Tag Archives: Privacy

FBI ‘fabricated terror emergencies to get phone records’

The US justice department is preparing a report which concludes that the FBI repeatedly broke the law by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist to obtain more than 2,000 telephone call records over four years from 2002, including those of journalists on US newspapers, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.

The bureau also issued authorisations for the seizure of records after the fact, in order to justify unwarranted seizures.

The Washington Post said the emails show how counter-terrorism ­officials inside FBI headquarters breached regulations designed to protect civil liberties. (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. (Read more from wired.com)

Dear CIA,

Decode THIS:

…………………./´¯/)
………………..,/¯../
………………./…./
…………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`·¸
………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(‘(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
……….”…\………. _.·´
…………\…………..(
…………..\………….\…

Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions

More Change we can believe in. . .

By DEVLIN BARRETT (AP) – Sep 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.

Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve the post-Sept. 11 law’s authority to access business records, as well as monitor so-called “lone wolf” terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps.

The provision on business records was long criticized by rights groups as giving the government access to citizens’ library records, and a coalition of liberal and conservative groups complained that the Patriot Act gives the government too much authority to snoop into Americans’ private lives. (Read more from www.google.com/hostednews/)

Lawless Surveillance, Warrantless Rationales (a critique of Obama continuation of Bush policies)

Over at The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy website, Electronic Frontier Foundation Legal Director Cindy Cohn writes about the so-called Presidential Surveillance Program, the “still-shadowy set of programs that spy on Americans in America without any probable cause or warrant.” The EFF, as regular BB readers know, has fought this program for several years now — in 2006, it filed suit against AT&T for providing the NSA with direct access to its database of communications records. Snip from Cohn’s essay:

While the details are unknown, credible evidence indicates that billions of everyday communications of ordinary Americans are swept up by government computers and run through a process that includes both data-mining and review of content, to try to figure out whether any of us were involved in illegal or terrorist-related activity. That means that even the most personal and private of our electronic communications – between doctors and patients, between husbands and wives, or between children and parents – are subject to review by computer algorithms programmed by government bureaucrats or by the bureaucrats themselves. (Read more from boingboing.net)

See Also:

1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime’

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed.

The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: “It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.”

He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

“It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.” (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

Government Reaction: Obviously, we need more cameras.

Obamacare = massive loss of privacy

“Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled ‘Administrative Simplification,’ the bill sets new ‘standards’ for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will ‘enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . . ‘ In addition, they will ‘enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.’

What is envisioned is a ‘machine-readable health plan beneficiary card’ that, in addition to information about a person’s medical history, will contain checking-account or credit-card information, so as to allow electronic payments and, if a person is lucky, occasional remittances. Since under the proposed legislation everyone would be required to have health insurance, all Americans would have to provide this information.” (Read more from nationalreview.com)

Another target of Obamacare: Americans’ right to financial privacy

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

“Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled ‘Administrative Simplification,’ the bill sets new ‘standards’ for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will ‘enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . .’ In addition, they will ‘enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.'”
(from nationalreview.com)

A friend of mine who describes himself as liberal and pacifist put it this way: I support the interpretation that Roe v Wade guarantees certain privacy rights; how can you oppose gov’t intrusion into fertility, but support it for every other health decision.

Pastor Steven L Anderson Speaks @ Gilbert Arizona Tea Party

This turns into a great speech. It dispels the death by association much of the media preach – associating the tea parties with the Republican Party.

My favorite part comes at 4:30 – “The Republican Party does not represent you anymore. . . . President Obama is spending our children’s future. He’s selling us into slavery and serfdom. But don’t forget that before Obama’s stimulus was George W. Bush’s banker bailout that both McCain and Obama supported. They want you to think that you have a choice in this country between Republican and Democrat, between right and left, but when the governments boot is stamping upon your face – and I can speak from experience – it doesn’t matter whether it’s the left boot or the right boot. Big government is the enemy.”

IRS tells government everything about you

“The Joint Committee on Taxation today released Disclosure Report for Public Inspection Pursuant to Internal Revenue Code Section 6103(p)(3)(C) for Calendar Year 2008 (JCX-24-09). . . .

The report reveals that the IRS made 5.3 billion disclosures of tax return information to federal and state agencies (up from 4.5 billion in 2007). Here are the Top 5 recipients of taxpayer information:

1. States: 3,182,927,345 disclosures
2. Bureau of Census: 1,842,087,625 disclosures
3. Congressional Committees: 260,592,773 disclosures
4. Medicare Premium Subsidy Adjustment: 40,431,964 disclosures
5. Child Support Enforcement Agencies: 14,856,897 disclosures
” (Read more from taxprof.typepad.com)