Operation Eroding Freedom

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2007-08-09T15:02:00.000-05:00

We have moved! The content originally posted on this site is now being hosted on our new blog, Speak Truth to Power. Speak Truth To Power is a timely collection of insightful commentaries, news items, and video interviews brought to you by The Rutherford Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and human rights. Click here to visit.

FBI Would Skirt the Law With Proposed Phone Record Program, Experts Say

2007-07-11T16:00:00.000-05:00

ABC News reports, “A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say.” “The $5 million project would apparently pay private firms to store at least two years' worth of telephone and Internet activity by millions of Americans, few of whom would ever be considered a suspect in any terrorism, intelligence or criminal matter,” explains the report.

New York Plans Surveillance Veil for Downtown

2007-07-10T10:11:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports, “By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.” According to the report, “The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists.”

Court Supports Bush in Wiretap Suit

2007-07-10T10:09:00.000-05:00

The Los Angeles Times reports, “A federal appeals court on Friday handed the Bush administration a major victory, ruling that plaintiffs who had challenged its domestic spying program did not have legal standing to do so.” According to the report, “The 2-1 decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sent the case back to a judge in Detroit, who last year ruled the program unconstitutional. The panel ordered U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to dismiss the case, but it did not rule on the program's legality.”

Judges OK Warrantless Monitoring Of Web Use

2007-07-10T08:18:00.000-05:00

“Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.” The San Francisco Chronicle reports, “In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the ‘pen register’ devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves.”

Files on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War

2007-06-27T08:39:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports, “Long-secret documents released Tuesday provide new details about how the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on Americans decades ago, including trying to bug a Las Vegas hotel room for evidence of infidelity and tracking down an expert lock-picker for a Watergate conspirator.” “Known inside the agency as the ‘family jewels,’” the Times explains, “the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A.”

FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data

2007-06-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports, “An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.” According to the report, “The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews.”

FBI Terror Watch List 'Out of Control'

2007-06-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

ABC News reports, “A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.” According to the report, “A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals.”

Democrats May Subpoena N.S.A. Documents

2007-06-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

“Senior House Democrats threatened Thursday to issue subpoenas to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents from the Justice Department related to the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program,” reports The New York Times. “If the Democrats take that step,” according to the report, “it would mark the most aggressive action yet by Congress in its oversight of the wiretapping program and could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.”

Official: Cheney Urged Wiretaps

2007-06-07T10:50:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports that a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday that “Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004.” According to the report, “The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.”

Bush Wants Phone Firms Immune to Privacy Suits

2007-05-04T14:22:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports, “The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens' privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program.” According to the report, “The measure is part of a legislative package drafted by the Justice Department to relax provisions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that restrict the administration's ability to intercept electronic communications in the United States.”

Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement

2007-05-02T08:57:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reports, “Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.” “Rather,” the report explains, “they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.”

Who’s Watching the F.B.I.?

2007-04-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

“In the latest and most serious post-9/11 civil-liberties abuse to emerge from Washington, the Bush administration’s ‘Trust me anyhow’ defense has finally collapsed,” writes law professor Jeffrey Rosen in today’s edition of The New York Times. According to Rosen, “The scandal involves ‘national-security letters,’ which the F.B.I. has secretly used to scrutinize the financial data, travel records and telephone logs of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents.”

City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention

2007-03-26T09:52:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports, “For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.” “From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami,” the report explains, “undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.”

FBI Violations May Number 3,000, Official Says

2007-03-21T10:03:00.000-05:00

According to The Washington Post, “The Justice Department's inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here.” The report goes on to state, “Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI's own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be ‘cases of serious misconduct’ involving the improper use of ‘national security letters’ to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records.”

FBI Issues New Rules For Getting Phone Records

2007-03-20T10:24:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports, “The FBI, which has been criticized for improperly gathering telephone records in terrorism cases, has told its agents they may still ask phone companies to voluntarily hand over toll records in emergencies by using a new set of procedures, officials said yesterday.” According to the article, under the new policy, requests can be submitted to the companies verbally in the most dire emergencies.

Feds, AT&T Urge Against Wiretap Trial

2007-03-13T15:34:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press reports, “The federal government is urging an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, warning that disclosure of such activities could compromise national security.” "’The suit's very subject matter - including the relationship, if any, between AT&T and the government in connection with the secret intelligence activities alleged by plaintiffs - is a state secret,’ the Justice Department argued in court papers.”

Report Says FBI Violated Patriot Act Guidelines

2007-03-09T08:42:00.000-05:00

ABC News reports, “The FBI repeatedly failed to follow the strict guidelines of the Patriot Act when its agents took advantage of a new provision allowing the FBI to obtain phone and financial records without a court order, according to a report to be made public Friday by the Justice Department's Inspector General.” “The report, in classified and unclassified versions, remains closely held, but Washington officials who have seen it tell ABC News it documents ‘numerous lapses’ and describe it as ‘scathing’ and ‘not a pretty picture for the FBI.’”

Key Lawmakers Getting Files About Surveillance Program

2007-02-01T13:41:00.000-05:00

“Bowing to bipartisan pressure from lawmakers,” reports The New York Times, “the Justice Department announced Wednesday that it was turning over to selected members of Congress secret documents with details of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.” According to the report, “The decision was made two weeks after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales faced senators’ withering questions about why the Bush administration had refused to provide details about the legal underpinnings of the program.”

Secrecy Is at Issue in Suits Opposing Spy Program

2007-01-29T10:26:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports, “The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits.” According to the report, plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings, judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies, and judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.

Canadian to Remain on U.S. Terrorist Watch List

2007-01-23T09:18:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports, “Despite a Canadian inquiry that cleared a Syrian-born Canadian citizen of any terrorist ties, the Bush administration has formally refused a Canadian government request that it remove the man, Maher Arar, from the terrorist watch list, saying that the United States has secret information justifying his inclusion.”

Spy Court's Orders Stir Debate on Hill

2007-01-19T08:41:00.000-05:00

“The Bush administration quickly locked horns with Democratic lawmakers yesterday over its revised domestic wiretap program, signaling that the government will probably oppose efforts to release new court orders from a clandestine court that now governs the spying.” According to The Washington Post, “The head of the secret court that approved the program said she has no objection to releasing the documents, but Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte indicated that the administration is likely to resist.”

Court to Oversee U.S. Wiretapping in Terror Cases

2007-01-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

“The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists,” reports The New York Times. According to the report, “The Justice Department said it had worked out an ‘innovative’ arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the ‘necessary speed and agility’ to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.”

The Legal Tangles Of Data Collection

2007-01-16T10:40:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has this article discussing technology’s toll on American civil liberties. The article opens: “When it comes to data collection, federal laws often have been outpaced by technology, critics say. And sometimes, the executive branch carves out its own exception.”

Deletions in Army Manual Raise Wiretapping Concerns

2007-01-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

“Deep into an updated Army manual,” reports The New York Times, “the deletion of 10 words has left some national security experts wondering whether government lawyers are again asserting the executive branch’s right to wiretap Americans without a court warrant.” The original guidelines from 1984 said the Army could seek to wiretap people inside the United States on an emergency basis by going to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or by obtaining certification from the attorney general “issued under the authority of section 102(a) of the Act.” But according to the report, “That last phrase is missing from the latest manual, which says simply that the Army can seek emergency wiretapping authority pursuant to an order issued by the FISA court ‘or upon attorney general authorization.’”