Presidential Surveillance Program: Spying Went Beyond Warrantless Wiretapping

[Rockwell]

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration authorized secret surveillance activities that still have not been made public, according to a new government report that questions the legal basis for the unprecedented anti-terrorism program.

It's unclear how much valuable intelligence was yielded by the surveillance program started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to the unclassified summary of reports by five inspectors general. The reports mandated by Congress last year were delivered to lawmakers Friday.

President George W. Bush authorized other secret intelligence activities _ which have yet to become public _ even as he was launching the massive warrentless wiretapping program, the summary said. It describes the entire program as the "President's Surveillance Program."

The report describes the program as unprecedented and raises questions about the legal grounding used for its creation. It also says the intelligence agencies' continued retention and use of the information collected under the program should be carefully monitored.

Many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap in intelligence. Others, including FBI, CIA and National Counterterrorism Center analysts, said intelligence gathered by traditional means was often more specific and timely, according to the report.

The Bush White House acknowledged in 2005 that it allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international communications that passed through U.S. cables without court orders.

The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 government officials and private sector personnel, including former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Five former Bush administration officials refused to be interviewed, including former CIA Director George Tenet and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/10/pres...

[MBP-CALI]

OK so they copied every bit of data off the internet backbone,
easedropped on every airborne signal
, created a database of all our emails,
used NSA satellites to spy on US soil,
infiltrated antiwar peace groups,
used state police as part of domestic spying.

What else is left? Murder of Americans based on a suspicion?

Everyone who participated in this is worse than Al Q.

[Hello]

Yawn - slinging the same old sludge.

[MBP-CALI]

March 2nd, 2009
Bush Administration Claimed Fourth Amendment Did Not Apply to NSA Spying
News Update by Kurt Opsahl
In an October 23, 2001, Office of Legal Counsel memo released today, the Bush Administration concluded that "the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations," including "intercepting electronic or wireless communications" by "employing surveillance methods more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies." See Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at pp. 4, 18, and 25 (emphasis original).

When news of this memo first surfaced in a footnote to another memo, we wondered if it meant that the Administration's lawyers advised that the National Security Agency (a component of the military) could spy on Americans with impunity and face no Fourth Amendment claim.

Turns out that the Bush Administration did think it could spy on Americans in the U.S. without regard to the Constitution.

We had suspected as much, but the confirmation is still chilling. Our suspicions were raised back in 2006 when the DOJ asserted that "that warrantless communications intelligence targeted at the enemy in time of armed conflict is a traditional and fundamental incident of the use of military force authorized by the AUMF" and that "the NSA activities fit squarely within the sweeping terms of the AUMF. The use of signals intelligence to identify and pinpoint the enemy is a traditional component of wartime military operations." As the DOJ saw it, "In the present conflict, unlike in the Korean War, the battlefield was brought to the United States ..." Thus, we were deeply concerned that the "domestic military operations" authorized by the OLC memo included domestic surveillance of Americans, without regard to their constitutional rights.

Now we know. The recently released October 23, 2001 Memo confirms a disregard for the Constitution that was only hinted at before. In finding the Bill of Rights over-ridden by the President's authority to use military force, it also asserts that the "use of force ... might include ... employing surveillance methods more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies."(p. 4) and that domestic "[m]ilitary action might encompass ... intercepting electronic or wireless communications." (p. 18). The opinion's sweeping scope was not limited to terrorists, asserting the "Government's ability to 'search' and 'seize' even innocent United States persons," (p. 31, emphasis added), and that it was not "necessary that the military forces on our soil be foreign." (p. 27, emphasis original).

The October 23, 2001 Memo did not limit itself to the Fourth Amendment, asserting that the President's war powers superseded the "takings" clause of the Fifth Amendment (p. 33), and that "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage a war successfully." (p. 24).

This legal opinion, written by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, remained in effect until October 6, 2008, when the OLC issued a memo recommending that "caution be exercised before relying in any respect on the 10/23/01 memorandum."

Thus, between October 23, 2001, and October 6, 2008, resting on legal analysis that they now admit was "doubtful," the OLC took the unqualified position that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to domestic wiretapping conducted by a military entity, such as the NSA. Chilling indeed.

[ACLU RT]

Unclassified report on Bush's wiretapping now public. http://bit.ly/2t8fy (pdf) Oversight now, please? <- Pls R/T

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu...

[MBP-CALI]

June 17th, 2009
More from the NYT on NSA's Domestic Spying: "Pinwale" Has Your Emails
Deeplink by Kevin Bankston
Following up on their report in April detailing the National Security Agency's systemic and significant "overcollection" — that is, illegal interception — of Americans' domestic communications, James Risen and Eric Lichbtblau of the New York Times have just published a new story with even more detail about the NSA's ongoing warrantless wiretapping and the concerns it is raising in Congress.

Thankfully, it appears that the NYT's confirmation in April that the NSA has been exceeding its legal authority and "overcollecting" masses of Americans' communications has spurred some closed-door investigations on Capitol Hill. Today's story focuses on this renewed concern from Congress over the wiretapping program, and what Congress' latest closed-door inquiries have revealed about the ongoing spying:

Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
The anonymous NSA analyst had some very interesting things to tell the Times. In particular, we now have a name for the secret database program where the NSA stores the millions of foreign and domestic emails that its surveillance vacuum sucks up: it's called "Pinwale".

[The NSA] appears to have tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants, according to the former analyst, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.

The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.

Other intelligence officials confirmed the existence of the Pinwale e-mail database, but declined to provide further details.
These details are new, but the conclusion is still the same as we've been saying for years now: ordinary Americans' most private emails — even President Clinton's emails!— have been and still are being intercepted in bulk and then stored in secret NSA databases, without probable cause. That's why we're suing the government in our case Jewel v. NSA, and that's why one of the remedies we're asking for in that case is the destruction of the domestic communications and records that the NSA has been illegally hoarding in databases like Pinwale.

Help us rein in this blatant violation of your privacy rights and support our litigation to stop the NSA spying by joining EFF today. With your help, someday your emails, my emails, and even President Clinton's emails may finally be wiped from the NSA's memory banks.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic's blog has an interesting follow-up on the NYT story with additional details about the Pinwale database program.

http://www.eff.org/related/3488/blog

[MBP-CALI]

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Hersh_US_has_be...

It could be about Cheney's Assassination Ring - if you ever watch the Bourne series of movies, this is what we were doing. Killing and leaving...I think that violates the law.

[Hello]

LOL

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w135/goal4...

[Jonathan Turley]

Keith Olbermann: Bush Authorized Illegal Surveillance Beyond Wiretapping?
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

[MBP-CALI]

Hello wrote:

LOL
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w135/goal4...

Took the picture while you were at a Tea Bagging Protest Party?
Is that Mema in the background?

[gobbler26]

Is it the strategy of the left to keep the population focused on the last administration so they won't have a close eye on what is going on in Washington? Wake up! The Bush administration can't "hurt" you anymore...but the Democrats in Washington can destroy everything you "thought" was the American way of life.

[Random Damage]

gobbler26 wrote:

Is it the strategy of the left to keep the population focused on the last administration so they won't have a close eye on what is going on in Washington? Wake up! The Bush administration can't "hurt" you anymore...but the Democrats in Washington can destroy everything you "thought" was the American way of life.

Yeah, but how are the injuries and damages of that administration to be addressed? Just brush 8 years of constitutional violations under the rug? How can the democrats destroy what the previous administration decimated?

Geez, you actually try to rationalize what the bush administration did? You must have several cups of the kool-aid.

[gobbler26]

constitutional violations? yea...right. We will see how that works out for sure. In the mean time, the Democrats are turning the American dream to a nightmare and the dumb masses haven't a clue....although SOME are starting to figure it out.

[Random Damage]

gobbler26 wrote:

constitutional violations? yea...right. We will see how that works out for sure. In the mean time, the Democrats are turning the American dream to a nightmare and the dumb masses haven't a clue....although SOME are starting to figure it out.

Oooh, hate and fear!!! Twin prongs of the republican pitchfork. Spread the hate and spread the fear!!!!!

[gobbler26]

Democrats...prodded by the far liberal wing...are embarking on a journey that will have far reaching implications. Do they think they will NEVER be the party out of power? Will that be the start for Republicans to investigate all dealings while the Dems held power and seek criminal investigations on any appearance of "wrong" doing?
As to "hate and fear"....the Democrats/liberals cornered that market long ago.

[Hello]

MBP-CALI wrote:

<quoted text>
Took the picture while you were at a Tea Bagging Protest Party?
Is that Mema in the background?

OHHH good come back

[Dallas]

Have you ever seen the movie "Wag the Dog." Slightly different circumstance but same plot.

[Random Damage]

gobbler26 wrote:

Democrats...prodded by the far liberal wing...are embarking on a journey that will have far reaching implications. Do they think they will NEVER be the party out of power? Will that be the start for Republicans to investigate all dealings while the Dems held power and seek criminal investigations on any appearance of "wrong" doing?
As to "hate and fear"....the Democrats/liberals cornered that market long ago.

Was that before or after the "Willie Horton" ad campaign? Or perhaps the fear of Obama spreading socialism? or perhaps the proposition 8 issue? or how about the entire post 9/11 circus?

[gobbler26]

How about....electing a Republican will result in "black churches burning", seniors will "lose their social security" ....this list could go on forever. Do you really want to go there Random?
These aren't the same as attacking a previous administration after the fact....for political gain or revenge. If anyone believes it is any more than that....could I sell you some beachfront property in Arizona.

[gobbler26]

Obama spreading socialism.....he is well on his way, along with huge dept and bigger government. I wish it were only a "fear".