Archive for category: emptywheel

Laura’s right. Jeff Stein’s article detailing the several ways in which Senator Richard Shelby spied on Anthony Lake and similar activities raises all sorts of questions.

Tenet also wrote that, “National Security Agency officials told usthat Shelby staffers had been asking whether there was derogatoryinformation in their communications intercepts on Lake.”

But the NSA refused Shelby’s entreaties, two sources said, and there was no derogatory information in the FBI’s files.

Shelbyalso demanded, and got, the FBI’s raw files on Lake. The senator didnot respond to three days of requests last week for comment.

Laura reminds us that Shelby was the guy who leaked NSA intercepts from Al Qaeda to Fox News. But this story raises several other questions about the extent of this practice.

1. Two sources say the NSA refused to give Shelby what he wanted. But we know that the NSA did give John Bolton what he wanted. Who is getting info like this from NSA? High ranking executive branch officials? Congressmen? Who else?
2. Stein describes the nastiness of the Gosslings, going back to the 1990s. That reminds me of Pete Hoekstra’s threat (from July of last year) purportedly directed at the Administration. That threat seemed to be an attempt to prevent the Read more →

And her FCC Chair hubby, Kevin Martin, is working media on the other side. The LAT reports (h/t Sirota) that the FCC is leaking information on key votes to big stakeholders. Since there’s a restriction on lobbying in the week before a vote, this has the effect of making it impossible for those representing citizens to lobby in a timely fashion.

People are allowed to submit comments and meet with FCC commissionersand staff until one week before a public meeting. The FCC circulatesdrafts of its proposed rulings and decisions among its staff so theyknow what items are scheduled to be voted on. But the information isconfidential, and FCC rules prohibit anyone from releasing it withoutthe chairman’s authorization.

"FCC officials told us that, for stakeholders to successfully maketheir case before FCC, ‘timing is everything,’ " the report said."Specifically, if a stakeholder knows that a proposed rule has beenscheduled for a vote and may be voted on in three weeks, thatstakeholder can schedule a meeting with FCC officials before the ruleis voted on."

Those who don’t know about an upcoming vote until the agenda isannounced are frozen out of lobbying by the one-week prohibition, theGAO said.

"FCC staff who disclose nonpublic information about when an issue Read more →

I’m pooped so will have to return to this article. It explains how, after DOJ under Jack Goldsmith threw out John Yoo’s torture policies, Steven Bradbury came in and replaced them with still worse opinions.

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” ina legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared tohave abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authorityto order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’sarrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Departmentissued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very differentdocument, according to officials briefed on it, an expansiveendorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time providedexplicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination ofpainful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping,simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey,the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruisingclashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as theopinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues atthe department that they would all be “ashamed” when the worldeventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress Read more →

I guess if you make sure your contractors can’t reveal what they’ve done in your name, it becomes harder for others to discover what it is that you, personally, have done. But not impossible. The IT companies for the White House are denying that their the company that missed 5 million missing emails in their daily audits.

When Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that wentmissing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside ITcontractor.

The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according tosources close to the investigation of a possible violation of theFederal Records and Presidential Records acts.

[snip]

Contrary to Roberts’ statement to the Oversight Committee, severalsources, including an IT company currently doing contractual work forthe Executive Office of the President, have told ChannelWeb that nooutside company had a managed services contract to audit the Executive Office of the President’s e-mail archiving system daily during the period when the e-mails went missing.

"There are many contractors working for the [Information Assurance]Directorate and no single one provided audit and archive functions,"said a spokesperson for Unisys, an IT security and hardware firm whichhas provided the Executive Office of the President "with a variety ofIT services that support the Office of Administration."

"We don’t believe that Unisys is the Information AssuranceDirectorate contractor to which Deputy Attorney General Keith Robertsreferred when he briefed Rep. Waxman’s committee in May," said LisaMeyer, director of public relations for the Blue Bell, Penn.-basedcompany.

For the record, we might want to distrust Unisys on this point. After all, they’re the company supposedly in charge of monitoring Homeland Security’s computer system. And they seemed to have missed basic things–like installing security devices on Homeland Security’s networks.

One lingering suspicion that they’re just moving this off the books:

After several requests from the Homeland Security Committee callingfor a moratorium on the controversial use of spy satellite imagery fordomestic purposes, the Department has heeded the call and delayed itsplanned October 1st launch of its new National Applications Office(NAO). The Department has cited the need to address unanswered privacyand civil liberties questions from Congress – as addressed in theCommittee’s September 6th hearing on the matter and also in lettersfrom August 22nd and September 6th from Committee Members.

Rep.Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the Committee on HomelandSecurity, released the following statement regarding the decision:

“Whilewe are pleased by the Department’s decision to go back to the drawingboard and get it right, we are troubled by its silence on the secondpart of our request: that Congress also be provided ‘a full opportunityto review the NAO’s written legal framework, offer comments, and helpshape appropriate procedures and protocols.’

Even putting aside my suspicion this is just another head fake to move surveillance beyond the grasp of Congress, Thompson’s point remains. The Administration thus far refuses to allow Congress some input into what appropriate use of satellite surveillance of civilians would be.

Well, at least Read more →