Archive for category: emptywheel

The last time John McCain tried so hard to screw Americans with bad telecom policy, his close lobbyist escort on a telecom donor’s plane was offering to share a blankie with him.

But that bad telecom McCain is back in action, introducing a bill that would invite telecoms to have their way with the public toobz.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a bill in the Senate on Thursday that would effectively allow Internet service providers to slow down or block Internet content or applications of their choosing.

[snip]

McCain’s bill, the Internet Freedom Act, would block the Federal Communications Commission from making Net neutrality the law of the land.

Maybe McCain’s just the kind of guy who, once bought, stays bought. Or maybe he has returned to his pre-presidential campaign ways, badmouthing the influence peddlers of Washington DC while playing ball with those same influence peddlers.

But one thing’s for sure. McCain is fucking over the taxpayers who own the public airwaves with a virtually indefensible policy.

John Conyers, Jerry Nadler, and Bobby Scott just introduced bills that will provide needed reforms to PATRIOT and FISA while reauthorizing most of the sunsetting authorities this year.

From the Committee press release, the PATRIOT bill does the following.

Title I:  Patriot Act Related Amendments

Roving Wiretaps

• Clarifies roving wiretap laws in order to ensure that the government only conducts surveillance on a single, identifiable target.

Section 215 Orders

• Improves the standard for issuing a Section 215 order by requiring specific and articulable facts to show that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation, other than a threat assessment.

• Provides recipients of Section 215 orders with the ability to immediately challenge both the underlying order and any gag order associated with it.

• Facilitates compliance with already existing minimization procedures to ensure proper safeguards pertaining to information collected via Section 215 orders.

• Prohibits a request for Section 215 records to a library or bookseller for documentary materials that contain personally identifiable information concerning a patron.

Criminal “Sneak and Peak” Searches

• Adopts safeguards against abuse of searches where notice to subject of search is delayed by shortening the initial 30 day delay period to 7 days, requiring that any application for an extension in the 7 day delay be made by the Senate confirmed US Attorney in the district where the delayed notice warrant was originally obtained, and removing ability to obtain delay by merely alleging that notice would “otherwise seriously jeopardize an investigation or unduly delay a trial.”

Pen Register and Trap and Trace Device

• Requires more specificity in the application for pen register and trap and trace and establishment of minimizations procedures.

Nationwide Court Orders

• Allows a provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service to challenge a subpoena, order, or warrant requiring disclosure of customer communications or records in either the district in which the order was issued or the district in which the order was served.

Audits, Reports, and Sunsets

• Requires annual Inspector General audits and reports to Congress on the use of Section 215 orders, NSLs, and Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices through the end of 2013.

• Provisions pertaining to Section 215, NSLs, and roving wiretaps will sunset on December 31, 2013.

Lone Wolf

• Allows the Lone Wolf provision to sunset at the end of this year (December 31, 2009).

Title II: NSL Reform

• Ensures that the FBI can obtain basic information without a court order, but also adds reasonable safeguards.

• Improves the issuance standard for NSLs by requiring specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the information sought pertains to a foreign power or agent of a foreign power, and requires the FBI to record them in a written certification.

• Improves procedures which provide an opportunity for an NSL recipient to challenge the NSL itself and any gag order associated with it.

• Authorizes meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial review of NSLs and associated gag orders.

• Requires the Attorney General to authorize the use of any information acquired or derived from an NSL in a criminal proceeding.

• Requires the Attorney General to establish minimization and destruction procedures to ensure that information obtained pursuant to an NSL regarding persons who are no longer of interest in an authorized investigation is destroyed.

And the FISA bill does the following:

H.R. 3846, FISA Amendments Act of 2009 Brief Summary

Telecommunications Immunity

• Repeals the retroactive immunity provision in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, leaving it to the courts to determine whether telephone companies that complied with the illegal warrantless wiretapping program acted properly under the laws in effect at the time and therefore deserve immunity.

Bulk Collection

• Prevents the government from using the warrantless collection authorities of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to conduct “bulk collection,” which could include the collection of the contents of all communications between the United States and the rest of the world.

Reverse Targeting

• Places additional limits on the warrantless collection authorities of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to ensure that they are not used as a pretext when the government’s real goal is to target the Americans with whom the ostensible foreign target is communicating.

Use of Unlawfully Obtained Information

• Limits the government’s use of information about U.S. persons that is obtained under FISA Amendments Act of 2008 procedures that the FISA Court later determines to be unlawful, while still giving the FISA Court flexibility to allow such information to be used in appropriate cases.

Protections for International Communications of Americans

• Permit unfettered acquisition of foreign-to-foreign communications and of communications of suspected terrorists into or out of the United States, while creating safeguards for communications not related to terrorism that the government knows have one end in the United States.

The NYT has the story about Chris Christie and Michele Brown we’ve all been waiting for (or rather, half of it).

First, support for the argument that Brown tried to time the big bust of Democrats this summer to benefit Christie’s campaign.

In mid-June, when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors gathered to set a date for the arrests of more than 40 targets of a corruption and money-laundering probe, Ms. Brown alone argued for the arrests to be made before July 1. She later told colleagues that she wanted to ensure that the arrests occurred before Mr. Christie’s permanent successor took office, according to three federal law enforcement officials briefed on the conversation, presumably so that Mr. Christie would be given credit for the roundup.

And–as I suggested would happen the other day–evidence that Brown was deliberately stonewalling on FOIA requests–including the request that exposed Brown’s and Christie’s expensive, taxpayer funded travel.

News of Mr. Christie’s loan to Ms. Brown broke in August, dealing a blow to his candidacy, and he apologized for failing to report it on his tax returns and ethics filings.

Less than two weeks later, Justice Department officials told Mr. Christie’s interim replacement, Ralph Marra, to remove Ms. Brown from acting as coordinator of the Freedom of Information Act requests about Mr. Christie’s tenure because of the obvious conflict of interest, according to a federal law enforcement official briefed on the communications. Ms. Brown resigned from the prosecutor’s office the same day, the official said.

But this is just the first of what I expect to be several damning revelations over the next few weeks.

Still to come? At the very least, some focus on the bonuses Christie gave Brown. And who knows? Maybe we’ll finally get the explanation for why Christie and Brown traipsed around the country and world together on the taxpayer dime.

I’m not so much surprised that Marcus Brauchli has had to admit that he knew the Pay2Play Salons were off the record.

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli says he knew more about the controversial “salons” the paper had planned than previously has been reported, including the fact that they were being billed as “off-the-record” to potential sponsors.

Brauchli made the acknowledgement in a letter to Charles Pelton, the person hired by the Post to organize what was to have been a series of corporate-sponsored, off-the-record dinners at the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth. Pelton, who resigned from the paper in September, told the Post’s ombudsman the day that POLITICO reported on the salons that Brauchli and other editors had been involved in discussions of them and that the plans had “been well developed in the newsroom.”

[snip]

But in a Sept. 25 letter to Pelton, obtained by POLITICO, Brauchli said he “knew that the salon dinners were being promoted as ‘off the record.’ That fact was never hidden from me by you or anyone else.” And he also acknowledged that he had seen two slide shows on the dinners and received e-mailed copies of the promotional materials for them.

After all, back when the WaPo started to ‘fess up to the fact that “senior managers” knew the details of the Pay2Pay salons, they made it clear those same managers knew they were off the record.

But while Post executives immediately disowned the flier’s characterization, senior managers had already approved major details of the first dinner. They had agreed, for example, that the dinner would include the participation of Brauchli and at least one Post reporter, that the event would be off the record, that it would feature a wide-ranging guest list of people involved in reforming health care, and that it would have sponsorship.

I always assumed when the WaPo said “senior managers,” that probably included the Executive Editor.

Read more →