[NYTr] Round-Up on Unconstitutional Domestic Spying

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by rick kissell

Los Angeles Time - Aug 23, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-intel23aug23,1,2267586.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=5&cset=true 


Spy chief reveals details of operations

The intelligence director confirms the FISA court ruling 
and defends wiretapping as a 'surgical' process.

By Greg Miller

WASHINGTON --- The nation's top intelligence official has confirmed that 
a federal court did rule the Bush administration's warrantless 
wiretapping program was in violation of the law, prompting the mad rush 
in Congress this month to overhaul key espionage provisions.

In an interview with a Texas newspaper, Director of National 
Intelligence J. Michael McConnell also disclosed that the number of 
people in the United States who are under surveillance by the nation's 
spy services is "100 or less," a figure he said showed that the 
government was not engaged in widespread spying on Americans.

His comments represent an exceedingly rare public description of one of 
the nation's most closely guarded and controversial espionage 
operations. Many of the details he described -- such as the 
deliberations of the special intelligence court and the scope of the 
surveillance operation -- are usually considered classified.

McConnell was interviewed by the El Paso Times after addressing a 
border security conference in the city Aug. 14. On Wednesday, the 
newspaper posted a transcript of the interview on its website at 
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6685679.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's adverse ruling earlier 
this year delivered a major blow to U.S. spying operations, McConnell 
said, even as intelligence analysts were expressing growing alarm that 
the Al Qaeda terrorist network was regrouping.

"We found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground," he said.

McConnell said the ruling came during a routine review of the program by 
the court, commonly known as the FISA court because it was created by 
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Initially, he said, one of the judges on the 11-member panel supported 
the government's position and ruled that individual warrants were not 
needed to intercept communication between two people overseas whose 
e-mails or calls happened to travel through data networks inside the 
United States.

But in a subsequent review, a second judge took a different position.

"The second judge looked at the same data and said, 'Well, wait a 
minute. I interpret the law, which is the FISA law, differently,' " 
McConnell said.

The decision meant that the government had to get a court order to trace 
calls or e-mails that traveled on networks inside the United States, 
even if the parties at both ends were overseas.

The government obtained a temporary stay allowing it to continue 
intercepting e-mails and phone calls without individual warrants through 
May 31, McConnell said, as he began sounding alarms on Capitol Hill that 
a key piece of the nation's counter-terrorism capabilities was about to 
be crippled.

Those warnings fueled a frantic, end-of-summer push in Congress to 
rewrite laws passed three decades ago, after U.S. intelligence agencies 
had been caught spying on student groups and other domestic targets. The 
emergency legislation, which is set to expire in six months, allowed the 
government to resume its eavesdropping operations without individual 
warrants.

But the changes, and the hurried atmosphere in which they were adopted, 
have prompted many Democrats to express misgivings about the revisions. 
They have pledged to revisit the issue next month after Congress returns 
from its August recess.

In defending the wiretapping program, McConnell went further than any 
public official has in describing its scope and the extent to which it 
sweeps up communications of people within U.S. borders.

"There's a sense that we're doing massive data mining," he said, 
referring to the practice of searching for suspicious content by combing 
through calling data surrendered by telephone companies. "In fact, what 
we're doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know 
what number, you can select it out."

McConnell's statement suggests that the government, which has access to 
most major telecommunications networks inside the United States, pulls 
out for review only the contents connected to phone numbers that are 
already under suspicion for ties to terrorism or other foreign 
intelligence priorities.

Critics of the program have questioned whether that is indeed the case 
and what safeguards are protecting U.S. residents from abuse of privacy 
rights.

McConnell said the nation's spy agencies obtained warrants any time they 
targeted someone inside U.S. borders. "It's a manageable thing," 
McConnell said. "On the U.S. persons side, it's 100 or less."

On the "foreign side," he said, "it's in the thousands."

Because so many of these calls travel through networks in the United 
States, McConnell said, the FISA court ruling created a significant new 
burden: Putting together a FISA warrant required "about 200 man-hours to 
do one telephone number."

McConnell said that he was generally satisfied with the revisions 
Congress passed but that he believed further changes were necessary to 
protect telecommunications companies from liability for sharing access 
to their networks with U.S. spy agencies -- particularly the National 
Security Agency, which eavesdrops on phone calls and e-mails around the 
globe.

McConnell rejected criticism that the Bush administration had used scare 
tactics to push for the FISA revisions or that he had misled 
congressional Democrats, who complained that he backed out of a deal on 
a more moderate legislative package.

Even as he disclosed new details about the espionage programs, McConnell 
made criticisms that the public debate has given Al Qaeda and other 
organizations insight into U.S. eavesdropping operations.

"The fact that we're doing it this way means that some Americans are 
going to die," he said. But because of the "claim, counterclaim, 
mistrust, suspicion" surrounding the program, he said, "the only way you 
could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way."

                         ***

The Washington Post - Aug 23, 2007

McConnell: Fewer Than 100 Secret U.S. Wiretaps

Domestic Terror Cases 'Manageable'

By Joby Warrick

Law enforcement officials are targeting fewer than 100 people in the 
United States for secret court-approved wiretaps aimed at disrupting 
terrorist networks, the top U.S. intelligence official said in an 
interview published yesterday.

The relatively low number of those under surveillance in this country 
stands in contrast with "thousands" of people overseas whose calls and 
e-mails are monitored for possible links to terrorism, Director of 
National Intelligence Mike McConnell said.

"If a terrorist calls in and it's another terrorist, I think the 
American public would want us to do surveillance of that U.S. person," 
he told the /El Paso Times/. The newspaper released a transcript of the 
Aug. 14 interview yesterday.

Previously, few details about the scope of the U.S.-based surveillance 
program had been made public.

McConnell made the revelation while visiting El Paso last week for a 
conference on border security. In an interview with the newspaper, he 
attempted to explain the distinction between court-sanctioned 
surveillance of Americans and the kind of warrantless surveillance that 
U.S. officials can now conduct under legislation signed into law by 
President Bush earlier this month.

The new law allows expanded, warrantless eavesdropping on foreigners' 
calls and e-mails to people in the United States, as long as the 
Americans involved are not considered targets of the investigation.

If the U.S. recipient of a call turns out to be a terrorism suspect,
law enforcement officials would "just get a warrant," McConnell said.
He described the number of such cases as "manageable."

"On the U.S. persons side, it's 100 or less," he said. "And then, the 
foreign side -- it's in the thousands."

A spokesman for McConnell's office declined to comment on the 
characterization.

Later, addressing a question about security along the U.S.-Mexico 
border, McConnell said that people linked to terrorist groups had
sought to enter the United States from the south, but "not in great
numbers."

Referring to the southwestern border, he said: "Would they use it as a 
path, given it was available to them? In time they will."

He said that a "significant number" of Iraqis have been smuggled across 
the border in the past year. A spokesman for McConnell clarified that 
the Iraqis were asylum-seekers, who have been apprehended at border 
crossings in increasing numbers. So far this year, 178 Iraqis seeking 
asylum have been detained along the southern border; 16 were captured 
while trying to sneak into the United States, the spokesman said.

                              ***

BBC News - Aug 22, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6958791.stm

US to shut "anti-terror" database

The Pentagon has said it will shut down a controversial anti-terror 
database.

US officials said the Talon programme would end on 17 September because 
the amount and quality of information gathered had declined.

The database was used to compile information on potential threats to US 
military facilities and personnel.

A Pentagon review found that it had included reports on peaceful 
protesters and anti-war demonstrations which should have been deleted.

However, the report by the defence department's inspector general said 
the Pentagon had acted legally in collecting information on US citizens 
because the reports were gathered for law enforcement rather than 
intelligence purposes.

Military and defence personnel will still report suspicious activities 
around military bases, but that information will go onto an FBI 
database, the Pentagon said.

'Not needed'

The Pentagon said public criticism was not behind the decision to close 
the database.

"The analytical value of [the database] was pretty slim," spokesman Col 
Gary Keck told reporters.

"The Talon database was a perfectly legal system, nobody ever said it 
wasn't, but it was just not meeting our needs any more," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had criticised the database, 
welcomed the decision to abandon it.

"There should be no place in a free democratic society for the military 
to be accumulating secret data on peaceful demonstrators," ACLU 
executive director Anthony Romero said.

The Talon reporting system was run by a little-known Pentagon agency 
called the Counter-Intelligence Field Activity (Cifa), whose size and 
budget are classified.