Brindle

You may recall that, back in early September, the FISA Court (FISC) agreed that its various rulings that secretly interpreted Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to mean something entirely different than any plain language reading of the law implies should be declassified. Here's what the court said at the time:

The unauthorized disclosure in June 2013 of a Section 215 order, and government statements in response to that disclosure, have engendered considerable public interest and debate about Section 215. Publication of FISC opinions relating to this provision would contribute to an informed debate. Congressional amici emphasize the value of public information and debate in representing their constituents and discharging their legislative responsibilities. Publication would also assure citizens of the integrity of this Court's proceedings.

In addition, publication with only limited redactions may now be feasible, given the extent of the government's recent public disclosures about how Section 215 is implemented. Indeed, the government advises that a declassification review process is already underway.

In view of these circumstances, and as an exercise of discretion, the Court has determined that it is appropriate to take steps toward publication of any Section 215 Opinions that are not subject to the ongoing FOIA litigation, without reaching the merits of the asserted right of public access under the First Amendment.

It then instructed the DOJ to figure out what to redact, so it could be declassified and released. Except... the DOJ instead fought that order, and while it did find some documents that meet the criteria -- namely a ruling from February of this year -- the DOJ is now telling the FISA Court that despite the order, it would really prefer to keep that interpretation of the law a complete secret. Actually, it goes further than that. It doesn't ask for permission to keep it secret, it just says that it cannot reveal the interpretation.

After careful review of the Opinion by senior intelligence officials and the U.S. Department of Justice, the Executive Branch has determined that the Opinion should be withheld in full and a public version of the Opinion cannot be provided.

Got that? This secret court interpretation of a law that we all live under, which the court itself has ordered to be revealed, is unlikely to be revealed because the intelligence community really, really doesn't want it revealed. Again, this is not about so-called "sources and methods." This is entirely about understanding how a US court interprets a US law. But that interpretation is secret, meaning that the law itself is secret, and apparently the executive branch of the federal government is going to fight to keep it that way.

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I'd missed this story when it came out a few weeks ago, but thanks to Rob Hyndman for calling it to my attention. There was plenty of press around the fact that one of the guys being held by US forces in Guantanamo, and who faces trial as one of the co-conspirators for 9/11, supposedly sustained head injuries while being held by the CIA. But, that's just the tip of the iceberg of the story. Apparently Ammar al Baluchi, and some of the other prisoners are trying to argue that the US violated the UN Convention Against Torture with how they treated prisoners at the infamous black sites. But here's the crazy part: the US is arguing that the prisoners' own recollections of what was done to them cannot be used in court, because it would reveal classified information. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Yes, the US government is arguing that it can torture people (though, of course, it won't call it that), but if you try to call them on it via various courts, domestic or international, the very people who were tortured are not allowed to present evidence of their own torture, because it would reveal classified information. Classified information like how the CIA tortured people. Now, the people in this case may be very bad people, who really were involved in planning 9/11, and if that's true and proven as such, I have no problem with them being punished for their actions. But that doesn't excuse torturing them, no matter what some misguided authoritarians believe. And, furthermore, if the government is going to torture them, then they should at least have the balls to stand up in court and discuss what they did and why -- not telling the people they tortured that their own recollections of how they were tortured are considered classified material.

In the al Baluchi case, his lawyer has been using unclassified medical records to try to show that he was tortured, but remains barred from using anything beyond that.

Attorney James Connell invoked two of Baluchi’s unclassified GuantÃ�’¡namo medical records in a bid to argue that not everything the captives say about their treatment at the CIA’s overseas prison network from 2002 to 2006 constitutes national security secrets.

At issue is the 9/11 defense attorneys’ challenge of a military commissions protective order that, the defenders say, oblige the attorneys to make sure the prisoners don’t tell foreign courts or human rights groups their memories of what the CIA did to them during the years before they were brought here in 2006.

Another (military) lawyer representing some of the accused notes how ridiculous the situation is:

“You cannot use state secrets to classify the observations and experiences of someone who was exposed to torture,” said Army Maj. Jason Wright, Mohammed’s defense attorney, arguing that the U.S. government was using a classification regime to hide what the CIA did to the men in secret overseas prisons, out of reach of U.S. courts and the International Red Cross, from 2002 until 2006.

And yet that's exactly what the government is trying to do.

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Google has released the latest version of its transparency report concerning government requests. While they focus on how government requests for information have doubled over the past three years, they also have a not-at-all-subtle jab at the FISA Court and the DOJ for continuing to block their efforts to reveal how many FISA Amendments Act Section 702 requests (the so-called PRISM requests) they get from the government, and how many people it impacts. As you hopefully already know, Google (along with other tech companies) is in the process of suing the government over this restriction on its free speech. You can see that demonstrated pretty clearly in the bottom righthand quadrant of the graphic they released. Just call it the "redacted" infographic. Google's legal director on this issue, Richard Salgado, explains:

We want to go even further. We believe it’s your right to know what kinds of requests and how many each government is making of us and other companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice contends that U.S. law does not allow us to share information about some national security requests that we might receive. Specifically, the U.S. government argues that we cannot share information about the requests we receive (if any) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But you deserve to know.

Earlier this year, we brought a federal case to assert that we do indeed have the right to shine more light on the FISA process. In addition, we recently wrote a letter of support (PDF) for two pieces of legislation currently proposed in the U.S. Congress. And we’re asking governments around the world to uphold international legal agreements that respect the laws of different countries and guarantee standards for due process are met.

The longer the government keeps this form of censorship up, the worse it looks. What could possibly be "revealed" by letting Google and others say how many requests they've received under that act? The pervasive secrecy from the NSA may be a cultural trait, but there is no basis for it here.

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Every so often a public figure will come to the dubious conclusion that the past can be erased. This was a difficult proposition even before the advent of the internet. These days, it's nearly impossible. But long odds rarely deter the particularly inspired… or particularly stupid.

Some abuse the easily-abusable laws in European countries to generate memory holes. Max Mosely has been fruitlessly pursuing the removal of so-called "not actually a Nazi orgy" photos for years. Others simply blunder around, issuing baseless legal threats and questionable DMCA notices. Others, like the UK Conservative Party, do their own dirty work.

Being willing to wipe your own collective memory takes a special kind of bravery, the kind often associated with reckless acts shortly preceded by the phrase, "Hold my beer."

pixelpusher220 was the first to send in the ComputerWeekly story which details the efforts the UK's Conservative Party recently made to eradicate an entire decade's worth of speeches from the internet.

The Conservative Party has attempted to erase a 10-year backlog of speeches from the internet, including pledges for a new kind of transparent politics the prime minister and chancellor made when they were campaigning for election.

Prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne campaigned on a promise to democratise information held by those in power, so people could hold them to account. They wanted to use the internet transform politics.

But the Conservative Party has removed the archive from its public facing website, erasing records of speeches and press releases going back to the year 2000 and up until it was elected in May 2010.

The Conservative Party did more than simply delete the speeches from its site. It also blocked out Google and the Internet Archive using an extensive addition to its robots.txt. This is just a small excerpt of conservatives.com's bot blocking additions.

Disallow: /News/News_stories/2000/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2001/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2002/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2003/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2004/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2005/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2006/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2007/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2008/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2009/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2010/01/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2010/02/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2010/03/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2010/04/
Disallow: /News/News_stories/2010/05/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2000/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2001/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2002/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2003/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2004/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2005/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2006/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2007/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2008/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2009/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2010/01/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2010/02/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2010/03/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2010/04/
Disallow: /News/Speeches/2010/05/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2000/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2001/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2002/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2003/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2004/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2005/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2006/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2007/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2008/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2009/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2010/01/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2010/02/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2010/03/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2010/04/
Disallow: /News/Articles/2010/05/

So, how did it get the Internet Archive to remove its historical collection, something ComputerWeekly writer Mark Ballard likens to "sending Men in Black to strip history books from a public library and burn them in the car park?"

Well, apparently the Internet Archive treats changes to robots.txt files as retroactively applicable. Once the bot blocker informed IA it was no longer welcome to crawl these pages, it erased the corresponding archives as a "matter of courtesy."

By making this change, the Conservative Party was able to eliminate 1,158 "snapshots" the Archive had gathered over the last 14 years, a rather breathtaking eradication accomplished without ever having to strong arm internet historians or stare down Google directly.

The Conservative Party has offered no comment on the slash-and-burn of its own history, simply saying it has passed along the query to its "website guy."

Now that the speeches (and the Archives) have been removed, conservatives.com's robots.txt has been trimmed down to something more manageable.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /XMLGateway/
Disallow: /sitecore/
Disallow: /users/
Disallow: /flash/
Disallow: /pdf/
Disallow: /layouts/site.aspx
Disallow: /Activist_centre/
Disallow: /News/Blogs.aspx
Disallow: /News/Blogs/
Disallow: /sitecore/
Disallow: /Get_involved/Join/Friend.aspx
Disallow: /Get_involved/Join/Member.aspx
Disallow: /Get_involved/Join/Youth.aspx
Sitemap: http://www.conservatives.com/xmlFeeds/GoogleSitemap.aspx

A search through its xml sitemap confirms that nothing remains of the pre-2010 speeches. The earliest speech listed in the xml file is from June of 2010. Users browsing the site will be hard pressed to find any speeches earlier than January of 2013, however. Searching through the sitemap will uncover direct links to earlier speeches but clicking the "Archive" button to view older speeches automatically limits results to 2013. Here's the shady URL the "Archive" button leads to:

http://www.conservatives.com/News/SpeechList.aspx?SearchType=NewsDate&SearchTerm=130101-131231

So, why are these speeches being buried? Perhaps it has something to do with the Cameron's promises of government transparency and accountability made while campaigning, something he increasingly lost interest in once in power.

"Above all, the power for anyone to hold to account those who in the past might have had a monopoly of power - whether it's government, big business, or the traditional media," said Cameron, who was then campaigning for power as leader of the Conservative opposition.

Cameron was going to make sure the information revolution would hold people like prime ministers to account, he said another speech on 11 October 2007, at the Google Zeitgeist Conference in San Francisco.

"It's clear to me that political leaders will have to learn to let go," he said then. "Let go of the information that we've guarded so jealously."

Transparency would make public officials accountable to the people, said Cameron then. He was riding at the front of the wave that would wash us into a new world, and a new age.

Like many politicians, transparency and accountability sound like great ideas when you're lapping up applause (and votes) and hoping to stick it to your legislative adversaries. But it swiftly loses its luster the first time it's applied to you and your activities. Then it's back to the old ways that have "worked" for years. Obfuscation, opacity and a growing tendency to view your constituents as the enemy swiftly replace the campaigning ideals.

Years down the road, after many years at the helm, this viewpoint realignment culminates in running a decade's-worth of empty promises through the internet shredder in hopes of trimming down the number of irate citizens using your own words against you.

Unfortunately for those manning the shredder, they seem to have missed another set of archives, one located in their own backyard. A commenter at ComputerWeekly points out that the Conservative Party site has been archived by the British Library since 2004, and many of those supposedly vanished speeches are only a few clicks away.

All this effort will do for the Conservative Party is make it look worse. There's zero net gain to be had here. Nothing completely vanishes from the net and even if the Internet Archive may err on the side of courtesy in its efforts, others will be saving, securing and stashing the same documents and webpages certain entities wish to remove from the public eye. The harder they try, the more likely they are to fail.




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While there are still copyright maximalists out there who insist that copyright can't be used for censorship, it looks like we've got yet another example, and it's a crazy one. Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain, who is running for the Colorado legislature on what appears to be the extreme "I hate gay people" ticket, has been able to kill off the YouTube account of Right Wing Watch, a group that (as you may have guessed) highlights and mocks extreme comments from "right wing" politicians. Over the last few months, they've been posting a few of Klingenschmitt's (who goes by "Dr. Chaps") wackier statements, including video clips of him making those statements. This is pretty clear fair use, but Klingenschmitt started using YouTube's copyright claim system to take down the videos.

In part, he argues that the videos are infringing (actually, he argues "plagiarism" which is different than copyright infringing, and the videos are actually neither), but he also focuses on the YouTube comments on those videos. Klingenschmitt claimed that the YouTube comments amounted to "death threats" from RWW's followers -- though, they're pretty standard crazy YouTube comments, not serious death threats. Also, since the comments are not made by RWW, but viewers on YouTube, RWW is not liable for them. However, he kept sending takedowns, and eventually YouTube terminated RWW's account, arguing that it was their third strike.

In response to this abuse of YouTube's takedown policy, Klingenschmitt released a press release congratulating himself, saying "David takes down Goliath." Tim Murphy, from Mother Jones, asked Klingenschmitt if he felt he should be held similarly responsible for the YouTube comments on his own videos, and Klingenschmitt said that if the user is alerted to comments and don't take action, they become responsible, which is actually not what the law says.

Either way, this appears to be another case where copyright claims are being used to censor content that someone doesn't like. And, given that it's in the context of a political campaign for office, that's especially concerning. Stifling criticism of a political candidate by abusing the law should be seen as a huge problem. Hopefully YouTube acts quickly to restore RWW's account. Whether you agree with RWW or not, hopefully you can agree that (1) they should be allowed to post fair use video and criticize politicians they disagree with and (2) they should not be held accountable for comments made by YouTube viewers.

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It's horrifying enough that this question needs to be asked, but Rep. Alan Grayson, who has been one of the most vocal members of Congress in calling out the NSA's bad behavior has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, seeking assurance that if US citizen Glenn Greenwald were to come back into the US that he could do so without being arrested. Grayson notes that a variety of prominent people, both within and outside the government (but who have influence on the government) have called for Greenwald to be arrested and prosecuted.

Mr. Greenwald, a United States citizen currently living in Brazil, has been publicly attacked by Members of Congress such as Representative Peter King, who on multiple occasions has called for his arrest merely because of his reporting as a journalist on the NSA. The Chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers, have appeared to echo this threat, as have prominent foreign-policy commentators such as Alan Dershowitz and Marc Thiessen.

He also highlights the infamous UK detention of Greenwald's partner, David Miranda. And then asks the basic question of whether or not the US government will agree that Greenwald can enter his own country without arrest for the crime of "journalism the government doesn't like."

I regard this as regrettable, because: (1) the commission of journalism is not a crime; (2) on the contrary, it is protected explicitly under the First Amendment; and (3) Mr. Greenwald's reports regarding these subjects have, in fact, informed me, other Members of Congress, and the general public of serious, pervasive violations of law and constitutional rights committed by agents of the government.

Bearing in mind that Mr. Greenwald is a citizen of the United States, please let me know: (1) whether the Department of Justice intends to bring charges against Mr. Greenwald, and (2) should Mr. Greenwald seek to enter the United States, whether the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, or any other office of the federal government intends to detain, question, arrest, or prosecute Mr. Greenwald, or to monitor or interfere in any way with his entry into or movement within the United States.

It's a sad and shameful comment on the state of the US government today that this question needs to be asked, no matter what the eventual answer is. We've strayed very very far from the ideals that this country is supposed to embrace.

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Reader Willard Seehorn sends in a fantastic example of both ridiculous government requests in a legal matter, as well as one of the best snarky responses to such an overreach. It starts with a Tennessee state Assistant District Attorney General who, in the midst of a case, asked the court to order the defense counsel to refrain from referring to the prosecution as "the government." You can understand why certainly, seeing as how in the present consciousness, the Americans on the jury might associate "the government" with "the government that is doing all that crap they hate on an ongoing basis." The ADAG made this case explicitly, stating that use of the term was inherently derogatory coming from the defense council, Drew Justice. Well, Justice replied to the court in the most wonderful way imaginable.

Justice noted in his response that the court had no authority to ban the term's use in the courtroom and that doing so would be a first amendment violation. However, should the court disagree, he had some requests:

First, the Defendant no longer wants to be called "the Defendant." This rather archaic term of art obviously has a fairly negative connotation.... At trial, Mr. P. hereby demands to be addressed only by his full name, preceded by the title "Mister." Alternatively, he may be called simply "the Citizen Accused." This latter title sounds more respectable than the criminal "Defendant." The designation "That innocent man" would also be acceptable.

Moreover, defense counsel does not wish to be referred to as a "lawyer," or a "defense attorney." Those terms are substantially more prejudicial than probative. See Tenn. R. Evid. 403. Rather, counsel for the Citizen Accused should be referred to primarily as the "Defender of the Innocent." This title seems particularly appropriate, because every Citizen Accused is presumed innocent. Alternatively, counsel would also accept the designation "Guardian of the Realm." Further, the Citizen Accused humbly requests an appropriate military title for his own representative, to match that of the opposing counsel. Whenever addressed by name, the name "Captain Justice" will be appropriate.

It appears the snark is strong with Captain Justice. Perhaps some will say that such an obviously sarcastic and ridiculous response is unbecoming of an officer of the court. To hell with those people. How else is a sane person supposed to respond to an equally ridiculous request from the prosecutor? Not wanting to be referred to as "the government" when you are "the government" is silly. Captain Justice's sign off sums the request up nicely.

WHEREFORE, Captain Justice, Guardian of the Realm and Leader of the Resistance, primarily asks that the Court deny the State’s motion, as lacking legal basis. Alternatively, the Citizen Accused moves for an order in limine modifying the speech code as aforementioned, and requiring any other euphemisms and feel-good terms as the Court finds appropriate.

Hopefully the court will act sanely and not try to muzzle an attorney over such a specious claim. On the other hand, reading about the ongoing adventures of Captain Justice would be rather entertaining.

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As we just recently covered, the FBI's enthusiasm for starting investigations far outweighs its interest in ensuring they are justifiable. A site owner who forwarded an email containing a threat to hack his site was misinterpreted by an FBI agent to be a threat against the agency, kicking off (at least) six years of monitoring. Even as evidence failed to pile up, the investigation went continued unabated, ultimately costing the site owners' a chunk of income as donors scattered when news of the investigation became public.

Here's yet another example of the FBI's mentality at work -- seizing on anything as an excuse to dig into personal information. This particular person was Jill Kelley who, because of the FBI's actions, became part of the national sideshow involving General Petraeus' affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. On the advice of military officials, Kelley reported the suspected cyberstalking of her and her husband to the FBI. Apparently, the FBI felt this gave it free rein to invade Kelley's privacy.

We authorized the FBI to look at one threatening email we received, and only that email, so that the FBI could identify the stalker. However, the FBI ignored our request and violated our trust by unlawfully searching our private emails and turning us into the targets of an intrusive investigation without any just cause—all the while without informing us that they had identified the email stalker as Paula Broadwell, who was having an affair with Mr. Petraeus.

It looks as if the FBI is way too willing to extend itself permissions that haven't been specifically granted. Maybe the investigating agents felt Kelley meant to give the agency carte blanche access to her and her husband's email accounts, but was unable to articulate her desire to have her privacy violated thanks to the stress she was under. Or something.

All of this and yet the FBI didn't feel compelled to apprise Kelley of the outcome of its intrusive investigation. (In the end, charges were dropped.) Rather, it opted to leak her information to the press and misconstrue the contents of certain emails it had obtained without permission, leaving she and her husband to deal with the resulting fallout (rumors of an affair, media campouts in Kelley's yard).

The resulting investigation by the military cleared her (and the general she was linked to by the FBI's perusal of her emails) of any impropriety but the damage was already done. The agency's decision to exceed its authorization has managed to turn another person into an advocate against its excesses.

It appears from the NSA's leaks that the government may be trying to collect everything about everyone and everywhere—including America's closest friends and allies—with or without the knowledge of the White House. Unaccountable individuals given free rein to invade people's privacy—and a government that maintains the tools that permit them to do so—are a prescription for a privacy disaster.

With all the current economic, political, social and diplomatic issues facing the country, it is understandable that many Americans seem relatively unconcerned about intrusions on individual privacy. They shouldn't be. The unauthorized search of my family's emails was triggered when we appealed to law enforcement for protection. But who knows what else might set off governmental invasion of privacy—politics or some other improper motivation might suffice. If this could happen to us, it could happen to you.

Not only does this sort of behavior chill speech and make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment, it also makes the country -- and its citizens -- less safe. If people have to think twice before asking law enforcement or investigative agencies to look into possible criminal activity out of fear of having their own personal information sifted through or subjected to months of intrusive surveillance, they may opt to ignore the problem or take matters into their own hands. Either outcome is undesirable.

The NSA has made many placating statements about how it's limited by its authorizations, rather than its capabilities. These have never been particularly reassuring, and are even less so now, as its investigative counterpart appears more than willing to twist requests for help into invitations to snoop.





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There is an epidemic coursing its way through our school systems that puts our children's lives in danger. For some reason, this epidemic appears to be on the rise, resulting in fear, oppression, and a demoralizing experience for our kids in schools that almost certainly effects the educational experience, if not the psychological well-being of millions of young Americans. As I'm sure you have already guessed, I'm obviously talking about the stupid adults that run everything and have put in place a nearly-institutionalized overreaction to some very real but rare tragedies of recent note. That overreaction is how you get terrified kids during school shooting drills. It's how you get seven year olds suspended for novelty pens, which I guess is mightier than the high-powered rifle.

And it's how you end up with a grade school child being threatened with expulsion for drawing some pictures of what he'd like to dress as on Halloween.

The three images in question depict a soldier, a ninja and a Star Wars character - possibilities for the 8-year-old's Halloween costume. Each of the drawings show the character holding either a gun or a knife.

"I think we really send our children the wrong message when we show that, as adults, we're so afraid of our shadow that an innocent picture - that any 8-year-old might've drawn - is cause for this kind of concern." [Comment from a local citizen]

The report also notes that the student engaged in creative writing which was likewise deemed to be dangerous, but which ultimately turned out to be a fictional story about the school being attacked by zombies, otherwise known as the kind of thing every single young boy thinks about at some point. For these crimes, the principal of the school informed the parents that they have a zero tolerance policy for images depicting guns and violence, that the child's creativity resulted in every other child in the school being in danger, and that they were grounds for expulsion.

And, in case you haven't decided yet, this is stupid. The images of school shootings in our media are powerful ones, but they don't necessarily need to result in everyone over the age of eighteen completely losing their minds and institutionalizing a culture of fear of our own children. You want to create a mythos around violence and guns amongst children? Outlaw discussion about them. You want to ostricize children? Limit creativity. You want to make children trust adults even less than they already do? Try to put them in some iron-grip of zero tolerance during the very time when they are learning to be most expressive, curious, and creative.

Can we please just go back to trusting our children to be relatively decent again? Because each and every one of these stories is dumb.



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It seems the TSA is unable to learn from its mistakes. When your entire operation is continually scrutinized and criticized by the public and policy makers, you'd think there would be a concerted effort to minimize these sorts of embarrassing incidents.

The TSA hasn't met a medical condition it can't treat as threat. Anything physically unusual is subjected to additional patdowns, harassment and detainment. Err on the side of caution, I suppose, but it's doing itself no favors by refusing to up its level of understanding past "aggressively mystified."

A disabled child was harassed by government agents and his family was caused to miss their flight, all because inept security screeners thought that his medical equipment may have been a bomb. Even children with debilitating medical conditions set off paranoiac ideations and inhumane treatment from the Transportation Security Administration.

3-year-old Apollo, who was born with a cardiovascular abnormality that affects his ability to eat, was suspected of harboring an explosive device after TSA employees believed they had detected residue on the medical supplies that help keep him alive.

Yes, Apollo's condition is unusual and yes, for whatever reason, his very essential formula set off the explosive residue testing equipment, but the entire system leading up to this point is incredibly fallible. The TSA's boilerplate response ignores a great many facts in its hurry to offload the blame on Apollo's parents.

The TSA looked into Bergeron’s complaint for Yahoo Shine on Friday before issuing the following statement: “We regret that the family did not have a positive screening experience. We strongly encourage passengers with medical conditions to arrive at the checkpoint with ample time for screening. We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public and strive to treat all passengers with dignity and respect.”

Thanks for the "arrive early" tip, but Apollo's mother (Renee Bergeron) did everything she could do to expedite this process and it still went wrong.

“I walked right up to the first agent and told her, ‘My son is tube-fed and this cooler has formula and medical supplies in it,’” Bergeron said, explaining that she had hoped that being direct would be a helpful approach and that it would have prompted a TSA agent to do a thorough search and swab of the items before sending them through to their gate.

No such luck. The responding (ha!) TSA agent told her to put it on the belt with the rest of luggage and made no attempt to inform the screeners up ahead that something unusual might be on the way. The formula cooler triggered the "bomb residue" alarm and Bergeron's (and Apollo's) day went from merely difficult to something much worse.

They were escorted to a restroom then, as Apollo had to go, but Bergeron was not allowed to take him alone. Then the two were ushered to a private room where agents gave Bergeron a thorough pat-down and where a nervous Apollo began to cry and beg his mom to hold him. Bergeron was told she couldn’t touch her son because she could “contaminate” him. “It was horribly traumatic for him,” she said.

“To make a long story short, the flight left without us,” she wrote in her blog. “As it turns out, they don’t hold flights for people suspected of carrying explosives onto the plane.”

Somewhat ironically, Bergeron and her son were on their way to an "Everybody Plays" event, which celebrates and encourages active lives for children with different health issues and disabilities. To be subjected to additional hassle and attention because of his condition isn't going to help Apollo learn to live a fuller life.

Now, it may seem a bit churlish to criticize the agency for following its own policies regarding explosive residue, but it's not as if Bergeron didn't try to let agents know something unusual was headed their way, in terms of both luggage and human beings. But this was ignored and the usual panic ensued when the machine decided the formula was actually explosives. And it's not as if the agency doesn't have any previous experience with this exact flier.

Bergeron said she is considering filing a complaint with the TSA. It’s not the first time they have experienced harassment at the hands of the agency.

Last year they were mistreated on their way to Texas for Apollo’s medical treatment. In that instance, a TSA employee attempted to pour out all four of Apollo’s bottles of formula before he found it in himself to spare all but one. “It was so blown out of proportion and ridiculous” Bergeron said.

The policies constantly override any innate logic TSA agents might possess and continue unimpeded even when the agency itself admits it doesn't think airplanes are terrorist targets. The underlying problem with these policies and the security theater they anchor is that they're unable to be overridden by agents' intuition or better judgement. Because of this, no one learns anything from these experiences. The TSA just copy-pastes another boilerplate "just policy" non-apology and moves on to the next debacle.

Even worse, the TSA itself provides absolutely no assistance for travelers in terms of prepping for unusual situations, other than tell them to "arrive early." Arriving early is completely useless when agents are free to detain fliers for nearly any reason and for indefinite periods of time. A spokesperson spoke to Yahoo and pointed to this post on the TSA's blog as "answering" questions about how bomb residue tests work. But what's contained in that post doesn't address Bergeron's situation at all. Furthermore, it doesn't really explain the system. It spends most of the post telling people TSA agents will be using swabs to detect bomb residue. No information is given as to what common (or uncommon) items/chemicals/household products might cause a false positive. There's no info on failure rates or anything detailing the technology involved. It's just "we'll be using these so don't be worried." In terms of dealing with Bergeron's multiple experiences with the TSA, it's about as useless as a 404 page.

I understand that too much information might give someone an idea of how to bypass these tests, but when you're dealing with the possibility of throwing out the only food a child with a rare medical condition can eat simply because of policies and faulty machinery, you need to be willing to disseminate more info than a canned response and a worthless "we're the good guys" blog post.



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The US's use of drones is nothing if not controversial, and the overall secrecy around the program -- including the belief that it can be used against Americans as well -- has worried an awful lot of people. Even those in the administration who support the program apparently are uncomfortable with it implicitly, as the Obama administration had drawn up a whole bunch of rules that would limit drone killing... which they wanted to put in place in case Romeny won the election. But, when Obama won, they abandoned the idea. In other words, the position of the administration is basically, "trust us with these drone killing programs... but no one else." Under significant pressure about all of this, the President finally announced in May that the drone killing program would be moved from the CIA to the Defense Department, where it would have more oversight (slightly) and limits.

Except, as Foreign Policy is now reporting, that isn't actually happening and may never happen. The main reason appears to be fairly simple: the CIA loves killing people with these drones, and people in the Defense Department are kind of uncomfortable with doing so. So, the CIA wants to keep control, and the Defense Department doesn't want it.

The U.S. official said that while the platforms and the capabilities are common to either the Agency or the Pentagon, there remain distinctly different approaches to "finding, fixing and finishing" terrorist targets. The two organizations also use different approaches to producing the "intelligence feeds" upon which drone operations rely. Perhaps more importantly, after years of conducting drone strikes, the CIA has developed an expertise and a taste for them. The DOD's appetite to take over that mission may not run very deep.

Yes, the CIA has developed a taste for killing people from the skies with drones controlled from far away. It's like a sport.

Remember when the US banned assassinations by the CIA? Yeah. Weren't those the days?

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So far, one of the biggest stories of the Snowden NSA leaks, by far, is the revelation that the NSA was infiltrating the private data links between Google and Yahoo data centers (and, it seems likely, other companies as well). Google had clearly suspected this, as it had been reported earlier that they were scrambling to encrypt those data links. As you may recall, the original Washington Post article also noted that two Google engineers who were shown the NSA's slides "exploded in profanity" and anger at the NSA.

It would appear that this sentiment is pretty common across Google's security team, and they're displaying their anger on Google Plus -- but also announcing that all that data is now encrypted. When the news first broke, security engineer Brandon Downey expressed reasonable anger about the news:

Fuck these guys.

I've spent the last ten years of my life trying to keep Google's users safe and secure from the many diverse threats Google faces.

[...] But after spending all that time helping in my tiny way to protect Google -- one of the greatest things to arise from the internet -- seeing this, well, it's just a little like coming home from War with Sauron, destroying the One Ring, only to discover the NSA is on the front porch of the Shire chopping down the Party Tree and outsourcing all the hobbit farmers with half-orcs and whips.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post revealed a few more slides showing more details of the NSA's infiltration of private data links between data centers. In response to that, another security engineer, Mike Hearn, announced that all the traffic shown in those slides is now encrypted, along with his own "fuck you" to the NSA and GCHQ:

I now join him in issuing a giant Fuck You to the people who made these slides. I am not American, I am a Brit, but it's no different - GCHQ turns out to be even worse than the NSA.

We designed this system to keep criminals out. There's no ambiguity here. The warrant system with skeptical judges, paths for appeal, and rules of evidence was built from centuries of hard won experience. When it works, it represents as good a balance as we've got between the need to restrain the state and the need to keep crime in check. Bypassing that system is illegal for a good reason.

Unfortunately we live in a world where all too often, laws are for the little people. Nobody at GCHQ or the NSA will ever stand before a judge and answer for this industrial-scale subversion of the judicial process. In the absence of working law enforcement, we therefore do what internet engineers have always done - build more secure software. The traffic shown in the slides below is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ staff did on understanding it, ruined.

Of course, some people might reasonably question the idea that Google is "little people" here. And, while it's good to see Google staffers furious about this, it remains to be seen if Google will actually do more about this. A lawsuit against the US government for hacking into its network seems called for. And, potentially against Level 3 as well, given that it appears Level 3 provided much of the dark fiber Google was using -- and the company gave a giant "if the government comes to us, we can't talk about it" response, that hinted strongly towards "the government came to us and had us tap Google's private links."

Hopefully, we'll start to see that employee anger over this turn into much more: including better privacy tools for users and using Google's political pull to fight the NSA in DC as well.

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This post is going to be very short on commentary because the hideous abuse of justice has basically rendered me near speechless.

David Eckert, a resident of Deming, NM, was pulled over by police officers after failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. For whatever reason, the officers decided Eckert was hiding something, or perhaps they were unsatisfied that a routine stop hadn't blown up into something bigger.

They asked him to step out of the car and then searched his vehicle (without his consent). Another officer brought in a drug dog which reacted (a relatively worthless indication of anything -- drug dogs can easily be "alerted" by their controlling officers) to the driver's seat. (Eckert's lawyer calls into question this dog's training, presenting documents that claim to show it hadn't received the proper field training and recertification. See exhibits listed under docket item 27.) Then the officer "observed" that Eckert was standing "erect with his legs together" and his "buttocks clenched." This was all the justification the Deming police needed to subject Eckert to the following horrific chain of events at a hospital in neighboring Silver City.

1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

At no time did Eckert give his consent to these searches. The police did obtain a warrant to rectally search Eckert but that warrant itself was problematic. For one, it was severely lacking in probable cause. For another, it was valid only for Luna County but the searches were executed in Grant County. Third, the warrant was only valid for four hours, up until 10 pm that night. Eckert was held for 14 hours and, according to medical records, prep for the colonoscopy didn't even commence until 1 am the following day.

Why the venue shift? Because the doctor at the Deming hospital told officers the proposed search was "unethical." Drs. Robert Wilcox and Okay Odocha of the Gila Regional Medical Center apparently had no qualms about forcibly "searching" Eckert eight times.

There's more in Eckert's complaint, including the fact that the second x-ray was of his chest, an area completely unrelated to the region where he was supposedly "concealing drugs." In addition to what can be proven from medical records and police reports obtained by Eckert's attorney, there are additional allegations that the officers Chavez and Hernandez mocked him and made derogatory comments about his "compromised position." They also allegedly moved the privacy screen repeatedly to expose him to others in the hospital hallway. This verbal abuse apparently continued during Eckert's ride back to the Deming police station. Understandably, Eckert now claims to be "terrified to leave the house" and does so "infrequently."

There are many lawsuits filed where most details are alleged. This isn't one of them. Most of what's "alleged" by Eckert is documented by the routine paperwork that accompanies medical procedures and search warrants. And, to add insult to injury, KOB4's news teams states that the Gila Regional Medical Center is billing Eckert for the invasive, non-consensual medical procedures and has threatened to take him to collections for non-payment.

The only question remains is why no one involved on the "law" side ever thought anything past the first step on the list above might be excessive. These officers, along with two shamefully compliant doctors, went as far as they could to humiliate and violate someone simply because they could -- in a collective effort that looks far more like making Eckert pay for the "crime" of making the cops look stupid than any sort of legitimate law enforcement effort.




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This is from 2006 -- I blogged it here -- but it's even more true today.

Under a top secret program initiated by the Bush Administration after the Sept. 11 attacks, the [name of agency (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.)] have been gathering a vast database of [type of records] involving United States citizens.

"This program is a vital tool in the fight against terrorism," [Bush Administration official] said. "Without it, we would be dangerously unsafe, and the terrorists would have probably killed you and every other American citizen." The Bush Administration stated that the revelation of this program has severely compromised national security.

We've changed administrations -- we've changed political parties -- but nothing has changed.

In a dispute that's dragged on for over a decade, it appears that Antigua is, once again, making noises about how this time it's really, really, really going to do what the WTO has said it can do: set up a legal platform to infringe on American copyrights as a form of official payback for the US clearly violating a trade agreement with Antigua by outlawing online gambling. We've covered this dispute and all its twists and turns for years, but the short summary is that Antigua won at every turn, even as the US tried to once declare victory where it had lost. The US even tried to just say it could unilaterally change the trade agreement, which is not how those things work.

Of course, Antigua is a small country, so how does it "get back" at the US after such a win, when it's clear that the US doesn't care at all about the WTO saying it violated the agreement? Well, some folks had the bright idea that perhaps Antigua could just violate American copyrights, and pirate their way to the equivalent value of what the US should be paying. That idea was first floated around 2006, and it seemed like a joke. However, it continued to gain steam. Of course, the real idea behind these sorts of things is that Antigua and the WTO hope that this will make the RIAA and MPAA go running to the US government and beg them to come to some sort of settlement in which gobs of cash are sent from the US Treasury to Antigua. It's a well-known trick in trade wars: co-opt some powerful lobbyists who really shouldn't have any dog in the actual fight, and get them on your side. It happens in trade disputes quite often.

Of course, in the years since the WTO first gave its stamp of approval to this plan, what we've seen is every so often, Antigua makes a public statement along the lines of, "Hey! we're really going to do it!" and the US responds with "You'd better not!" and then there's silence for a year or two, and the dance starts all over again. Apparently it's time for that dance again, because Antigua is making very public that it's really, no really (do you hear that USTR?) really, really, really planning to move forward this time. No, really. They even had a meeting about it. And they're going to set up a body to "manage and operate" the platform. They also claim that they'll soon let private companies bid on participating. And... of course, they knock the US for "failing to negotiate."

I imagine that at some point the US will do another "Oh no, you'd better not!" statement, and then we'll be waiting around for another six to nine months before Antigua insists that it's really, really, no really moving forward with it this time. Really. Guys. Really. We mean it this time.

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Earlier this month, we noted that anonymous NSA officials had been whining about not getting strong enough support from the White House. In particular, they seemed upset that President Obama wasn't front and center in the press defending their actions and that he hadn't stopped by at Ft. Meade to give them a pep talk. We found the whole thing pretty silly. The President had made remarks in support of the NSA and there were a bunch of other things on his plate at the time that seemed more pressing politically. And, also, if you need a pep talk from the President to be happy in your job, you're probably in the wrong job.

However, such talk is getting much louder now that the President has apparently told people he had no idea the NSA was spying on foreign leaders. The NSA itself confirmed that Keith Alexander had never spoken to President Obama about spying on Angela Merkel, though it's possible that the President knew about it from other sources. And, of course, now Senator Dianne Feinstein is insisting she never knew about spying on foreign leaders either. To be honest, both claims seem ridiculous -- and it seems like this kind of weak response is further pissing off NSA officials. We already noted how NSA people were freaking out about Feinstein's statements (though, some believe this is just for show), but the grumbling over the President's statements is getting much louder as NSA officials recognize that it appears the President is positioning the NSA as a rogue agency, rather than one carrying out his orders.

Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.

In particular, they say the claims that the President didn't know about spying on foreign leaders is hogwash.

Precisely how the surveillance is conducted is unclear. But if a foreign leader is targeted for eavesdropping, the relevant U.S. ambassador and the National Security Council staffer at the White House who deals with the country are given regular reports, said two former senior intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing classified information.

Obama may not have been specifically briefed on NSA operations targeting a foreign leader's cellphone or email communications, one of the officials said. "But certainly the National Security Council and senior people across the intelligence community knew exactly what was going on, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous."

If U.S. spying on key foreign leaders was news to the White House, current and former officials said, then White House officials have not been reading their briefing books.

The ramifications here may be serious, as the intelligence community apparently views this as President Obama completely throwing them under the bus:

Some U.S. intelligence officials said they were being blamed by the White House for conducting surveillance that was authorized under the law and utilized at the White House.

"People are furious," said a senior intelligence official who would not be identified discussing classified information. "This is officially the White House cutting off the intelligence community."

What that actually means in the long run is less certain. It's still entirely possible that this is all for show. In fact, the White House has already said Feinstein's claim that the US would stop spying on foreign leaders is simply not true.

That said, if this means more and more NSA employees are disgruntled, I would imagine there are plenty of reporters ready and willing to help them blow the whistle on more things happening within the intelligence community. I'm guessing they already know what Glenn Greenwald's email is, for example...

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As was expected, a new bill to curb the NSA's excesses was introduced in both houses of Congress this morning, with very strong backing in both houses and on both sides of the aisle (in terms of having both powerful sponsors, and lots and lots of co-sponsors). The bill is not perfect, and it is not the final answer to all the NSA's activities, but it's a big step in the right direction -- stopping dragnet surveillance, reforming the way the FISA court works and adding some more transparency (we described many of the details in our post last week, and the bill matches what was expected). It has a decent chance of passing, but getting anything through Congress can be a chore these days. We'll be following what happens with this bill closely. You can see the full bill below or the quick two pager describing the details.

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While we're a bit cynical about the reasoning behind Senator Dianne Feinstein's sudden "conversion" to realizing that perhaps the NSA is out of control with its spying, and needs greater oversight and control, apparently her statement sent chills through officials at the NSA. After all, Feinstein was the strongest Senate defender of the NSA's activities -- to the point that we'd suggested in the past a somewhat co-dependent relationship. However, it sounds like she just turned on the NSA and has suggested that perhaps it needs to go to rehab. Shane Harris and John Hudson at Foreign Policy's The Cable blog have the details:

"We're really screwed now," one NSA official told The Cable. "You know things are bad when the few friends you've got disappear without a trace in the dead of night and leave no forwarding address."

Of course, that's the sort of crazy hyperbole that the NSA is increasingly known for. Feinstein hasn't "disappeared." She's just finally pointed out what many of the rest of us have been arguing for ages: that the NSA is out of control, going way beyond what it's authorized to do, and has little real oversight, in part because of its regular practice of misleading pretty much everyone over the details and extent of its surveillance programs.

Even more important, the statement from that NSA official shows that they still don't recognize what got them into this mess. If the NSA had actually been upfront about what it was doing with others, perhaps it wouldn't find itself in this mess today. It makes you wonder if the NSA is so focused on being super secret about its operations to the outside world that it couldn't distinguish enough about being transparent to government oversight bodies as well.

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You have to hand it to Rep. Mike Rogers. Not only is he politically tone deaf to why people are so pissed off about NSA surveillance and privacy violations, but he appears to be culturally insulting as well. His latest is to defend last week's story about the NSA collecting information on 70 million calls in France to claim that the French ought to be "popping champagne bottles" to cheer on the NSA spying on them. Honestly, it would be difficult to make up a comment this clueless.

“If the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping champagne corks. It’s a good thing. it keeps the French safe. It keeps the US safe. It keeps our European allies safe,” he added.

“This whole notion that we’re going to go after each other on what is really legitimate protection of nation-state interest, I think is disingenuous.”

At least he didn't suggest they should also enjoy some cheese. Of course, that presumes the only reason the US is spying on the French is to protect them against terrorists. But, if that were actually true, they wouldn't also be bugging the phones of leadership and politicians. To date, there is no indication that the spying on all of those calls was limited to "protecting" the French -- and Rogers' own next statement more or less confirms that this has always been about protecting US interests, not the French.

So, here's a simple question for Mike Rogers: would he be okay with sharing all of his phone and email records with the French? After all, perhaps they'll use it to protect him from harm. Even better, yet, why not release that information publicly. If it's just metadata, then there's no expectation of privacy, right? If Rogers releases all of his phone and email metadata for the past five years, I'll stop by his office the next time I'm in DC with a bottle of champagne.

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Was just about to hit the hay for the evening when this came through the wire. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure I’m not still dreaming in my onesie, but here goes. Revealed in a press release just moments ago is Motorola’s ambitious open hardware platform dubbed Project Ara. You heard right, according to Motorola, they want to do to hardware, what Android has done to software. How? By creating an open based modular smartphone platform. I’ll give you a few moments to pick your jaw up from the ground.

Better? Good. Alright, so the goal with Project Ara is to have 3rd party developers create pieces of a phone that can be decided upon by the user, not unlike what we saw in the Phonebloks concept we showed you a few weeks ago. While everyone could agree that allowing users to choose individual components of a smartphone could be fun, it sounded so far fetched, many — myself included — dismissed it as a dream that simply wasn’t possible. Oh, how wrong we were.

According to Motorola, each device will come with an endoskeleton or “endo” that holds all the different components together (see above image). And really, skies the limit when it comes to the modules that can be attached to an endo. Hardware keyboard, faster processor, bigger battery, or something different altogether (taser gun perhaps?). Anything you can dream up.

The craziest part is that Motorola says they’ve been secretly working on Project Ara for over a year now. This could have really been what Motorola’s Guy Kawasaki alluded to back in March. It wasn’t until recently Motorola teamed up with the creator of the Phonebloks concept. Motorola mentions a similar vision for the future of smartphones, where the Phonebloks head has already begun laying the groundwork for a community based on open, customizable, modular-based hardware.

Motorola says the MDK (Module Developer’s Kit) will be released sometime in the next few months, where developers will soon be invited to start creating modules for Project Ara. Interested in becoming an Ara Scout? Motorola is inviting regular folks like yourself to collaborate with them on “special missions” that will help shape Project Ara for the masses. Think of it like the Motorola Feedback Network but more fun. Sign up here.

Okay, now that we got all that out of the way… Seriously, is this a dream?

[via Motorola]

Back in July, the NY Times made it pretty clear that United States Solicitor General Donald Verrilli almost certainly lied to the Supreme Court, concerning how evidence obtained via NSA surveillance techniques would end up in court. As you may recall, the lawsuit in question involved the ACLU, with the government arguing that the ACLU had no standing. The Supreme Court asked a basic question about whether or not anyone could possibly have standing then to challenge the law -- and Verrilli insisted (and the justices relied on) the claim that if the feds used data collected under these questionable surveillance statutes, that the defense team would be told about this, and they could challenge the constitutionality of the collection. Except... no defendant had ever been told any such thing. And then someone noticed that Senator Dianne Feinstein, in defending the NSA surveillance, had insisted that it was key in a bunch of cases -- meaning one of them was lying. This, apparently, got Verrilli quite upset at the various national security lawyers who had looked over his defense and who apparently chose not to tell him that what he was saying about the government telling defendants stuff wasn't, in fact, true. As was reported a few weeks ago, Verrilli then led a fierce debate within the administration, and said that a policy change was necessary. And, to kick it off, they were searching for a single case in which they would reveal such info was used.

Of course, this allowed the feds to cherry pick their case... and the date and time to release the "news." So, of course they chose Friday night, which is when the government always tries to release bad news. So we're taking that news and discussing it the following Monday, because this is big and it deserves serious attention. Late Friday, the government admitted that it had used information gleaned via programs under the FISA Amendments Act in the criminal case against Jamshid Muhtorov, who was charged in January 2012 with "providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a designated terrorist organization based in Uzbekistan." Much of the original complaint against Muhtorov involves discussions about intercepted calls and emails, though it's unclear how many (if any) of those were done under the FAA or other law enforcement authorities.

The new notice in the case doesn't reveal very much at all, other than that the government intends to "offer into evidence or otherwise use or disclose in proceedings... information obtained or derived from acquisition of foreign intelligence information conducted pursuant to the" FAA. Basically, this case now is very likely to become the key case in testing the constitutionality of at least some aspects of the FISA Amendments Act surveillance efforts (which include the "upstream" tapping of the internet backbone via telcos, though it's not clear if that was used in this particular case).

In other words, this case just got a lot more interesting -- though it's clear that the feds tried very carefully to pick a case where the facts work strongly in their favor. I would imagine, however, that various public interest and civil liberties groups are gearing up to see how they might help out in the case.

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Remember how the feds said they were going to be more careful about respecting freedom of the press and such? Not that anyone really expected that to happen, but late last week there was a scary report about how DHS officials and Maryland police were sent to do a search of Paul Flanagan's house to make sure he had no guns -- since he's been legally prohibited from owning a gun due to previous legal issues. But, while in the house, the officials apparently searched Flanagan's wife's documents and seized a bunch. That's a problem because his wife, Audrey Hudson, is a journalist and they took a bunch of her private notes, many of which revealed journalistic sources.

Hudson claims that the search concerning her husband was nothing more than a ruse to uncover details of government sources she had quoted in a recent article about Air Marshals. While not definitive, there appear to be an awful lot of coincidences that lead to the seizure of her documents. First, one of the people on the "search" was with the Coast Guard Investigative Services, and the Federal Air Marshals are a part of the Coast Guard. Admittedly, Hudson's husband, Flanagan, works for the Coast Guard. However, the investigator who did the search asked Hudson if she had authored that particular article, so he was well aware of it going in. Furthermore, the search warrant was just about guns, so it seems odd that they'd go searching her computer. On top of that, the "excuse" given by the Coast Guard after all of this is incredibly flimsy:

"In the course of a joint Federal & Maryland State Police investigation, a lawful search warrant was served on August 6, 2013 in Shadyside, MD. The Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) was asked to participate since the search involved a Coast Guard employee. During the course of the search, the CGIS agent discovered government documents labeled FOUO - For Official Use Only (FOUO) and LES - Law Enforcement Sensitive. The files that contained these documents were cataloged on the search warrant inventory and taken from the premises. The documents were reviewed with the source agency and determined to be obtained properly through the Freedom of Information Act. The CG employee was notified that the documents were cleared and the CG employee picked them up after signing for the documents."

Basically, for no clear reason, they decided that even though they were looking for guns, they would start rifling through her documents, and then seize them, even though they had been obtained through perfectly legal means. It is entirely possible that this was all coincidental, but it certainly would seem to create some fairly significantly chilling effects, yet again, for reporters.

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So, last week, there was the report that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had found out about the US NSA spying on her mobile phone and had made an angry call to President Obama. As we noted, US officials made perhaps the weakest response ever, insisting that they weren't monitoring her phone today and they promised they wouldn't monitor it in the future -- but absolutely refusing to comment on whether or not the NSA had done so in the past. Of course, that just called much more attention to the obvious implication that they had -- and it took just a couple days before Spiegel revealed the details. Not only had the NSA been monitoring Merkel's mobile phone, but they'd been doing it for over a decade, since before she was in power:

There are strong indications that it was the SCS that targeted the cell phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is suggested by a document that apparently comes from an NSA database in which the agency records its targets. This document, which SPIEGEL has seen, is what set the cell phone scandal in motion.

The document contains Merkel's cell phone number. An inquiry to her team revealed that it is the number the chancellor uses mainly to communicate with party members, ministers and confidants, often by text message. The number is, in the language of the NSA, a "Selector Value." The next two fields determine the format ("raw phone number") and the "Subscriber," identified as "GE Chancellor Merkel."

[....] The time stamp is noteworthy. The order was transferred to the "National Sigint Requirements List," the list of national intelligence targets, in 2002. That was the year Germany held closely watched parliamentary elections and Merkel battled Edmund Stoiber of Bavaria's Christian Social Union to become the conservatives' chancellor candidate. It was also the year the Iraq crisis began heating up. The document also lists status: "A" for active. This status was apparently valid a few weeks before President Obama's Berlin visit in June 2013.

Spiegel has a lot more, including some revealing information about how the NSA uses the US embassy in Berlin to intercept all kinds of communications.

But then there's this incredible claim: President Obama insists he had no idea about it when he spoke to Merkel:

Merkel spoke with Obama on Wednesday afternoon, calling him from her secure landline in her Chancellery office. Both spoke English. According to the Chancellery, the president said that he had known nothing of possible monitoring, otherwise he would have stopped it. Obama also expressed his deepest regrets and apologized.

Now, remember, this is the very same President Obama, who just a couple months ago claimed that every time more Snowden news broke, it would be the first he'd heard about some of these programs, and he'd have to go ask the NSA what they were really doing. Could this be one of those situations? It seems almost impossible to believe that the NSA would be spying on the head of state of one of our closest allies without the President being aware. As the Spiegel report notes, those kinds of orders would have to be renewed with approval from the top:

Among the politically decisive questions is whether the spying was authorized from the top: from the US president. If the data is accurate, the operation was authorized under former President George W. Bush and his NSA chief, Michael Hayden. But it would have had to be repeatedly approved, including after Obama took office and up to the present time. Is it conceivable that the NSA made the German chancellor a surveillance target without the president's knowledge?

However, after trying to avoid the question, over the weekend, the NSA admitted that Keith Alexander had never briefed the President about spying on Merkel (though, it's possible he heard about it from others).

This makes it sound, again, like the NSA has gone rogue. How can President Obama seriously allow Keith Alexander and James Clapper to remain in charge when they've just made him look like a complete fool, supposedly totally unaware of what his own intelligence apparatus is up to -- especially when it concerns programs that, once revealed, can have a serious negative impact on a variety of diplomatic fronts.

And for what benefit? The Spiegel report makes it clear that the NSA saw little value in spying on Merkel. They just did it because... reasons.

Former NSA employee Thomas Drake does not see this as a contradiction. "After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Germany became intelligence target number one in Europe," he says. The US government did not trust Germany, because some of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots had lived in Hamburg. Evidence suggests that the NSA recorded Merkel once and then became intoxicated with success, says Drake. "It has always been the NSA's motto to conduct as much surveillance as possible," he adds.

The fact that President Obama hasn't yet fired Alexander in particular is fairly incredible, given this latest revelation.

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We already knew that Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner was getting ready to release a major new anti-NSA spying bill called the USA Freedom Act, and Derek Khanna has just revealed many of the details of the bill, scheduled to be introduced in both houses of Congress this coming Tuesday. It will be backed by Sensenbrenner in the House and Pat Leahy in the Senate, and will have plenty of co-sponsors (already about 50 have signed up) including some who had initially voted against the Amash Amendment back in July. In other words, this bill has a very high likelihood of actually passing, though I imagine that the intelligence community, and potentially the White House, will push back on it. For Congress, gathering up a veto-proof majority may be a more difficult task.

The bill appears to do a number of good things, focusing on limiting the NSA's ability to do dragnet collections, rather than specific and targeted data collection, while also significantly increasing transparency of the activities of the NSA as well as the FISA court when it comes to rulings that interpret the law.

• End bulk data collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. This is the program that collects metadata on every phone call based on a twisted interpretation of the law and a thorough revisionist dictionary for words like "targeted," "relevance," "search" and "surveillance." Sensenbrenner, who crafted much of the original PATRIOT Act insists that when he wrote it, it was intended to already ban this kind of dragnet. The new bill will make that explicit. Similarly, it appears that the bill will require the intelligence community to be much more proactive in filtering out unnecessary information and deleting information collected incidentally.
  
  
• Fixing the FISC: As many have recommended, the law would make sure that a public advocate can be present to be an adversarial presence, arguing in favor of protecting Americans' privacy. There will be a special Office of the Special Advocate (OSA) created for this role. Somewhat surprisingly, the OSA will even be allowed to appeal decisions that the FISA court makes if it believes they stray from the law or the Constitution. That could be a very big deal.
  
  Separately, the DOJ will be required to declassify all FISC decisions from the past decade that involve "a significant construction or interpretation of the law." That is, no more secret law-making by the FISC.
  
  
• Greater transparency for companies on the receiving end of demands for information. This would make it so companies that get orders to hand over information can reveal numbers of requests, effectively stopping the existing gag orders which prevent us from knowing how often the NSA is demanding info from internet companies.

This legislation doesn't solve all the problems, but it does clearly attack the most egregious actions by the NSA and the wider intelligence community. I imagine those in that community will fight back hard on this. We'll be hearing outrageous claims about how people will die if they can't spy on all of us. But, in the end, if the NSA hadn't continued to expand its spying efforts, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.

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There aren't many upsides to Snowden's revelations that NSA is essentially spying on the entire Internet, all the time, but if one good thing has already come out of that sorry state of affairs it's the emergence of security expert Bruce Schneier as a mainstream commentator on the digital world. That's largely because his core expertise has been shoved into the very center of our concerns, making his thoughts on what's going on particularly valuable.

One fruitful theme that he has been developing recently is the idea of feudal computing (I imagine it could well turn out to be the subject of his next book.) Schneier first wrote about this even before the NSA story broke, back in November last year. He then revisited the idea shortly after the first Snowden story appeared, and has now returned to the theme again, in what is perhaps his best essay on the subject so far. It's called "Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet," and explores some of the implications of our new digital dystopia -- and what we can do about it. It begins by describing how things were supposed to be:

In its early days, there was a lot of talk about the "natural laws of the Internet" and how it would empower the masses, upend traditional power blocks, and spread freedom throughout the world. The international nature of the Internet made a mockery of national laws. Anonymity was easy. Censorship was impossible. Police were clueless about cybercrime. And bigger changes were inevitable. Digital cash would undermine national sovereignty. Citizen journalism would undermine the media, corporate PR, and political parties. Easy copying would destroy the traditional movie and music industries. Web marketing would allow even the smallest companies to compete against corporate giants. It really would be a new world order.

Unfortunately, as we know, that's not how it worked out. Instead, we have seen the rise of the feudal Internet:

Feudal security consolidates power in the hands of the few. These companies [like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook etc.] act in their own self-interest. They use their relationship with us to increase their profits, sometimes at our expense. They act arbitrarily. They make mistakes. They're deliberately changing social norms. Medieval feudalism gave the lords vast powers over the landless peasants; we’re seeing the same thing on the Internet.

More recently, we have witnessed the dangerous alignment of private and governmental interests and power:

Both corporations and governments want ubiquitous surveillance, and the NSA is using Google, Facebook, Verizon, and others to get access to data it couldn't otherwise. The entertainment industry is looking to governments to enforce their antiquated business models.

A key question is: how did this happen? How did things go so wrong when they seemed to start off so well? Schneier has a good answer:

The truth is that technology magnifies power in general, but the rates of adoption are different. The unorganized, the distributed, the marginal, the dissidents, the powerless, the criminal: they can make use of new technologies faster. And when those groups discovered the Internet, suddenly they had power. But when the already powerful big institutions finally figured out how to harness the Internet for their needs, they had more power to magnify. That's the difference: the distributed were more nimble and were quicker to make use of their new power, while the institutional were slower but were able to use their power more effectively.

And that's where we are today, at a point where the big institutions -- governments above all -- have finally overcome their initial cluelessness, and worked out that as well as being a threat to their power, the Internet could also be a means for them to consolidate it. Fortunately, Schneier has some practical suggestions about what we need to do now in order to tip the balance back towards the people:

In the short term, we need more transparency and oversight. The more we know of what institutional powers are doing, the more we can trust that they are not abusing their authority. We have long known this to be true in government, but we have increasingly ignored it in our fear of terrorism and other modern threats. This is also true for corporate power. Unfortunately, market dynamics will not necessarily force corporations to be transparent; we need laws to do that. The same is true for decentralized power; transparency is how we will differentiate political dissidents from criminal organizations.

Oversight is also critically important, and is another long-understood mechanism for checking power. This can be a combination of things: courts that act as third-party advocates for the rule of law rather than rubber-stamp organizations, legislatures that understand the technologies and how they affect power balances, and vibrant public-sector press and watchdog groups that analyze and debate the actions of those wielding power.

Transparency and oversight give us the confidence to trust institutional powers to fight the bad side of distributed power, while still allowing the good side to flourish. For if we are going to entrust our security to institutional powers, we need to know they will act in our interests and not abuse that power. Otherwise, democracy fails.

There's much more in Schneier's essay, including thoughts on the "security gap", and why the longer-term solution is to reduce power differences by opening up data. It's a really important piece that pulls together many of the big issues that Snowden's leaks have raised. Unusually, it not only offers a compelling analysis of what's wrong, but also some sensible, if broad-brush, thoughts on how to put it right.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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This is a video from the Kansas City Maker Faire of a Tesla coil playing AWOLNATION's 'Sail'. It almost sounds like the song was meant to be performed by Tesla coils. It wasn't though, it was meant to be performed in my earbuds when I am pumping iron at the gym AND GETTING F***ING YOKED. I don't even know what that means, I just want you to imagine me as a really muscular dude and not some guy with chicken legs so weak they can barely pedal a bicycle. The last time I took the stairs instead of the elevator? Two broken legs. Hit the jump for the video. Thanks to Stephanie, who dreams of sailing a flying pirate ship to the moon. Whoa, you too?

Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA boss, who famously argued that the only people complaining about NSA surveillance were internet shut-ins who couldn't get laid, apparently never learned that when you're in a public place, someone might overhear your phone calls. Entrepreneur and former MoveOn.org director Tom Matzzie just so happened to be on the Acela express train from DC to NY when he (1) spotted Hayden sitting behind him and (2) started overhearing a series of "off the record" phone calls with press about the story of the week: the revelations of the NSA spying on foreign leaders. Matzzie did what any self-respecting American would do: live-tweet the calls. During the calls Hayden apparently slammed the Obama administration, while insisting he only be quoted as a "former senior administration official."

I'm sure Hayden will be happy about this. After all, as I'm sure he'd be the first to argue, he had no expectation of privacy in such a situation, right? In the end, it appears someone in his office spotted the tweets, and alerted Hayden who ended up taking a photo with Matzzie and having a short conversation with him.

A bunch of the tweets are below:

Former NSA spy boss Michael Hayden on Acela behind me blabbing "on background as a former senior admin official" Sounds defensive.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Hayden talking about a famous blackberry now.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Hayden was bragging about rendition and black sites a minute ago.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Michael Hayden on Acela giving reporters disparaging quotes about admin. "Remember, just refer as former senior admin" #exNSAneedsadayjob

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela: Michael Hayden was talking to Massimo Calabresi at TIME I am pretty sure. Does he tweet?

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela listening to former NSA spy boss Michael Hayden give "off record" interviews. I feel like I'm in the NSA. Except I'm in public.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela: phone ringing. I think the jig is up. Maybe somebody is telling him I'm here. Do I hide?

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

New call. I am totally busted I think.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

I think I'm safe. Just passed Philly. No rendition yet. Do I have the balls to ask him for a photo? #haydenacela

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela: Hayden's comments to press were clearly about NSA spying on foreign allies. #haydenacela

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Win pic.twitter.com/tsJHqjv1LM

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

I just had a very nice conversation with Michael Hayden. He was a gentleman and we disagree.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On the pic. His office called him and then he graciously offered me an interview. We talked around the 4th amendment and foreign spying.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

I have to say. I'm actually a little afraid. The intelligence world is kind of dark and scary.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Hayden just left train in Newark. He touched my back...again. I think a stop short actually.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Getting off train soon. Somebody email my wife and explain all this.

— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

For all the talk from the NSA folks how revealing how we collect phone information will lead terrorists to use other means... the fact that an ex-NSA boss would give such calls in a public place like this makes it pretty clear that even if you know if others eavesdrop on you, and you're supposedly an "expert" on this stuff, sometimes people just take a chance anyway. And sometimes it doesn't work so well.

Of course, Hayden's response to all of this is to blame "liberal activists" for this "bullshit" story, while insisting that Matzzie's statements about what the calls were about were "terribly wrong." As if anyone's going to believe that.

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It is the GNU project's 30th birthday, and we are pleased to announce version 0.5 of the GNU Hurd. The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. It is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux). A bit late, but there you have it. Does anyone here actually use Hurd?

By now, I think everyone agrees that politicians lie. Sometimes they lie about spying on us as we take selfies with our camera phone, sometimes they lie in court, and it seems like sometimes they lie just for the fun of it. Many people talk about how awful it is that politicians lie. They think that politicians need to lie less. I disagree. I think that our best hope is to elect politicians so completely full of shit that their BS is instantly recognizable as such, which means we actually know the opposite is the truth. It's sort of a governance by photographic negative philosophy.

But what would such a politician look like, you ask? Well, probably a great deal like Malaysia's Reezal Merican ('Merican!) Bin Naina Merican (totally 'Merican!). See, Reezal doesn't like video games all that much, primarily because he thinks they are anti-Islam, and he's currently advocating banning Grand Theft Auto 5 (of course). Fortunately for him, he has some international partners in this ban. Namely the UK and his namesake, 'Merica.

In Malaysia, a member of Parliament named Reezal Merican Bin Naina Merican is asking his government to ban Grand Theft Auto V due to violence. His rationale is that the United States and the United Kingdom have already banned the game. They have? Oh really?

Confused? Me too, because just last night I was happily playing GTA5 while coincidentally shouting "'Merica!" with each and every gunshot fired from my avatar. I thought perhaps I was playing a banned game, which actually only made me revel in its glory all the more, but then I remembered that Reezal is a politician. One, I might add, who seems to be putting my super-liar government philosophy into practice.

Because, of course, GTA5 certainly isn't banned in the UK or 'Merica, something which I'd guess Reezal knows full well. But if you're going to lie, I say go big. At worst you'll get called out on it, but at best we all get to have a laugh and at least one politician becomes infinitely more transparent through the power of bullshit.

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We’ve always wanted a way to record what’s being displayed on our Android devices, but the current solutions are all flawed in some way. They might require root, they might not be very smooth, and some just flat-out don’t work. Koushik Dutta is hoping to change all of that with a new feature he’s working on for future versions of CyanogenMod.

Users can start recording their screen at any time using a combined press of the “power” and “volume up” buttons, which isn’t unlike the standard “power” + “volume down” combo we use for taking screenshots. Koush’s method includes the ability to show device touches with an on-screen graphic so users know what is being pressed, and when. You also have the option of having your phone record audio from the microphone during the recording, which would make it super easy to say whatever you need on top of the recording.

There are many situations where such a feature would be useful, such as tutorial videos, app demos, and getting support for any issues you might be having. Color us excited for sure.

The feature isn’t currently present in any CyanogenMod nightlies, but Koush has already uploaded the code to the project’s Gerrit page for any developers who might want to give it a shot:

Remote display framework support.

Any app can use the remote display APIs to mirror to another device...
This can be used to implement AirPlay, Chromecast, or even screen recording.

We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled to see when, exactly, the rest of us will be able to get in on the fun. Watch a quick video demo of the new feature above.

[via Google+]