Liberty and Justice 4 ALL

Contrary to press reports of a White House compromise on NSA legislation, Senator Specter has agreed to a bill that would shield the Administration from accountability for its illegal warrantless wiretapping. The bill has been erroneously described as requiring judicial review of the President's warrantless wiretapping program. In fact, the bill retroactively guts the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by making judicial review of the program by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court optional. It would also allow electronic surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment's requirements of probable cause and individualized suspicion.

Center for Democracy and Technology

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans' international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.

At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.

Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.

"It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" asked Specter, R-Pa.

"The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales told the committee hearing, during which he was strongly criticized on a range of national security issues by Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the panel's senior Democrat.

Last week, under a deal with Specter, Bush agreed conditionally to a court review of his anti-terror eavesdropping operations.

When the program was disclosed in December, it outraged Democrats and civil libertarians who said Bush overstepped his authority.

Bush's 2001 directive authorized the National Security Agency to monitor — without court warrants — the international communications of people on U.S. soil when terrorism is suspected. The administration initially resisted efforts to write a new law, contending that no legal changes were needed. But after months of pressure, officials have grown more open to legislation.

Under the deal with Specter, the president agreed to support a bill that could submit the program to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a constitutional review.

Last week, Gonzales said the bill gives Bush the option of submitting the NSA program to the intelligence court, rather than requiring the review.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

USAToday

In a grave threat to civil liberties, the Senate Judiciary Committee today approved legislation that would gut the historic Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the President to carry out wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance inside the United States without a court order. The bill -- sponsored by Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), but radically altered by his Republican colleagues -- would make judicial review for electronic surveillance optional. June 08, 2006

• CDT Analysis of Specter Proposal [PDF] May 15, 2006

Source: Center for Democracy and Technology

NEW YORK -- Responding to reports that phone companies are turning over private details about Americans’ telephone calls to the National Security Agency, the American Civil Liberties Union today launched a nationwide initiative to end illegal government spying.

ACLU affiliates in 20 states today filed complaints with Public Utility Commissions or sent letters to state Attorneys General and other officials demanding investigations into whether local telecommunications companies allowed the NSA to spy on their customers.

“We cannot sit by while the government and the phone companies collude in this massive, illegal and fundamentally un-American invasion of our privacy,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “And unfortunately, we cannot wait for Congress to act. The ACLU is mobilizing its members and supporters nationwide to demand investigations into this shocking breach of trust. And we are asking the FCC to use its authority to uncover the facts about how far the president's illegal spying has gone. The American people want answers.”

The ACLU today also sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to reconsider its refusal to investigate reports that at least three major telecommunications companies -- AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon -- cooperated with the NSA in an effort to collect calling information and call patterns on every American.

In its letter, the ACLU refuted the agency’s assertion – made public late yesterday – that the classified nature of NSA activities render it “unable” to investigate potential wrongdoing. The ACLU noted that the government is publicly defending the program, so there is no way that all the details about it are “state secrets” or involve classified information. The letter also pointed out that the government has a recent history of overclassifying information and conveniently claiming that any evidence of embarrassing or illegal actions are “state secrets.”

In the complaints sent to state utilities commissions and other officials around the country, the ACLU is also alling for investigations into the unlawful sharing of billions of consumers’ call records with the NSA. If the sharing is found to be in violation of state law, the ACLU is urging that officials issue “cease-and-desist” orders to the telecommunications companies in their state.

“It’s time to shed light on this illegal invasion of privacy that could affect everyone in this country,” said Carol Rose, Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, which today filed a complaint on behalf of its 22,000 members and four Massachusetts city mayors, seeking a public hearing into possible violations of state law. “The purpose of this effort is not to obstruct legitimate law enforcement activities, but to protect the basic privacy and due process rights of people whose telephone records have been divulged without a warrant, notice or consent.”

In addition to the ACLU of Massachusetts, actions were filed today by ACLU affiliates in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Other ACLU affiliates are expected to file additional letters and complaints in the coming weeks.

As part of its nationwide campaign, the ACLU today is running full-page advertisements in The New York Times and half a dozen major daily newspapers, with the headline: “If You’ve Used a Telephone in the Last Five Years, Read This.” The advertisement provides a link to www.aclu.org/dontspy, where individuals can add their names to the public record in the ACLU’s complaints with Public Utility Commissions and send e-mails to the FCC urging that it investigate the matter. The ad is also running in the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Portland Press Herald (Maine) and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“We are seeking to create the perfect storm to end illegal NSA spying,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program.

When the NSA spying program was initially uncovered last December, the ACLU was one of the first organizations to bring a legal challenge, acting on behalf of a prominent and politically diverse group of journalists, scholars and lawyers. That challenge will be heard before Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit on Monday, June 12; it will be the first ever hearing on the legality of NSA spying since the program was disclosed.

By Ryan Singel

When the government told a court Friday that it wanted a class-action lawsuit regarding the National Security Agency's eavesdropping on Americans dismissed, its lawyers wielded one of the most powerful legal tools available to the executive branch -- the state secrets privilege.

That privilege allows the government to tell a judge that a civil case may expose information detrimental to national security, and to ask that testimony or documents be hidden or a lawsuit dismissed. That extraordinary executive power was established in English common law and upheld in a 1953 Supreme Court case involving the fatal crash of a secret bomber.

In this case, the government will be asking a federal judge in California to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T for its alleged complicity in warrantless government surveillance of its customer's internet and telephone communications. The EFF alleges that AT&T gave the government access to a massive phone billing database and helped the NSA spy on its customers' internet use.

But what exactly is the privilege, and how powerful is it?

Read the rest at Wired News

At the center of the square off over the access to private personal data online -- a much publicized debate that extends from Beijing to Washington -- stands an uncertain arbiter: the search engine.

The companies that operate the most popular search engines -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft -- are making decisions about how the information they collect about user behavior should be protected, in some cases from the eyes of governments that want to take a closer look but lack a clear legal right to do so.

"Search engines are the future of [that] debate," says Timothy Wu, a Columbia Law School professor specializing in telecommunications law, copyright, and international trade. "Questions about policy ultimately are going to be handled by search engines -- whether we live in a more or less government-controlled country."

As the collection and storage of data becomes an industry of its own, the availability of the information "is a temptation for the government," says Sherwin Siy, staff counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit public interest group. He, Wu and others spoke Tuesday in a panel discussion at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York City.

And when governments -- not just in the United States, but around the world -- want information about their citizens, "Search engines are first places they go," says Wu, who is also the co-author of a new book, "Who Controls the Internet."

Recently, Google has resisted a subpoena by the Justice Department to turn over search query data, while in China, Yahoo has complied with government requests for data that have led to the imprisonment of at least three people.

In the past year, search engines have unveiled new features in their services that are based on an individual's history of online inquiries. Google's Personalized Search, for example, still in beta after launching last June, orders results based on what a user has sought out in the past.

Searches conducted on a user-downloaded toolbar, offered by all the major U.S. portals, collect more information than a search engine normally would.

Ramez Naam, group program manager for Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Search, believes that consumers are not as concerned about the security of information related to their Internet searches as they are with fighting computer viruses, for which they often purchase extra software protection.

"Privacy is not something that people are saying this is priority one, you have to have this," he says. Anonymous surfing software is available from companies such as Anonymizer, but "few people are so motivated that they would install this."

Microsoft is working to make its privacy agreements more comprehensible for the average user, he says.

While Amazon.com has shown that personalization can be a valuable service for consumers when they're shopping, "in the search engine world we've not yet demonstrated this is a great feature."

"We're highly motivated to figure out what we can do to give people the privacy they need and the services on top of that," Naam says. "There's certainly an opportunity to provide value-add to customers and make more money."

A key public policy question for the future will be how easily search engines and future browser software accommodate individuals who wish to protect their identity while using the Internet, Wu says.

"Search engines can't help but take a political stance," he says. "When they make a decision to put an Anonymizer in software, they're making a decision."

InternetWeek

By Antone Gonsalves

Want privacy? Don't give up your personal data.

That's the gist of the brouhaha that followed Google Inc.'s release this week of an upgrade to its Google Desktop software, which can store files from a PC on the company's server.

Among the enhancements in the new version of the product, which is available by download, is a feature called Search Across Computers, which allows people to choose files on their hard drives that they want Google to automatically index, store and track on its servers, and make accessible over the Web from any computer. People can disable the feature, if they don't want files stored online.

According to Google's privacy policy, the company would treat the files as personal data and not share it with anyone. Besides storing files, the company also offers to store a person's email and instant messaging correspondences, and while Google doesn't have any plans to use any of the information to target people with advertising, it doesn't say it won't in the future.

Nevertheless, even the vocal critics of the Mountain View, Calif., search engine agree that Google is not the villain with a black hat in offering to store personal data. "But, it's at least wearing a grey hat," Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for privacy advocate the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said.

The San Francisco group argues that many people are unlikely to take the time to learn the features that can disable and manage file and data sharing. In addition, it says Google is asking for too much information, and could enhance privacy of personal files by encrypting the data and giving its owners the only key to unlock the information.

"Google has a responsibility to make privacy by design a priority," Bankston said.

EFF, which advises people not to store personal data with Google, also argues that the company is making people more vulnerable to lawyers' subpoenas and government warrants, because current federal law gives less protection to data stored online than to data stored in a home PC.

But Andrew Serwin, a partner and privacy expert with the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP in San Diego, disagrees, arguing that government, law enforcement and attorneys in civil cases have to follow the same rules in seeking personal data online as offline.

Read the rest at Network Computing

WASHINGTON -- The government surveillance stories that have filled the headlines in recent months aren't isolated incidents, but rather reflect a widening gap between the technology that collects sensitive personal data and the laws designed to protect that data against government misuse, a new report finds.

The National Security Agency's domestic spying program, the Justice Department's efforts to obtain millions of Internet search records, the government's use of cell phones to track suspects, and other developments highlight the law's failure to keep pace with technological advances, according to ''Digital Search & Seizure: Updating Privacy Protections to Keep Pace with Technology," a report released today by the Center for Democracy & Technology. The report suggests that technology is making government surveillance easier, not harder, and that stronger protections are needed if innocent Americans are to retain their privacy rights.


[ Read the rest ... ]

By Alexander Wolfe

The recent news that the U.S. Justice Department has been seeking search data from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and America Online has struck fear into the hearts of Web surfers. Many users are concerned, not because they've done anything wrong, but because they wonder just how much personal information can be gleaned from their on-line searches.

While the government action is aimed at fighting child porn, some computer-security pundits and newspaper columnists are raising concerns that even users who haven't gone anywhere near such toxic material could potentially have their searches traced.

Political debates aside, the question of browser privacy is at its heart a technical issue. Whether you're using Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox , there are at five simple steps you can take to keep Web busybodies from uncovering information on your search queries.

Read the rest at Security Pipeline

By Antone Gonsalves

Microsoft Corp. has defended its decision to provide search data to federal prosecutors trying to revive an anti-pornography law ruled unconstitutional, saying it "tried to strike the right balance in a very sensitive matter."

Last Thursday, America Online Inc., Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. acknowledged that they received subpoenas from the Justice Department, which is trying to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo acknowledged handing over search data to the government; Google has refused and intends to fight, saying the Bush administration's requests are too broad.

The day after the disclosure, Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., said in its MSN Search Weblog that its actions were consistent with the "principle statement: privacy of our customers is non-negotiable and something worth fighting to protect," said Ken Moss, general manager of MSN Web Search.

Microsoft and the other companies who handed information over to the Justice Department were criticized by some experts as giving in too easily. In defending itself, Microsoft explained that it provided a random sample of pages from its search index and some aggregated query logs that listed queries and how often they occurred.

The data revealed how frequently some query terms occurred, but could not be used to link queries to an IP address or to look for people who queried for specific terms. An IP address is an identifier for a device attached to the Internet.p>

"Absolutely no personal data was involved," Moss said. In providing the data, the company "tried to strike the right balance in a very sensitive matter."

Read the rest at Security Pipeline