Tag: Homeland Security

EFF, ACLU Demolish "It’s Just Metadata" Claim in NSA Spying Appeal

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Contact:
Andrew Crocker
Legal Fellow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
an****@*ff.org
+1 415 436-9333 x139

EFF, ACLU Demolish “It’s Just Metadata” Claim in NSA Spying Appeal

Americans Deserve Full Protection of the Fourth Amendment
for their Telephone Records, Groups Argue

Washington, DC – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today filed
an amicus brief in Klayman v. Obama, a high-profile lawsuit
that challenges mass surveillance, arguing that Americans’
telephone metadata deserves the highest protection of the
Fourth Amendment.
Larry Klayman, conservative activist and founder of
Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, was among the first
plaintiffs to sue the National Security Agency (NSA) over
the collection of telephone metadata from Verizon customers
that was detailed in documents released by Edward Snowden.
In December 2013, Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary
ruling that the program was likely unconstitutional, and
the case is currently on appeal before the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In the new amicus brief in Klayman v. Obama, the EFF and
ACLU lawyers repudiate arguments by U.S. officials that the
records are “just metadata” and therefore not as sensitive
as the contents of phone calls. Using research and new
case law, the civil liberties groups argue that metadata
(such as who individuals called, when they called, and how
long they spoke) can be even more revealing than
conversations when collected en masse.
“Metadata isn’t trivial,” EFF Legal Fellow Andrew Crocker
says. “Collected on a massive scale over a broad time
period, metadata can reveal your political and religious
affiliations, your friends and relationships, even whether
you have a health condition or own guns. This is exactly
the kind of warrantless search the Fourth Amendment was
intended to prevent.”
The brief explains that changes in technology, as well as
the government’s move from targeted to mass surveillance,
mean that the holding of the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith
v. Maryland that the government relies on (often called the
“third-party doctrine”) does not apply. Instead, EFF and
the ACLU point to a series of recent key
decisions–including the Supreme Court decisions in United
States v. Jones in 2012 and Riley v. California in 2014–in
which judges ruled in favor of requiring a warrant for
electronic search and seizure.
“Dragnet surveillance is and has always has been illegal in
the United States,” says ACLU Staff Attorney Alex Abdo.
“Our country’s founders rebelled against overbroad searches
and seizures, and they would be aghast to see the liberties
they fought hard to enshrine into our Constitution
sacrificed in the name of security. As even the president
himself has recognized, we can keep the nation safe without
surrendering our privacy.”
EFF and the ACLU have each litigated numerous First and
Fourth Amendment lawsuits related to NSA surveillance and
together represent Idaho nurse Anna Smith in a similar case
currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
called Smith v. Obama. The ACLU is a plaintiff in a case
currently pending before the Second Circuit Court of
Appeals, ACLU v. Clapper, to be heard on Sept. 2. EFF has
two cases–Jewel v. NSA and First Unitarian Church of Los
Angeles v. NSA–before the U.S. District Court for Northern
District of California.
For the amicus brief:
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-and-aclu-amicus-brief-klayman
For this release:
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-aclu-demolish-its-just-metadata-claim-nsa-spying-appeal
 

I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/19/im-a-cop-if-you-dont-want-to-get-hurt-dont-challenge-me/
It’s not the police, but the people they stop, who can prevent a detention from turning into a tragedy. By Sunil Dutta August 19
Sunil Dutta, a professor of homeland security at Colorado Tech University, has been an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years. The views presented here are his own and do not represent the LAPD or CTU.

<MINDSET>
Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me.

VS
Policing by consent
http://kottke.org/14/08/policing-by-consent
Compare and contrast that with Kottke’s post discussing the core principles of the original Bobbies:
At the heart of the Metropolitan Police’s charter were a set of rules either written by Peel or drawn up at some later date by the two founding Commissioners: The Nine Principles of Policing. They are as follows:
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

Ken White at PopeHat has an excellent take on this:
http://www.popehat.com/2014/08/19/sunil-dutta-tells-it-like-it-is-about-american-policing/The money quote from Ken:

[Dutta’s] core message is this:
Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.

The outrageous thing is not that he says it. The outrageous thing is that we accept it.

Would we accept
“if you don’t want to get shot, just do what the EPA regulator tells you”?
Would we yield to
“if you don’t want your kid tased, do what the Deputy Superintendent of Education tells you”?
Would we accept
“if you don’t want to get tear gassed, just do what your Congressman tells you?” No.

Our culture of individualism and liberty would not permit it.
Yet somehow, through generations of law-and-order rhetoric and near-deification of law enforcement, we have convinced ourselves that cops are different, and that it is perfectly acceptable for them to be able to order us about, at their discretion, on pain of violence.
It’s not acceptable. It is servile and grotesque.
Chris Beck

US police given billions from Homeland Security for 'tactical' equipment

The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson
The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on “the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement,” the criminal justice professor Peter Kraska defined “police militarization” as “the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model.”
The harrowing events of the last week in Ferguson, Missouri – the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager, Mike Brown, and the blatantly excessive and thuggish response to ensuing community protests from a police force that resembles an occupying army – have shocked the U.S. media class and millions of Americans. But none of this is aberrational.
 
 
US police given billions from Homeland Security for ‘tactical’ equipment
With little oversight, federal agency awarded billions to local police for spending on drones, drugs, vehicles and ‘animals and plants’, among eligible purchases

Under existing federal requirements, police departments and state law enforcement agencies do not need to spend much of that money on preventing terrorism or preparing for disaster relief.
The Department of Homeland Security would not say whether it plans to review any of its grant programs in light of the controversy surrounding the deployment of military-style gear on the streets of Ferguson. One of its main congressional overseers told the Guardian he plans to “continue” scrutiny of the grants, while praising them as necessary.
During the current fiscal year, DHS plans to award $1.6bn in grant money for state, local and tribal agencies, mostly to aid them with counterterrorism, border security and disaster preparedness, it announced last month. By contrast, the Defense Department’s “1033” program to transfer surplus military gear gave out less than $500m worth of equipment in fiscal 2013.
 
SHOCKING 1 in 7 Americans are starving 
Explained by Lauren Bush granddaughter of George H and niece of George W bush
http://www.reuters.com/video/2014/08/18/feeding-americas-startling-statistics?videoId=340524227
 
Humans Need Not Apply 15:00 TOTAL
THE TAKE AWAY: AUTOMATION PRODUCED ABUNDANCE FOR LITTLE EFFORT.

  • MUSCLE LABOR REPLACED BY MACHINES
  • BRAIN LABOR REPLACED BY MACHINES
  • SOFTWARE BOTS ARE  BETTER THAN HUMANS (COLLEGE WHITE COLLAR WORKERS)
  • AUTOMATION ENGINEERS PROGRAM BOTS TO TEACH THEMSELVES
  • AUTOMATION ENGINEERS PROGRAM THE SHIT OUT OF YOU BEING NEEDED
  • BOTS THEN TEACH THEMSELVES HOW TO PROGRAM THE SHIT OUT OF AUTOMATION ENGINEERS
  • BOTS TAUGHT THEMSELVES HOW TO TRADE WITH OTHER BOTS ON THE STOCK MARKET IS HOW THIS WORKS NOW.
  • PROFESSIONAL BOTS DO THE WORK OF LAWYERS AND DOCTORS NOW
  • YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL THERE IS A CREATIVE BOT TOO
  • MECHANICAL BOTS CAN DO CREATIVE WORK
  • ARTIFICIAL CREATIVITY FOR ALL HUMAN TALENTS
  • EMILY HOWELL BOT WRITES MUSIC
  • THE ROBOT REVOLUTION WILL REPLACE 45% OF THE WORK FORCE. 13:44
  • WHAT TO DO WHEN THE MAJORITY OF THE WORK FORCE IS UNEMPLOYABLE?

MAKE SURE THE POLICE IS THE MILITARY!
 

 
“Abundance, for little effort.” 
That the way we live better is by producing more per unit of labor. Robert Solow’s (Nobel-winning) insight.
FROM 60- or 70-hour weeks.
TODAY with productivity increases from technical advance, decent livings are possible with 40-hour weeks.
TOMORROW  2-hour weeks
Of course, the _real_ issue, then, is wealth distribution.
Who ‘takes home’ the benefits from such dramatic labor-saving?   The way things are going in the US, for example, the answer is:  A good bit less than 1 percent of the population.  Of course the world’s north-south divide illustrates this injustice at the global level.
 
 
 
Hundreds of bioterror lab mishaps cloaked in secrecy
Alison Young, USA TODAY 5:25 p.m. EDT August 17, 2014
Hundreds of bioterror lab mishaps cloaked in secrecy More than 1,100 laboratory incidents involving potential bioterror germs were reported to federal regulators during 2008 through 2012, reports show. Details of what happened are cloaked in secrecy.
More than half these incidents were serious enough that lab workers received medical evaluations or treatment, according to the reports. In five incidents, investigations confirmed that laboratory workers had been infected or sickened; all recovered. In two other incidents, animals were inadvertently infected with contagious diseases that would have posed significant threats to livestock industries if they had spread. One case involved the infection of two animals with hog cholera, a dangerous virus eradicated from the USA in 1978. In another incident, a cow in a disease-free herd next to a research facility studying the bacteria that cause brucellosis, became infected due to practices that violated federal regulations, resulting in regulators suspending the research and ordering a $425,000 fine, records show.
But the names of the labs that had mishaps or made mistakes, as well as most information about all of the incidents, must be kept secret because of federal bioterrorism laws, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which regulates the labs and co-authored the annual lab incident reports with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The issue of lab safety and security has come under increased scrutiny by Congress in recent weeks after a series of high-profile lab blunders at prestigious government labs involving anthrax, bird flu and smallpox virus. On Friday, a CDC investigation revealed how a rushed laboratory scientist had been using sloppy practices when a specimen of a mild bird flu virus was unwittingly contaminated with a deadly strain before being shipped to other labs. Earlier this summer, other researchers at CDC potentially exposed dozens of agency staff to live anthrax because of mistakes; nobody was sickened. Meanwhile, at the National Institutes of Health, long-forgotten vials of deadly smallpox virus were discovered in a cold-storage room where they weren’t supposed to be.

The new lab incident data indicate mishaps occur regularly at the more than 1,000 labs operated by 324 government, university and private organizations across the country that are registered with the Federal Select Agent Program. The program is jointly run by the USDA and the CDC, which are required by law to annually submit short reports with incident data to Congress.

Such secrecy is a barrier to improving lab safety, said Gigi Kwik Gronvall of the UPMC Center for Health Security in Baltimore, an independent think tank that studies policy issues relating to biosecurity issues, epidemics and disasters.

“We need to move to something more like what they do in aviation, where you have no-fault reporting but the events are described so you get a better sense of what actually happened and how the system can be fixed,” said Gronvall, an immunologist by training and anassociate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Gronvall notes that even with redundant systems in high-security labs, there have been lab incidents resulting in the spread of disease to people and animals outside the labs.

[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Newsletter

Fact Sheet: Senate’s USA FREEDOM ACT OF 2014

http://blogs.rollcall.com/technocrat/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2014/07/USA-FREEDOM-Act-background.pdf
USA FREEDOM ACT OF 2014
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 bans the bulk collection of Americans’private records.
• This bill enacts significant reforms to the surveillance
authorities that the government has used to justify collecting Americans’ telephone records and Internet metadata in bulk.
• It bans bulk collection by requiring the government to narrowly limit the scope of its collection, and makes clear that the
government may not collect all information relating to a
particular service provider or to a broad geographic region, such as a city, zip code or area code.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 provides the Intelligence Community
with the authority it needs to collect phone records in a more
targeted manner.
To replace bulk collection, the bill authorizes the use of
Section215 to obtain two hops of “call detail records” on a daily basis, if the government can demonstrate reasonable, articulable
suspicion that its search term is associated with a foreign
terrorist organization.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 expands government and company
reporting to the public.
• The bill requires the government to report the number of
individuals whose information has been collected under various
authorities; the number of those individuals who were likely
Americans; and the number of searches run on Americans in certain databases. It contains exceptions for numbers that are not
currently possible to generate.
• This bill gives private companies four options for reporting
public information about the number of FISA orders and national
security letters they receive.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 reforms the FISA Court process.
• This bill requires the FISA Court, in consultation with the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, to appoint a panel ofspecial advocates who are to advance legal positions in support ofindividual privacy and civil liberties.
• This bill enhances mechanisms for appellate review of
FISA Court decisions. The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 brings
Section 215 and National Security Letter nondisclosure orders intocompliance with the First Amendment.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 imposes new privacy protections for
FISA pen registers.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 prohibits the use of unlawfully
obtained information under Section 702 of FISA.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 extends the June 2015 USA PATRIOT Act sunsets to December 2017, to bring them in line with the current
FISA Amendments Act sunset.