.

WUO success rates online via podomatic have completely dwarfed most of our previous online listenerships put together. We looked at lots of radio channels, but it seems that we have found our yodeling point on the mountain of listeners we get on podOmatic.

So here’s to believeable successes on our transitional online station of choice. CHEERS!!

LOST EPISODE: EFF on Facebook & the FBI

DESERT ISLAND EDITION: Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiatives discussed with Camera Fraud’s Todd Kandaris

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Waking Up Orwell program pre-empted by aggressive online hack

BlogTalkRadio broadcasts repeatedly compromised, suffered from repeated DeLays

“This was by far, the most obvious outside attempt to maliciously pre-empt us in the program’s history. Based on where our program was rerouted it appears politically motivated by those entertained by neo-conservative talk.” – WakingUpOrwell

3/29/10 -11:00 PM PST – We’ve just discovered the copy of our lost program. The show sounds a lot like a recording of someone running on foot during the Blair Witch Project while reading news. It looks like the information available on BlogTalkRadio is consistent with what happened Thursday. We are still not going back… give today so we can keep the show alive.

BTC – Waking Up Orwell, BeatTheChip.org’s regular weekly radio news magazine, has been compromised for the 3rd time in its history of airing on BlogTalkRadio. The show was interrupted by an aggressive hack.

The hack preempted the airing of an interview with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s FOIA counsel, Lee Tien who explained their findings about FBI intrusions on social networks like Facebook and BlogTalkRadio.com. The hack consisted of successive browser crashing to interrupt media uploads, account episode deletions and disparity between the front end display of the episode and oustide interference with the host’s back end capability to view, acknowledge or operate the engineering ports of a rescheduled episode.

“We sincerely apologize to regular listeners who expected to hear the scheduled programming. Unfortunately, we cannot reconcile the repeated attempts to hack our accounts with BlogTalkRadio.com and are actively seeking a new radio home for our weekly program. I did all I could do today to air the program,” says Sheila Dean, host, producer and engineer for the dystopian news program.

What audience members witnessed at airtime was a non-aired episode scheduled late at 11AM CST featuring the EFF speaker. What the host-engineer saw was a prompt saying, “There are no shows that can be scheduled 3/25/10”. Dean published her technical difficulties using Twitter until the 11 AM CST airtime. She dialed into the BlogTalkRadio host mainframe using the caller code and later spoke for over 30 minutes. The broadcast was never heard. Operating browsers from her MacNotebook crashed repeatedly, interfering uploads of the pre-recorded media and back end access to host tools were rerouted to another webpage.

Dean first noticed problems with excessively slow access to her account. She restarted her computer and logged back into her user account. She then discovered her scheduled episode was deleted. BlogTalkRadio, in a reply to service the account said that only a person with access to the account could have deleted the program and that “it could not be done from our end.” The episode was submitted to BlogTalkRadio’s PR department for promotion earlier in the week.

In an EFFort to continue to air the radio program another episode was immediately scheduled to air at 11AM CST. Soon to follow Dean experienced interruptions and disparities consisting of successive browser crashes minutes before airtime after logging into her account. Dean mitigated this by switching to another PC right before airtime. She then logged into BlogTalkRadio.com’s online account to produce Waking Up Orwell as scheduled. The Internet Explorer browser then repeatedly rerouted Dean to another newscast featuring Tom DeLay on BlogTalkRadio.com and refusing her user access to her account.

“This was by far, the most obvious outside attempt to maliciously pre-empt us in the program’s history. Based on where our program was rerouted it appears politically motivated by those entertained by neo-conservative talk,” said Dean, producer of WakingUpOrwell.

WakingUpOrwell, often features controversial news specific to privacy and promotes involvement of citizens in affairs which directly affect American civil liberty. Dean’s broadcasts feature staunch criticisms of current government policies governing citizens rights and national security. While she was dissappointed in her inability to air the program, she is optimistic about funding for a new online and terrestrial home for her popularizing program.

BlogTalkRadio.com’s technical staff claim no culpability in the hacking attempts from their end.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Military Monitored Planned Parenthood, Supremacists

Thanks to TransPartisan guy who sent this info c/o Threat Level @ Wired.com

The U.S. military monitored Planned Parenthood and a white supremacist group as part of the government’s security preparations for the 2002 Olympics in Utah, according to new documents released by the Department of Defense.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command liaison collected and disseminated information on U.S. citizens who were members of Planned Parenthood and the white supremacist group National Alliance regarding their involvement in protests and distributing literature, according to an intelligence-oversight report released by the Pentagon. The documents indicate that the JFC liaison was working with the FBI’s Olympic Intelligence Center at the time.

This and other intelligence-activity disclosures appear in heavily redacted documents that were released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They came in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act project the organization is conducting to obtain oversight information from intelligence agencies.

EFF received more than 800 pages from intelligence oversight reports created by the Defense Department inspector general that examine actions, conducted by various branches of the department, that are believed to be illegal.

The reports cover the years 2001 to 2008 and were submitted to the Intelligence Oversight Board and cover the U.S. Army, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military entities. The board is composed of private citizens with security clearances who are supposed to submit to the office of the president any reports describing activities that are believed to be illegal.

The reports provide little context for the information that’s disclosed, leaving the public to wonder about the nature and extent of the information and surveillance revealed in them.

Pertaining to the Planned Parenthood members, for example, the oversight report provides no explanation about how the information was collected. Nor does it indicate why the information was collected and notes only that military intelligence is not allowed to collect and disseminate information on U.S. persons unless the information constitutes “foreign intelligence.” The report indicates that the collection was therefore “clearly outside the purview of military intelligence” and should have been handled by law enforcement. ::MORE HERE::

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

SAY YES!! EFF Push’s for telecomm exposure

Appeals Court Backs EFF Push for Telecom Lobbying Documents Disclosure

c/o EFF

Panel Rules Law Does Not Protect Identities of Lobbyists

San Francisco – Today a federal appeals court rejected a government claim of “lobbyist privacy” to hide the identities of individuals who pressured Congress to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the government’s warrantless electronic surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans.

As the court observed, “There is a clear public interest in public knowledge of the methods through which well-connected corporate lobbyists wield their influence.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been seeking records detailing the telecoms’ campaign for retroactive legal immunity under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Telecom immunity was enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

“Today’s ruling is an important one for government and corporate accountability,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “The court recognized that paid lobbyists trying to influence the government to advance their clients’ interests can’t hide behind privacy claims to keep their efforts secret.”

This decision is the latest setback for the government in its long-running attempt to delay disclosure of the documents EFF seeks. So far, EFF has obtained thousands of pages of records through this litigation.

“AT&T, Verizon and Sprint expended millions of dollars to lobby the government and get an unconstitutional grant of retroactive immunity for their illegal spying on American citizens,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “The public deserves to know how our rights were sold out by and for telecom lobbyists.”

The appeals court sent part of the case back down to the district court for further consideration, including whether disclosure of the lobbyists’ identities would reveal intelligence sources and methods and whether communications between the agencies and the White House can be withheld under the presidential communications privilege or other grounds.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

FLOGGER: REAL ID Retreats Yet Again

National ID Bashing with Cato’s,

Jim Harper

by Jim Harper

Several different outlets are noting the quiet passing of a Department of Homeland Security deadline to implement our national ID law, the REAL ID Act.

In May of 2008, with many states outright rejecting this national surveillance mandate, the DHS issued blanket waivers and set a new deadline of December 31, 2009 by which states were supposed to meet several compliance goals.

They have not, and the threat that the DHS/Transportation Security Administration would prevent Americans from traveling has quieted to a whimper.

The reason why? The federal government would be blamed for it. As Neala Schwartzberg writes in her review of the push and pull over REAL ID:

If I was a betting person (and I am from time to time) I’d bet the backed-up-down-the-corridor traveler who is then turned away after presenting his or her state-issued, official complete with hologram ID will blame Homeland Security.

Does the ongoing collapse of REAL ID leave us vulnerable?

Richard Esguerra of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says in this Wired article that REAL ID “threatens citizens’ personal privacy without actually justifying its impact or improving security.”

REAL ID remains a dead letter. All that remains is for Congress to declare it so. And it may be dawning on Congress that passing it a second time under the name “PASS ID” will not work.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

PATRIOT/State Secrets Reform bill passes House

c/o EFF
by Kevin Bankston

After a long two days of legislative battle, the House Judiciary Committee just finished its second day of debate on Chairman Conyers’ PATRIOT reform bill, HR 3845 (see our wrap-up of the first day). Thanks in no small part to those of you who used our action alert, the Committee rejected almost all amendments that would have weakened the bill’s reforms and voted to recommend the bill to the House floor by a vote of 16 to 10.

Even better, the Committee kept going after it was finished with PATRIOT to consider Representative Nadler’s State Secret Protection Act (HR 984), which would reform the state secrets privilege that the government has repeatedly used to try and throw EFF’s warrantless wiretapping cases out of court. After an impassioned defense by Mr. Nadler, who described how the government has used the privilege like a “magic incantation” to cover-up wrongdoing and warned that state secrecy “is the greatest threat to liberty at present,” the bill passed with even better numbers than the PATRIOT bill, 18 to 12!

It was, to say the least, a busy couple of days in the House Judiciary Committee. If you want the entire blow-by-blow of both day’s meetings, check out our Twitter stream at @EFF.

Admittedly, the PATRIOT bill isn’t all we had hoped for — as we described yesterday, it’s been weakened in a number of ways due to quiet pressure from the Obama Administration — but it passed through the Committee with most of its major reforms intact, and it is a substantial improvement over the PATRIOT bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. Meanwhile, the state secrets reform bill made it through the committee without being watered down at all, with only a few technical changes. Thanks and congratulations to the representatives and activists that worked so hard to make that happen.

Eyes now turn to the Senate, where the Senate Judiciary Committee’s PATRIOT Bill (S. 1692) will soon land on the floor, and to the House Intelligence Committee, which will soon be marking-up its own competing PATRIOT bill with much fewer reforms (HR 3969). So, the war is far from over. But two important battles were won today.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Julian Sanchez fact checks FOX on PATRIOT ACT renewal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAlcPH9KcxM

c/0 EFF UPDATE >> Julian Sanchez.com

It appears that the only television news network that’s been regularly covering the PATRIOT Act renewal process in Congress has been FOX News, and its coverage has seemed a lot more like pro-PATRIOT propaganda than unbiased news reporting. Fortunately, Julian Sanchez of The Cato Institute has been fact-checking this closely.

In other news….

Obama Sides with Republicans; PATRIOT Act Renewal Bill Passes Senate
Judiciary Committee Minus Critical Civil Liberties Reforms

It looks like most of the Senators on the Judiciary Committee weren’t swayed by last week’s New York Times editorial, which suggested they consider USA PATRIOT Act renewal a “critical chance to add missing civil liberties and privacy protections, address known abuses and trim excesses that contribute nothing to making America safer.”

Instead, the Committee passed a bill to renew all of the PATRIOT powers that were set to expire at the end of the year, with only a handful of the original reforms that were first proposed by Senators Feingold and Durbin’s JUSTICE Act and Committee Chairman Leahy’s original PATRIOT renewal bill.

No, rather than adding more protections to the bill, the Committee voted to accept seven Republican amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act to remove the few civil liberties protections left in the bill after it was already watered down at the previous Committee meeting. Surprisingly and disappointingly, most of those amendments were recommended to their Republican sponsors by the Obama Administration.

As Senator Feingold so elegantly stated in his post-vote blog post on Daily Kos: “In the end…Democrats have to decide if they are going to stand up for the rights of the American people or allow the FBI to write our laws.”

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Tell your Senators to support PATRIOT reforms like those in the JUSTICE Act!

PETITION: https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=441

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org