Deja DU: SO, how many secret domestic spy programs are there anyway, and are they legal?

[L. Coyote]

Compilation Thread w/126 posts: Jul-31-07
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1481897

To make a point, "More than there are stars in the heavens" (at least from a metropolitan perspective).
And, yes, they are legal. The NSA is forbidden by law from spying on Americans. Other agencies are not.

THIS THREAD: Focus - all domestic espionage programs. Purpose - provide actual context of current events.

Recent news events surrounding the Gonzales testimony re: Meuller, Comey, and Ashcroft's hospital visit, seems to convey a blissful ignorance about just what is happening on the domestic spying front, including the legal spying.

Much of the current investigation begaqn with the hacker-gate interception of all the Senate Committee on the Judiciary electronic communications, and Dem Senators began asking questions way back then, albeit without the power of the majority.

The "oversight era" could not begin until the People transformed the Congress. Now the sheer mass of corruption and abuses of power are difficult to deal with while, at the same time, attempting to stop an illegal war and run the country. Nonetheless, this issue has not yet evaporated, perhaps in no small part due to how it started with Republicans spying on the Senate Judiciary Democrats, and Dems wondering what they are up to this time. Watergate started with Republicans spying on Dems too, some might recall.

================
Feb. 2004. Hacker-Gate, "Republicans stole thousands of Democratic documents.."
This alone is way worse than Watergate. In this case the criminals actually pulled off a
their "listening" program, instead of getting caught trying to bug the Dems. And, in retrospect
from several years later, the Department of Justice or the GOP Congressional leadership did NADA!!
So, do we have the proverbial crime of the cover-up to consider too?

=======================================
Dems: Stolen memo case should go to DOJ
by kos - Tue Feb 10, 2004 at 02:02:22 PM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/2/10/17222/9423

.... Senate Dems are now demanding a criminal investigation from the Department of Justice
after Republicans stole thousands of Democratic documents from a shared Justice committee server.

From the registration only Roll Call:


Key Senate Democrats predicted Monday that the internal investigation into the
Judiciary Committee's leaked memos would be turned into a full-blown criminal investigation.

Exiting a 90-minute briefing about the probe with Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Pickle, a
quartet of senior Judiciary Democrats declared that what they had heard led them to believe
a criminal inquiry, most likely with the Justice Department handling it, should occur.

"Eventually, this has to be looked at as a criminal matter," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)...

Leahy sat in on the Senators-only briefing with Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), all of whom declined to speak of the details of where Pickle
stands in his three-month investigation ......


Republicans, in defending the theft, refer to the matter as a "technical glitch" and deny that the stolen memos amount to criminal wrongdoing .....

================
Uncensored 'Hackergate' Report Accidentally Released; Perps' Names Revealed - March 30, 2004
Report on the Investigation Into Improper Access to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Computer System
http://www.subliminalnews.com/archives/000167.php

An uncensored version of the Senate Sergeant At Arms' report on his investigation into Republican hacking of sensitive Democrat computer servers was accidentally released to journalists on March 4. The 67-page report includes the names of the partisan cyber-thieves, other key figures on both sides of the scandal, and numerous footnotes that were redacted in the public version.

A copy of the full, uncensored report ( http://cryptome.org/judiciary-sys.htm ) is available at Cryptome.org, which highlights the previously censored sections in red text. A link to a PDF of the censored version ( http://www.calpundit.com/blogphotos/Pickle%20report.pdf ) is also provided.

It is unclear just how accidental the "accidental release" of the full report actually was. A letter issued by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said the release was due to "an administrative error" and that there "was no intention on anyone's part to release this version at this time..."

As reported by Subliminal News at the time ( http://www.subliminalnews.com/archives/000141.php ), the scandal -- now often referred to as "Hackergate" -- erupted publicly in late January, 2004, when the Boston Globe and other press outlets reported that Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee had secretly infiltrated Democrat computers for at least a year.

-----------
FULL REPORT: http://cryptome.org/judiciary-sys.htm
PDF: http://www.calpundit.com/blogphotos/Pickle%20report.pdf
Joint Statement Of Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, (R-Utah)
And Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) .....

=======================================
Was the Senate File Pilfering Criminal?
Monday January 26, 2004 by Ed Felten
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/index.php?p=502

Some people have argued that the Senate file pilfering could not have violated the law, because the files were reportedly on a shared network drive that was not password-protected. (See, for instance, Jack Shafer’s Slate article.) Assuming those facts, were the accesses unlawful?

Here’s the relevant wording from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030):
Whoever … intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains … information from any department or agency of the United States … shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) …
…
the term ‘’exceeds authorized access'’ means to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter......

=========================================
Enough of a preamble to the scandal. This is just part of the background of the current events.

125 more posts follow!!! Everything you did not want to know about e-brother!!

[Warren Stupidity]

1. If you paid attention to this issue over the decades

you would know that the NSA has a cooperative agreement with at least two other close allies, a quid pro quo, that allows each to do the forbidden domestic widespread 'signal snarfing' for the other. They have been building their data mining systems on us for a long time. Pretty much unlimited funds for their data processing and information collection technology needs too.

For a while in the 80's and early 90's the NSA fought tooth and nail to suppress public key encryption technology. Then they stopped bothering. Guess why.

On a completely unrelated topic there have been several interesting articles published about far more mundane signal snarfing technologies than cracking the prime factors of huge numbers, things like picking your data from a considerable distance using the reflection of your monitor on an office window, stuff like that.

[flyarm]

2. How about the stolen info and mining of our telephones and emails????

the dems have my sympathy ..but they have done jack shit for we the people and our info..so my sympathy has it's bounds!

Stunning al-Haramain Filing Shames Obama; Shows Duplicity Of Officials
By: bmaz Thursday July 9, 2009 12:35 pm http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com /

In early June, a critical hearing was held in front of Judge Vaughn Walker in the al-Haramain warrantless wiretapping case. As a result of that hearing, Judge Walker entered an order commanding the attorney for plaintiffs al-Haramain et. al to file a motion for summary judgement. Hot off the press, the motion was filed minutes ago, and it is a stunning demonstration of just how disingenuous and two faced President Obama and his administration have been on the seminal issues of warrantless wiretapping, protection of Constitutional rights, transparency and accountability.

The first words in the main body of the motion are a stark reminder to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder of the very words and promises they have spoken in the past on the issue of illegal wiretapping:

“Warrantless surveillance of American citizens, in defiance of FISA, is unlawful and unconstitutional.”
President Barack Obama, December 20, 2007

“We owe the American people a reckoning.”
Attorney General Eric Holder, June 13, 2008

Apparently those words only were operative during the election, because that sure is not what Obama and Holder are saying and doing now. Instead, in pretty much as big of a Constitutional about face as is imaginable, Obama has decided to turn his back on his words and promises and throw his lot in with Bush and Cheney by asserting state secrets to protect the government from inquiry and accountability on its illegal and unconstitutional acts. It is not radical left wing bloggers saying that, it is distinguished US Senator Russell Feingold:


Of State Secrets, he said the Administration's repeated assertion of State Secrets in litigation was reminiscent of the Bush Administration. He alluded to the cases before Vaughn Walker, and complained that the invocation of State Secrets would prevent Americans from finding out what really went on with the warrantless wiretap program

Senator Feingold is exactly right in his quote.



read the rest at Emptywheel's blog........

[bertman]

3. The Dems have NONE of my sympathy. They have thousands of career politicians and staff

and retired politicians and staff who serve in D.C. and around the country. These people have been doing business in Washington for scores of years, yet they cannot comprehend the need for security of a computer shared with the Republicans?? Holy Mother of Gawd!

We live in the surveillance state, so everyone might as well get used to it. They aren't giving up what it's taken them years and hundreds of billions of dollars to accomplish. By them, I mean the folks who own the people who call themselves Democratic leaders and Republican leaders. Those so-called leaders are only there to provide the facade of representative government.

If there were any desire whatsoever by either party to return to a system of government where the People were in charge of their government, the first step would be to do away with these computerized voting machines that can be manipulated to produce whatever result is desired. Do we hear a rumble of Congressional support for such a concept? Do we hear anything from our President? Hell no. We heard only a peep from the Dems when the Presidency was STOLEN from us by the Bush Crime Family in 2000. Then, again in '04, after another voting machine and vote counting disaster, we heard only a faint echo of the call from those who had raised the alarm in 2000.

Bottom line, the Democrats know that they are stooges just as the Republicans are. And they don't seem to care--as long as they are well-paid and well provided for by their masters.

Feingold, Kucinich, and a few others are the proverbial voices in the wilderness of our new electronically-monitored police state. They deserve our thanks for a thankless job.

[flyarm]

6. yes you are 100% correct!! so let me reneg on my sympathies!!

I have said since going to Iowa last year..there are no two parties any longer..just one big party with one huge money pot in the middle..of our money!! and Our government is now nothing but a damn sham!

[snot]

4. It might be easier to respond if you asked, which ones WERE/ARE legal.

[L. Coyote]

5. Good point!