[Ppnews] The Secret State's Domestic Spying
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Sun May 8 19:59:14 EDT 2011
T<http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/8695-the-secret-states-domestic-spying.html>he
Secret State's Domestic
<http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/8695-the-secret-states-domestic-spying.html>Spying
written
by<http://www.pacificfreepress.com/component/comprofiler/userprofile/TBurghardt.html>
Tom Burghardt
Secret State's Domestic Spying on the Rise
by Tom Burghardt
l<http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/> Antifascist Calling...
http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/8695-the-secret-states-domestic-spying.html
Despite last week's "termination" of America's
bête noire, Osama bin Laden, the reputed "emir"
and old "new Hitler" of the Afghan-Arab database
of disposable Western intelligence assets known
as al-Qaeda,
<http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/05/2010_fisa.html>Secrecy
News reports an uptick in domestic spying.
Never mind that the administration is engaged in
an unprecedented
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/25/whistleblowers>war
on whistleblowers, or is systematically targeting
antiwar and solidarity activists with trumped-up
charges connected to the "material support of
terrorism," as last Fall's multi-state
<http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/09/fbi-raids-activists-homes-in-sinister.html>raids
on anarchists and socialists in Chicago and Minneapolis attest.
In order to do their best to "keep us safe," Team
Obama is busily building upon the criminal legacy
bequeathed to the administration by the Bush
regime and even asserts the right to assassinate
American citizens "without a whiff of due
process," as
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/07/awlaki/index.html>Salon's
Glenn Greenwald points out.
According to a new Justice Department
<http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/2010rept.pdf>report
submitted to Congress we learn that "during
calendar year 2010, the Government made 1,579
applications to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (hereinafter 'FISC') for
authority to conduct electronic surveillance
and/or physical searches" on what U.S. security
agencies allege are "for foreign intelligence purposes."
The April 29 missive, released under the Freedom
of Information Act, documents the persistence of
our internal security apparat's targeting of
domestic political opponents, under color of rooting out "terrorists."
Secrecy News analyst Steven Aftergood comments
that "this compares to a reported 1,376
applications in 2009. (In 2008, however, the
reported figure--2,082--was quite a bit higher.)"
"In 2010," Aftergood writes, "the government made
96 applications for access to business records
(and 'tangible things') for foreign intelligence
purposes, up from 21 applications in 2009."
Also last year, America's premier domestic
intelligence agency, the FBI, "made 24,287
'national security letter' requests for
information pertaining to 14,212 different U.S.
persons, a substantial increase from the 2009
level of 14,788 NSL requests concerning 6,114
U.S. persons. (In 2008, the number of NSL
requests was 24,744, pertaining to 7,225 persons.)"
As I have pointed out many times, national
security letters are onerous lettres de cachet,
secretive administrative subpoenas with built-in
gag orders used by the Bureau to seize records
from third-parties such as banks, libraries and
telecommunications providers without any judicial
process whatsoever, not to mention the
expenditure of scarce tax dollars to spy on the American people.
"Money for Nothing..."
With U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's February
<http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/February/11-ag-181.html>announcement
that the Department of Justice will seek $28.2
billion from Congress in Fiscal Year 2012, a 1.7%
increase, the FBI is slated to reap an $8.1 billion windfall.
We're told that the "administration supports
critical national security programs within the
department, including the FBI and the National Security Division (NSD)."
"The requested national security resources
include $122.5 million in program increases for
the FBI," including "$48.9 million for the FBI to
expand national security related surveillance and
enhance its Data Integration and Visualization
System, as well as "$18.6 million for the FBI's
Computer Intrusion Initiative to increase
coverage in detecting cyber intrusions."
Rather ironic, considering that
<https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/audit-finds-fbi-doing-poor-job-cyber-investigations-042911>ThreatPost
reported last month that a U.S. Department of
Justice
<https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/audit-finds-fbi-doing-poor-job-cyber-investigations-042911>audit
found that the FBI's ability to "investigate
cyber intrusions" was less than adequate. The
report disclosed that "fully 36% [of field
agents] were found to be ill-equipped."
To make matters worse, "FBI field offices do not
have sufficient analytical and forensic
capabilities to support large scale
investigations, the audit revealed." All the more
reason then to shower even more money on the Bureau!
And with the FBI demanding new authority to peer
into our lives, on- and offline, the FY 2012
budget would "address the growing technological
gap between law enforcement's electronic
surveillance capabilities and the number and
variety of communications devices available to
the public, $17.0 million in program increases
are being requested to bolster the department's
electronic surveillance capabilities."
One sure sign that things haven't changed under
Obama is the FBI's quest for additional funds for
what it is now calling it's Data Integration and
Visualization System (DIVS). According to April
congressional
<http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-budget-for-fiscal-year-2012>testimony
by FBI Director Robert Mueller, DIVS will
"prioritize and integrate disparate datasets across the Bureau."
Another in a long line of taxpayer-funded
boondoggles, it appears that DIVS is the latest
iteration of various failed "case management" and
"data integration" programs stood up by the Bureau.
As I
<http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/04/managing-data-and-dissent-where-big.html>reported
last year, previous failed efforts by the FBI
have included the Bureau's Virtual Case File
(VCF) project. Overseen by the spooky Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC),
VCF cost taxpayers some $170 million dollars
before it crashed and burned in 2006.
And when defense and security giant Lockheed
Martin took over the case management brief, VCF,
now rechristened Sentinel, also enjoyed a
similarly expensive and waste-filled fate. A 2009
report by the Department of Justice's Office of
the Inspector General
(<http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a1003_redacted.pdf>OIG)
found that despite some $450 million dollars
showered on Lockheed Martin and assorted
subcontractors, the Sentinel system "encountered significant challenges."
According to a notice quietly posted in August in
the
<http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/08/31/2010-21248/privacy-act-of-1974-system-of-records#p-21>Federal
Register, "DIVS contains replications and
extractions of information maintained by the FBI
in other databases. This information is
replicated or extracted into DIVS in order to
provide an enhanced and integrated view of that information."
Wait a minute! Isn't that what VCF and Sentinel
were supposed to do? We're told that the "purpose
of DIVS is to strengthen and improve the methods
by which the FBI searches for and analyzes
information in support of its multifaceted
mission responsibilities to protect the nation
against terrorism and espionage and investigate criminal matters."
(Dirty) Business as Usual
While the FBI and the Justice Department have
failed to prosecute corporate criminals
responsible for the greatest theft and upward
transfer of wealth in history, not to mention the
virtual get-out-of-jail-free cards handed out to
top executives of the drug-money laundering
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-07/wachovia-s-drug-habit.html>Wachovia
Bank, they're rather adept at trampling the rights of the American people.
As the
<http://www.sfbayguardian.com/2011/04/26/spies-blue>San
Francisco Bay Guardian recently reported, while
corporate lawbreakers get a free pass, "San
Francisco cops assigned to the FBI's terrorism
task force can ignore local police orders and
California privacy laws to spy on people without any evidence of a crime."
According to a Memorandum of Understanding
obtained by the ACLU, "it effectively puts local
officers under the control of the FBI,"
investigative journalist Sarah Phelan disclosed.
Civil rights attorney Veena Dubal told the Bay
Guardian that during "the waning months of the
Bush administration" the FBI "changed its
policies to allow federal authorities to collect
intelligence on a person even if the subject is
not suspected of a crime. The FBI is now allowed
to spy on Americans who have done nothing
wrong--and who may be engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment."
"It's the latest sign of a dangerous trend: San
Francisco cops are working closely with the feds,
often in ways that run counter to city policy,"
Phelan writes. "And it raises a far-reaching
question: With a district attorney who used to be
police chief, a civilian commission that isn't
getting a straight story from the cops, and a
climate of secrecy over San Francisco's intimate
relations with outside agencies, who is watching the cops?"
Apparently, no one; and in such a repressive
climate the federal government has encouraged the
FBI to target anyone deemed a threat to the new corporate order.
Earlier this year, an Electronic Frontier
Foundation
<https://www.eff.org/pages/patterns-misconduct-fbi-intelligence-violations>report
revealed that the Bureau continues to
systematically violate the constitutional
guarantees of American citizens and legal
residents, and does so with complete impunity.
As I
<http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2011/02/american-police-state-fbi-abuses.html>wrote
at the time, this was rather ironic considering
the free passes handed out by U.S. securocrats to
actual terrorists who killed thousands of
Americans on 9/11, as both
<http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2010/02/10DOHA60.html>WikiLeaks
and FBI whistleblower
<http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/02/01/the-fbi-%E2%80%9Ckamikaze-pilots%E2%80%9D-case/>Sibel
Edmonds disclosed.
According to EFF, more than 2,500 documents
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that:
* From 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB
approximately 800 violations of laws, Executive
Orders, or other regulations governing
intelligence investigations, although this number
likely significantly under-represents the number
of violations that actually occurred.
* From 2001 to 2008, the FBI investigated, at
minimum, 7000 potential violations of laws,
Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.
* Based on the proportion of violations reported
to the IOB and the FBI's own statements regarding
the number of NSL violations that occurred, the
actual number of violations that may have
occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000
possible violations of law, Executive Order, or
other regulations governing intelligence
investigations. (Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence
Violations from 2001-2008, January 30, 2011)
But FBI lawbreaking didn't stop there. Citing
internal documents, EFF revealed that the Bureau
also "engaged in a number of flagrant legal
violations" that included, "submitting false or
inaccurate declarations to courts," "using
improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury
subpoenas" and "accessing password protected documents without a warrant."
And just last week the civil liberties' watchdogs
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/fbi-chastised-court-lying-about-existence>reported
that "the U.S. District Court for the Central
District of California has revealed the FBI lied
to the court about the existence of records
requested under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA), taking the position that FOIA allows it
to withhold information from the court whenever
it thinks this is in the interest of national security."
The court sharply disagreed and
<http://www.mainjustice.com/files/2011/04/Cormac-Carney-Order.pdf>asserted
that "the Government cannot, under any
circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court."
The Court held, following settled case law that
goes all the way back to Marbury v. Madison
(1803) that "Numerous statutes, rules, and cases
reflect the understanding that the Judiciary
cannot carry out its essential function if
lawyers, parties, or witnesses obscure the facts."
Skewering the FBI, U.S. District Judge Cormac J.
Carney wrote that while "The Government contends
that the FOIA permits it to provide the Court
with the same misinformation it provided to
Plaintiffs regarding the existence of other
responsive information or else the Government
would compromise national security ... that argument is indefensible."
Nevertheless, that court and the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals still held that despite the
Bureau's obvious attempt to bamboozle the federal
judiciary, thus subverting the separation of
powers amongst the three co-equal branches of
government as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution
(Article III), "disclosing the number and nature
of the documents the Government possesses could
reasonably be expected to compromise national
security." (see:
<http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/03/30/09-56035.pdf>Islamic
Shura Council of S. California v. FBI.)
In other words, while the Bureau was chastised
for withholding relevant documents from the court
that might demonstrate their illegal surveillance
of organizations and individuals who have never
been indicted, or even charged, with so-called
"terrorism offenses," the "national security" card trumps everything.
Electronic Surveillance
Late last month, EFF staff attorney Jennifer
Lynch
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/CIPAV_Post>reported
the group had "recently received documents from
the FBI that reveal details about the depth of
the agency's electronic surveillance capabilities
and call into question the FBI's controversial
effort to push Congress to expand the
Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act
(CALEA) for greater access to communications data."
The documents were obtained under a FOIA request
by EFF after a 2007 report published by
<http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/07/fbi_spyware?currentPage=all>Wired
disclosed that the FBI had deployed "secret spyware" to track domestic targets.
According to Wired, "FBI agent Norman Sanders
describes the software as a 'computer and
internet protocol address verifier,' or CIPAV."
In a follow-up
<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/08/fbis-wiretap-ne/>piece,
investigative journalist Ryan Singel revealed
that the FBI "has quietly built a sophisticated,
point-and-click surveillance system that performs
instant wiretaps on almost any communications device."
That surveillance system known as DCSNet, or
Digital Collection System Network, formerly known
as Carnivore, "connects FBI wiretapping rooms to
switches controlled by traditional land-line
operators, internet-telephony providers and
cellular companies," Wired reported.
"It is far more intricately woven into the
nation's telecom infrastructure than observers
suspected," Singel wrote at the time, a point
underscored a year later when whistleblower
<http://www.themediaconsortium.com/reporting/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/affidavit-bp-final.pdf>Babak
Pasdar blew the lid off the close relations
amongst America's telecoms and the Bureau's illegal surveillance programs.
As
<http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2008/04/fbis-quantico-circuit-still-spying.html>Antifascist
Calling reported at the time, a telecom carrier
Pasdar worked for as a security consultant,
subsequently named as Verizon by
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040702364.html>The
Washington Post, said the company maintained a
high-speed DS-3 digital line that allowed the
Bureau and other security agencies "unfettered"
access to the carrier's wireless network,
including billing records and customer data "transmitted wirelessly."
While Verizon denied the report that the FBI has
open access to its network, their mendacious
claims were demolished when the secrecy-shredding
web site <http://cryptome.org/>Cryptome published
the firm's
<http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/verizon-spy.pdf>"Law
Enforcement Legal Compliance Guide" in 2010.
Amongst the "helpful hints" provided to law
enforcement by the carrier, Verizon urges state spies to "be specific."
"Do not include wording such as 'any and all
records'", we read. "The courts have
traditionally ruled that this wording is
considered overly broad and burdensome. Request
only what is required." On and on it goes...
According to documents obtained by EFF, the
technologies discussed by Bureau snoops, when
installed on a target's computer, allows the FBI to collect the following:
* IP Address
* Media Access Control (MAC) address
* "Browser environment variables"
* Open communication ports
* List of the programs running
* Operating system type, version, and serial number
* Browser type and version
* Language encoding
* The URL that the target computer was previously connected to
* Registered computer name
* Registered company name
* Currently logged in user name
* Other information that would assist with
"identifying computer users, computer software
installed, [and] computer hardware installed"
(Electronic Frontier Foundation, New FBI
Documents Provide Details on Government's Surveillance Spyware, April 29, 2011)
According to initial reporting by Wired, the FBI
may have infiltrated the malicious program onto a
target's computer by "pointing to code that would
install the spyware by exploiting a vulnerability in the user's browser."
Lynch comments that "although the documents
discuss some problems with installing the tool in
some cases, other documents note that the
agency's Crypto Unit only needs 24-48 hours to prepare deployment."
Once the tool is installed, Bureau snoops aver
"it stay[s] persistent on the compromised
computer and ... every time the computer connects
to the Internet, [FBI] will capture the
information associated with the PRTT
[<https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/pen-registers>Pen
Register/Trap & Trace Order]."
The privacy watchdogs write that the Bureau "has
been using the tool in domestic criminal
investigations as well as in
<https://www.eff.org/files/FBI_CIPAV-07-p45.pdf>FISA
cases, and the FISA Court appears to have
questioned the
<https://www.eff.org/files/FBI_CIPAV-14-p52.pdf>propriety of the tool."
This is particularly relevant, and troubling,
considering that the FBI and other secret state
agencies such as the CIA and NSA already possess
formidable surveillance tools in their arsenals
and that private security outfits such as HBGary
and Palantir--as well as hundreds of other
firms--are busily concocting ever-more intrusive
spyware for their state and private partners, as
the massive disclosure of internal HBGary emails
and documents by the cyber-guerrilla group
<http://hbgary.anonleaks.ch/>Anonymousrevealed.
With all the hot air from Washington surrounding
claims by the FBI and other secret state
satrapies that they'll "go dark" unless Congress
grants them authority to build secret backdoors
into America's communications networks, EFF
revealed that documents "show the FBI already has
numerous tools available to surveil suspects
directly, rather than through each of their communications service providers."
"One heavily redacted
<https://www.eff.org/files/FBI_CIPAV-08-p168.pdf>email
notes that the FBI has other tools that 'provide
the functionality of the CIPAV [text redacted] as
well as provide other useful info that could help further the case'."
What is clear from the latest document release is
that it isn't the FBI that's "going dark" but the
right of the American people to free speech and
political organizing without the threat that
government-sanctioned malware which remains
"persistent" on a "compromised computer" becomes
one more tool for building "national security" dossiers on dissidents.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based
in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to
publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and
<http://globalresearch.ca/>Global Research, an
independent research and media group of writers,
scholars, journalists and activists based in
Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor with
<http://www.cjournal.info/>Cyrano's Journal
Today. His articles can be read on
<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/>Dissident Voice,
<http://www.inteldaily.com/>The Intelligence
Daily, <http://www.pacificfreepress.com/>Pacific
Free Press,
<http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/>Uncommon
Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website
<http://wikileaks.ch/>WikiLeaks. He is the editor
of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil
Disturbance" Planning, distributed by
<http://www.akpress.org/2002/items/policestateamerica>AK
Press and has contributed to the new book from
<http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20425>Global
Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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